Actors strike: Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul demonstrate side by side

The Breaking Bad duo, members of SAG-AFTRA, paraded through the streets of Los Angeles on Tuesday.

After seven weeks of strike, Hollywood actors continue to demonstrate against the major American production studios. The main actors’ union, SAG-AFTRA, which has 160,000 members, has been leading the social movement since July 13.

As soon as they went on strike alongside the screenwriters, who stopped working in May, several highly influential actors showed their support for the demonstrators. Among them, we include Matt Damon, Meryl Streep, Jennifer Lawrence, Rami Malek, Amy Schumer and Ben Stiller.

This time it’s the turn of Bryan Cranston And Aaron Paul to appear publicly alongside SAG-AFTRA. The duo of breaking Bad marched through the streets of Los Angeles. In a video published on the organization’s official Twitter account this Tuesday, they speak. “I just realized I’ve been a member for 44 years,” Cranston begins. “It’s my age! You became a member in 1979? This is my year of birth”Paul replies.

“If I hadn’t had access to residual payments, I clearly wouldn’t have been able to survive”continues the interpreter of Jesse Pinkman. “It’s an advantage that my generation and then yours had. The new generation no longer has it. We were also able to rely on unionization and many other things such as the sale of DVDs”, adds the man who played Walter White from 2008.

The residual payments they mention correspond to remuneration arising from rebroadcasts of a film or series on television. However, in streaming, there is not this type of remuneration. Once the program arrives on the platform, there is no revenue over the airing time, regardless of whether it is successful or not.

“Business has changed. Streaming has changed everything,” rebounds Bryan Cranston. The actor notably mentions the AMPTP (the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers) – the organization bringing together the biggest studios – which “wants to maintain the old model”. “It just doesn’t work. We try to make them understand that. And in fact, they know it very well”he continues.

“We will go nowhere, we stand in solidarity with every member of SAG-AFTRA”, concludes in turn Aaron Paul.

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