UPDATE 6:50 p.m. ET: Sean Gunn responded after his initial interview was removed. “I did an interview from the picket line at Netflix yesterday for The Hollywood Reporter, and they took that interview down because apparently I didn’t note that my residuals aren’t paid by Netflix, but they’re actually paid by the production company, Warner Bros.,” he shared in a video via Twitter on Saturday, July 15.
“OK, first of all, I never used the word residuals in my interview, but that’s not the important thing,” Gunn explained. “The important thing is that the whole point of my interview is that Netflix doesn’t pay residuals to the actors, so there’s no sharing in the success of a show with Netflix. It’s true that they pay a licensing fee to Warner Bros. and that Warner Bros. then pays residuals from that licensing fee, which is a very small amount, particularly for a show that’s been off the air for a long time. But when the show is a huge success, and they generate millions of dollars in profits for Netflix, we don’t share in any of that, in large part because there’s no transparency with their numbers. But really, this is about fairness for everybody. We just want to make sure we have a fair deal. If a show’s a success, we should participate in that. That seems totally reasonable.”
Original story:
Sean Gunn was a Gilmore Girls fan-favorite throughout its seven-season tenure, but he now is airing his behind-the-scenes grievances with streaming giant Netflix during the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike.
“I wanted to come out and protest Netflix because I was on a television show called Gilmore Girls for a long time that has brought in massive profits for Netflix,” Gunn, 49, told The Hollywood Reporter on Friday, July 14, from his perch on the SAG-AFTRA picket line in Los Angeles. “It has been one of their most popular shows for a very long time, over a decade. It gets streamed over and over and over again, and I see almost none of the revenue that comes into that.”
He added: “You really need to rethink how you do business and share the wealth with people. Otherwise, this is all going to come crashing down.”
Gunn, who played the quirky Kirk for all seven seasons of The WB’s Gilmore Girls, is standing in solidarity with his fellow members of SAG-AFTRA. The union — which represents more than 160,000 performers — authorized a strike earlier this week after the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) did not address any of their concerns regarding fair wages and the use of artificial intelligence during contract negotiations.
Per terms of the strike, union actors are forbidden from filming any TV or movie projects nor can they promote them during planned interviews or on social media. Gunn joined the likes of Mandy Moore, Jason Sudeikis, Logan Lerman, Schitt’s Creek alum Dustin Milligan and the cast of Grey’s Anatomy, all of whom have been spotted on the picket lines in recent days.
Netflix — one of the film studios that fall under the AMPTP’s jurisdiction — has not addressed the strike or Gunn’s claims about residual checks. Residual checks are typically paid to actors every time a past TV episode airs on linear television. However, there is currently no precedent for earning paychecks based on streaming platforms’ syndication rights. Gilmore Girls — which was created by Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino — can currently be streamed on Netflix, which greenlit its 2016 revival, Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life.
“I like physical comedy and I like precise old school comedy, and I think that’s what Amy [Sherman-Palladino] likes as well, and she writes incredibly well for that,” Gunn recalled to Entertainment Weekly in November 2016 about reading the early scripts for the show, which originally aired between 2000 and 2007. “There was just a nice rhythm between us with her as the writer and me as the actor that just worked. In terms of what an oddball Kirk is, that just grew at some point. I don’t know where that comes from. It made sense to me somehow.”
While Gunn — who made a cameo in the final season of Sherman-Palladino’s The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel earlier this year — has fond memories of working with the Palladinos on set, he is over studio CEOs not offering equal pay to their employees.
“I think when [Disney CEO] Bob Iger talks about what a shame [the strike] is, he needs to remember that in 1980, CEOs like him made 30 times what their lowest worker was making,” he quipped to the Associated Press on Friday, referring to the top executive at Walt Disney Studios. “Now, Bob Iger makes 400 times what his lowest worker [makes] and I think that’s a f—king shame, Bob. Maybe you should take a look in the mirror and ask yourself, ‘Why is that?’ And not only, ‘Why is that?’ but ‘Is it OK? Is it morally OK?’”
Gunn added: “If your response is just, ‘That’s just the way corporations work now,’ well, that sucks and that makes you a s—ty person, if that’s your answer.”
Gunn has also worked for Disney’s Marvel Studios, starring in all three of his brother James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy films.
