Fran Drescher Wants to Lock Up Bob Iger: The president of SAG-AFTRA, Fran Drescher lashed out against the CEO of Disney, Bob Iger. In an interview with Variety on a sit-in demonstration outside Paramount Pictures studios.
In an interview with CNBC’s David Faber from the Sun Valley conference on July 13, Iger said that the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikers were not “realistic” with their demands.
On Friday when asked about Iger’s comments Drescher said, “I found them terribly repugnant and out of touch. Positively tone deaf. I don’t think it served him well,”.
In an interview with Variety chief correspondent Elizabeth Wagmeister, Drescher continued, “If I were that company, I would lock him behind doors and never let him talk to anybody about this, because it’s so obvious that he has no clue as to what is really happening on the ground with hard-working people that don’t make anywhere near the salary he is making.”
“High seven figures, eight figures, this is crazy money that they make, and they don’t care if they’re land barons of a medieval time,” Drescher added.
Iger had an interview with Sun Valley just hours before Drescher officially called for a SAG-AFTRA strike, with picketing beginning July 14.
When asked about the labor strikes Iger replied, “It’s very disturbing to me,” He added, “We’ve talked about disruptive forces on this business and all the challenges we’re facing, the recovery from COVID which is ongoing, it’s not completely back. This is the worst time in the world to add to that disruption.”
Iger continued, “I understand any labor organization’s desire to work on behalf of its members to get the most compensation and be compensated fairly based on the value that they deliver.”
“We managed, as an industry, to negotiate a very good deal with the directors guild that reflects the value that the directors contribute to this great business. ” the CEO of Disney said,
“We wanted to do the same thing with the writers, and we’d like to do the same thing with the actors. There’s a level of expectation that they have, that is just not realistic.” He added.
“And they are adding to the set of the challenges that this business is already facing that is, quite frankly, very disruptive.” Iger said.
When announcing the SAG-AFTRA strike on July 13, Drescher went viral due to her fiery speech in which she denounced Hollywood studios.
Drescher said about SAG-AFTRA, “We are the victims here. We are being victimized by a very greedy entity,”.
“I cannot believe it, quite frankly: How far apart we are on so many things. How [the studios] plead poverty, that they’re losing money left and right when giving hundreds of millions of dollars to their CEOs. It is disgusting. Shame on them.” (External link: Yahoo! Movies)