How Fran Drescher became the voice of labor in America

In a 1994 episode of “The Nanny,” the titular caretaker played by Fran Drescher is pressured by her wealthy Broadway producer boss to cross a picket line where he’s hosting a premiere party. She refuses, saying that her mother taught her to never, ever cross a picket line.

Nearly three decades later, Drescher — who created and starred in the series — is at the center of the biggest Hollywood strike in over half a century

SAG-AFTRA, the actors' union that Drescher leads, announced its strike on Thursday. It is joined by the Writers Guild of America, which has been picketing since May. Together, the two unions have brought Hollywood to a halt.

Why is Hollywood on strike?

The demands of both unions are centered around residual payments from streaming services, data transparency and — crucially — concerns over the studios using artificial intelligence to replace human writers and actors.

While many of the faces of the strike are wealthy A-list actors, the union has more than 160,000 members, including those who struggle to clear the $26,000 per year in earnings needed to qualify for health insurance, a key issue Matt Damon raised recently on the “Oppenheimer” red carpet. When the strike was called, Damon and his castmates walked out of the film’s London premiere before the movie was screened.

'She has brought us all together'

Drescher ended up in this position after narrowly defeating actor Matthew Modine to win the presidency in 2021 despite a lack of labor experience. “What I don’t know, I promise you I will learn very quickly, and what I do know cannot be taught,” she said at the time.

Drescher was criticized last week for appearing in a selfie with Kim Kardashian during a fashion event in Italy, but she defended the move, saying she was there for work and was in contact with SAG-AFTRA staff throughout the trip. She earned rave reviews for her speech Thursday announcing the strike, clips of which immediately went viral.

“Eventually, the people break down the gates of Versailles,” Drescher said. “And then it’s over. We’re at that moment right now.”

Drescher has, in recent years, described herself as “anti-capitalist” and criticized “the big-business sociopaths, who pray to the money gods.” And in the run-up to the strike, she was vital in galvanizing the union, which voted nearly unanimously to authorize the strike.

“It’s pretty amazing what Fran has done,” actor Shaan Sharma, a member of the negotiating committee, told Variety. “She has brought us all together.”

A summer of labor action

Writers and actors are generating most of the headlines, but it’s a “hot labor summer” in a number of industries.

Thousands of hotel workers have been striking in California. And there is the looming potential of a Teamsters strike if the union cannot agree to a new deal with UPS by a July 31 deadline. Even a relatively brief strike by UPS workers could snarl supply chains, delay deliveries and have a major economic impact.

Labor unions have become much more popular over the last decade, according to polls, and now enjoy broad public support. Drescher has consistently tied the negotiations in Hollywood to the wider worker movement.

"The eyes of labor are upon us," she said after the press conference.

"It's very important that everybody appreciate that we're not just sticking up for ourselves, but we're sticking up for everybody else, because it is a slippery slope into a very dangerous time, and a real dystopia if big business, corporations, think that they can put human beings out of work and replace them with artificial intelligence. It's dangerous, and it's without thinking or conscience or caring."

When will the strike end?

There is no timetable for when the shutdown in Hollywood might end. Just before the actors went on strike, Deadline spoke to an anonymous studio executive who said the studios and streamers planned to hold out until the writers caved.

“The endgame is to allow things to drag on until union members start losing their apartments and losing their houses,” the executive said.

Disney CEO Bob Iger, meanwhile, called the union demands "disturbing" and said actors and writers weren't being "realistic."

While the resolution of the strike will determine Drescher’s future as a labor leader, there is one interesting historical note: The last time both the actors and writers struck at the same time was 1960, when the Screen Actors Guild president was Ronald Reagan.