Inside the Actors Strike Press Apocalypse: “The Celebrity Factory Has Shut Down”

With the Screen Actors Guild strike now compounding the already industry-shattering screenwriters stoppage, the entire Hollywood apparatus has officially been turned on its head, from writers rooms and on-set productions all the way down to restaurant workers, hairstylists, and florists. Here’s one more afflicted constituency to consider: all the publications that are in the business of covering Hollywood stars. (Vanity Fair v ery much included.)

As part of SAG-AFTRA’s showdown with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, actors are barred from promoting their projects in the press starting at midnight Friday. Q&As? Dunzo. Breezy gab sessions on the Today show or Good Morning America? Nope! Cover stories? Forget it. “This is basically like, the celebrity factory has shut down,” says Janice Min, CEO of The Ankler and former editorial director and copresident of The Hollywood Reporter. “If this goes on for a long time, you will feel it across the whole internet.”

Celebrity interviews are a huge audience driver for any publication that has digital scale. Once those are gone, it impacts not only the primary reach of a given interview, but the secondary reach as well: Other publications picking up quotes, people getting worked up on Twitter, the widespread circulation of photosâ€"that all ceases to exist for an indefinite period of time. (Weeks? Months?) Also, the loss of all this “earned media,” as it’s called, could theoretically inflict some pain at the box office, where organic buzz can be just as lucrative as paid marketing campaigns. (Not to mention the fact that the suspension of the late-night shows due to the writers strike had already taken a bite out of the studios’ marketing muscle; for a fleeting moment, magazine and newspaper interviews were all the more valuable.)

Another thing to consider is just how unprecedented the current situation is. The last time actors and writers were both on strike was in 1960, an entirely different media world. (An entirely different world altogether: That actors strike was led by Ronald Reagan, SAG president of the day.) Sure, there will be other things to write about despite the press blackout, including the strikes themselves, as well as industry-oriented topics like streaming strategy and corporate intrigue, the goings-on of Bob Iger, David Zaslav, and the like. But as far as coverage goes, actors are “on a whole other level because they have access to the public,” as Min put it. “Bob Iger is a meaningful figure in the industry, but on a magazine cover, people typically want to see Brad Pitt instead.”

On Monday, SAG leadership held a Zoom meeting with publicists to go over what would and wouldn’t be allowed in the event of a strike. Let’s start with the wouldn’t, as relayed to us by a publicist in the know: photo shoots, interviews, prep shooting, fittings, voice-over, writing, fan screenings, red carpets, premiere parties, and social media promotion for SAG projects. (Not long after this story was published, SAG sent the full list of prohibited promo activities to members.) Agreements might be hammered out on a case-by-case basis for truly independent projects, and actors serving as executive producers on projects in which they are not acting will apparently be permitted to promote them.

Also allowed: press for a book unrelated to an actor’s acting; press and social media that was banked before the strike took effect, as long as it comes with a disclaimer; charity red carpets, but only if there aren’t any logos on the step-and-repeat (and absolutely no talking about current projects); and receipt of lifetime achievement awards (but again, logos on the step-and-repeat are a no-no). SAG will reach out to publicists if it comes across anything it feels is in breach, and SAG will boot any clients who cross the lines. What about Comic-Con, the latest installment of which kicks off July 20? SAG would prefer that no performers attend, and if they do, they’ll be able to sign autographs but be barred from participating in moderated interviews unless the topic is, say, their entire career. All in all, SAG leaders told the assembled publicists not to put clients in a position to have to defend their actions. One word used to describe the call: “chaos.”