Drew Barrymore, Hollywood's Highest Profile Scab

The last actor's strike was in the year 2000, and was somewhat dissimilar to today's acting strike.  While this year's strike has so far been against the AMPTP (SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher has strongly signaled that there may be a strike against the video game industry as well, though that is not yet in place), in 2000 they were fighting the American Association of Advertising Agencies, specifically over commercials and whether or not actors would receive residuals for commercials aired on cable television, which by 2000 made up a large part of the media landscape.  During this time frame, actors were forbidden from making any commercials with companies unless they were granted a waiver by agreeing to SAG & AFTRA's (then separate unions) terms.

This was the longest work stoppage (to date) in the history of entertainment unions, and it caused severe hardship for those impacted.  But it also led to one of the most famous moments of an actor breaking union rules.  Elizabeth Hurley, a model and actress most famous for her work in the first Austin Powers movie, did a commercial for Estee Lauder cosmetics, which was in direct violation of the strike rules.  It's not super well-remembered now (to be fair, neither is Hurley whose career dissipated soon after this), but at the time it was a big deal.  Hurley, thanks to her work as a model & her high-profile relationship with Hugh Grant, was a household name in 2000, and was the only major actor to break the strike.  At the time, SAG publicly threatened the actress with losing her union card, which would've made her unemployable in Hollywood afterward.  Hurley immediately apologized, stating that she didn't know the work had violated her union rules, and her defenders tried to get the advert pulled.  She ended up getting to keep her union card, but had to make a public apology and pay a fine of $100,000.

So far this strike, we have not seen a high-profile actor do what Hurley did, specifically violate the terms of their contract & risk union expulsion.  But today, after 126 days of the writers' strike and nearly two months of the actors' strike, we are getting our first high profile, indisputable picket-crosser.  Drew Barrymore returned to her eponymous talk show earlier today, in a flagrant act of picket-crossing, and almost certainly in the process making a "scab" (the term in the US for someone who does union work while union workers are on strike, and yes, it's meant to be an ugly term) out of herself or anyone who writes on the show.

This is because Barrymore's show is a WGA-contracted show.  While other TV series like The Today Show and The View have carried on in the months since the WGA strike have continued (and The View, in particular, has been regularly picketed), they are considered part of their company's news division, which wouldn't be covered by WGA (though, it has to be said, The View does appear to have had WGA writers on staff that are currently on strike, so it's certainly not in the clear...John Edit-it does appear that The View is a struck show, and thus the hosts, including actress Whoopi Goldberg, have also been scabbing similarly to Barrymore, though their spot under the umbrella of news has meant that they didn't get the same kind of press).  Barrymore's show is the first major break for a solely entertainment program, with them essentially working without union-writers despite it being a show that has always employed union talent, and as a result is getting heat from across the entertainment world.

Barrymore, apparently not a member of the WGA, is not in violation of SAG-AFTRA.  Union rules are strange, but I'll give it a shot here to explain the difference.  SAG-AFTRA does cover the contracts of writer's & actor's, but they also cover the contracts of game show & talk show personalities like Barrymore...but that's not part of the current contract.  Barrymore can't promote any of her past movies on the show (that would violate SAG rules), but she can appear on her show without violating SAG.  However, her show can't exist without violating WGA rules, since she's an entertainment program that employed union talent.  So her SAG card is not at risk, but she's actively standing against a different industry union.

Other actors in her situation have largely stood with the writer's union.  Mayim Bialik, who is one of the hosts of Jeopardy!, has not returned to the show out of solidarity with the writers (her cohost Ken Jennings, not a professional actor like Bialik & Barrymore, has not, and has also been called a "scab").  No late night talk shows have returned, which is a marked difference between the 2007-08 writer's strike (when many of them did end up going on air), and the 2023 strike, and in the cases of people like Seth Meyers & Jimmy Fallon, they've been paying their staffs out-of-pocket.  Barrymore is not technically the only person who has been accused of picket-crossing (Kim Kardashian has also received that criticism, though that was before the SAG strike, and was allegedly not violating WGA rules since Kardashian & showrunner Ryan Murphy claimed they weren't changing scripts), but given her family's long history in the labor union (her Great Aunt Ethel was part of the 1919 Equity Strike, the first major acting strike in the United States) and her fans utter devotion to the actress's empathetic persona, this comes as a shocking about-face for the performer.

It's hard to know where this will go.  Barrymore has greatly undercut the writers' cause by essentially employing scabs (likely even herself) to ensure her show is on the air.  She's also put an intense pressure on other actresses like Jennifer Hudson & Sherri Shepherd to resume their shows without WGA talent, further hurting the cause.  The lesson Barrymore is teaching, no matter what pablum she puts on her Instagram, is that writer's are not an essential part of her success (which, given how poorly-worded that Instagram post was, is clearly not the truth).  An actress whose work in WGA-written films like ET, Charlie's Angels, and Never Been Kissed made her "America's Sweetheart" is actively turning her back on an industry that not only made her a household name, but has long considered her family to be royalty in Hollywood.  It's clear at this point that while Barrymore may not care about the impact to writers, she should try to care about the impact to her career.  After all, Elizabeth Hurley, even apologetic, never made another major Hollywood movie again after she broke the 2000 strike...