Sean Gunn Lisa O’Connor/Shutterstock
Sean Gunn was a Gilmore Women fan-favorite all through its seven-season tenure, however he now could be airing his behind-the-scenes grievances with streaming large Netflix through the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike.
“I wished to come back out and protest Netflix as a result of I used to be on a tv present known as Gilmore Women for a very long time that has introduced in huge earnings for Netflix,” Gunn, 49, instructed The Hollywood Reporter on Friday, July 14, from his perch on the SAG-AFTRA picket line in Los Angeles. “It has been one in every of their hottest exhibits for a really very long time, over a decade. It will get streamed over and time and again, and I see nearly not one of the income that comes into that.”
He added: “You actually need to rethink the way you do enterprise and share the wealth with folks. In any other case, that is all going to come back crashing down.”
Gunn, who performed the quirky Kirk for all seven seasons of The WB’s Gilmore Women, is standing in solidarity together with his fellow members of SAG-AFTRA. The union — which represents greater than 160,000 performers — approved a strike earlier this week after the Alliance of Movement Image and Tv Producers (AMPTP) didn’t tackle any of their issues concerning honest wages and using synthetic intelligence throughout contract negotiations.
Per phrases of the strike, union actors are forbidden from filming any TV or film tasks nor can they promote them throughout deliberate interviews or on social media. Gunn joined the likes of Mandy Moore, Jason Sudeikis, Logan Lerman, Schitt’s Creek alum Dustin Milligan and the forged of Gray’s Anatomy, all of whom have been noticed on the picket strains in current days.
Sean Gunn and Lauren Graham on ‘Gilmore Women: A 12 months within the Life.’ Netflix/Kobal/Shutterstock
Netflix — one of many movie studios that fall below the AMPTP’s jurisdiction — has not addressed the strike or Gunn’s claims about residual checks. Residual checks are sometimes paid to actors each time a previous TV episode airs on linear tv. Nonetheless, there’s at present no precedent for incomes paychecks based mostly on streaming platforms’ syndication rights. Gilmore Women — which was created by Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino — can at present be streamed on Netflix, which greenlit its 2016 revival, Gilmore Women: A 12 months within the Life.
“I like bodily comedy and I like exact old fashioned comedy, and I believe that’s what Amy [Sherman-Palladino] likes as nicely, and she or he writes extremely nicely for that,” Gunn recalled to Leisure Weekly in November 2016 about studying the early scripts for the present, which initially aired between 2000 and 2007. “There was only a good rhythm between us together with her as the author and me because the actor that simply labored. By way of what an oddball Kirk is, that simply grew sooner or later. I don’t know the place that comes from. It made sense to me one way or the other.”
Whereas Gunn — who made a cameo within the last season of Sherman-Palladino’s The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel earlier this yr — has fond reminiscences of working with the Palladinos on set, he’s over studio CEOs not providing equal pay to their workers.
“I believe when [Disney CEO] Bob Iger talks about what a disgrace [the strike] is, he must do not forget that in 1980, CEOs like him made 30 occasions what their lowest employee was making,” he quipped to the Related Press on Friday, referring to the highest govt at Walt Disney Studios. “Now, Bob Iger makes 400 occasions what his lowest employee [makes] and I believe that’s a f—king disgrace, Bob. Possibly it’s best to have a look within the mirror and ask your self, ‘Why is that?’ And never solely, ‘Why is that?’ however ‘Is it OK? Is it morally OK?’”
Gunn added: “In case your response is simply, ‘That’s simply the best way firms work now,’ nicely, that sucks and that makes you a s—ty particular person, if that’s your reply.”
Gunn has additionally labored for Disney’s Marvel Studios, starring in all three of his brother James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy movies.