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

With an indefinite moratorium on interviews, red carpets, cover shoots, and more, the Hollywood media is in for a rough ride. “You will feel it across the whole internet,” says Janice Min.

By Joe Pompeo and Natalie Jarvey

July 13, 2023

A sign reads 'Unions Stand Together' as SAGAFTRA members walk the picket line in solidarity with striking WGA workers...

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 very 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 photos—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.”

Speaking of chaos: “The SAG strike is going to decimate our entire entertainment ecosystem,” said a prominent Hollywood communications executive who advises both studios and talent. “Since nobody can promote anything, that takes away a whole economic underbelly, a systemic underbelly.” Consider the trades: “Their entire economic ecosystem is based on three principles—advertising, advertising, and advertising. They get advertising when they cover film festivals, which will be gone; when they cover awards season, which is gone; when you have talent on the covers of their magazines, which is gonna be gone. You’re taking away all the important trigger points in one of the most important corners of their business. Not only are they not gonna have actors on the covers, but are there even gonna be Emmys? Emmy packages? Emmy actor roundtables? All the editorial that goes around it?”

At least the entertainment media got to pretend like things were normal for a brief stretch on Wednesday morning as nominees for the 2023 Emmy Awards were announced. Though most writers refrained from their usual celebrations, actors jumped at the chance to get on the phone with journalists and take a victory lap heralding their accomplishments. Behind the scenes, publicists were hustling to help their clients bank as many interviews as possible related to upcoming projects before the blackout began. “This is life now,” bemoans the publicist source, “just trying to survive one mess after another.”

The comms executive feels that same agita. Touching on the broader sense of “existential grief” that is gripping the industry, our source joked (at least we think this person was joking): “Hopefully people are buying maps to the stars, because we’ll be selling those off of the tour buses. That’s our new job.”

This story has been updated.