Hundreds of WGA members stood outside Netflix’s headquarters in Hollywood, marching and chanting in an effort to bring more attention to their strike. Among them was “The G Word Creator,” Adam Conover, who spoke to TheWrap about members’ goals.
“I’ve never done anything like this before,” said Conover, creator of “The G Word,” and host of “Adam Ruins Everything” from TruTV. “But, you know, this is my first action. There was a moment, you know, a week or two ago where I was like, “I don’t want to go on strike! There’s other shit I want to do! You know, I want to… I got my career I want to worry about. I got a podcast, I’m making videos, I want to pitch some TV shows. I don’t want to do this.” None of us want to be here. Right?”
“We all really feel like the world is f—d up. You know, that like, things are wrong in America, and we have the opportunity here to go and actually fix one of them with our collective action!” Conover continued. “The Guild is asking me to come out here every day and picket for four hours. And if I do that, I can help stop Teamster trucks from going into that building, and we can halt productions and that’ll shorten the strike and that’ll make them come to the table, and that’ll make them cut the workers in on their profits. And I get to actually move the boulder of how f—d up things are in America by showing up here with a sign. That’s incredible!”
“And there’s going to be moments out there where it’s going to be hot in the middle of July, if we’re going that long,” Conover continued. “It’s going to rain on Thursday and we’re going to be out here and we’re going to be like ‘I don’t feel like doing it today.’ But you know what? If we didn’t do this, things would just be worse. It would be worse to not have a career as a writer at all. So the way I look at it is, I come out here and I try to like really focus on what a f—g amazing opportunity this is to make a difference.”
The WGA strike, authorized via a vote in April by 97% of guild members, began Tuesday at Midnight (Eastern) after contract negotiations with Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) broke down.
At issue, the guild is trying to stop the development of what it describes as “a gig economy inside a union workforce,” particularly at streaming services. Among other things, WGA seeks to improve compensation for streaming TV shows and films, and stop the abuse of so-called mini-rooms, a recent practice in which writers with a TV show pitch are required to actually assemble a writers room, with writers paid at scale, and create full season scripts even before a show has been greenlit.
Watch Conover’s full interview below.
