Sean Gunn Says He Doesn’t Get ‘Gilmore Girls’ Residuals at SAG Strike

Sean Gunn was a Gilmore Girls fan-favorite all through its seven-season tenure, however he now could be airing his behind-the-scenes grievances with streaming big Netflix throughout the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike.

“I needed to come back out and protest Netflix as a result of I used to be on a tv present known as Gilmore Ladies for a very long time that has introduced in huge income for Netflix,” Gunn, 49, advised The Hollywood Reporter on Friday, July 14, from his perch on the SAG-AFTRA picket line in Los Angeles. “It has been one among their hottest exhibits for a really very long time, over a decade. It will get streamed over and over and over, and I see nearly not one of the income that comes into that.”

He added: “You actually need to rethink how you do business and share the wealth with folks. In any other case, that is all going to come back crashing down.”

Gunn, who performed the quirky Kirk for all seven seasons of The WB’s Gilmore Ladies, is standing in solidarity together with his fellow members of SAG-AFTRA. The union — which represents greater than 160,000 performers — approved a strike earlier this week after the Alliance of Movement Image and Tv Producers (AMPTP) didn’t deal with any of their considerations concerning honest wages and the usage of synthetic intelligence during contract negotiations.

Per phrases of the strike, union actors are forbidden from filming any TV or movie projects nor can they promote them throughout deliberate interviews or on social media. Gunn joined the likes of Mandy Moore, Jason Sudeikis, Logan Lerman, Schitt’s Creek alum Dustin Milligan and the solid of Grey’s Anatomy, all of whom have been spotted on the picket lines in current days.

Netflix — one of many movie studios that fall beneath the AMPTP’s jurisdiction — has not addressed the strike or Gunn’s claims about residual checks. Residual checks are sometimes paid to actors each time a previous TV episode airs on linear tv. Nonetheless, there’s at present no precedent for incomes paychecks primarily based on streaming platforms’ syndication rights. Gilmore Ladies — which was created by Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino — can at present be streamed on Netflix, which greenlit its 2016 revival, Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life.

“I like bodily comedy and I like exact old style comedy, and I believe that’s what Amy [Sherman-Palladino] likes as properly, and she or he writes extremely properly for that,” Gunn recalled to Entertainment Weekly in November 2016 about studying the early scripts for the present, which initially aired between 2000 and 2007. “There was only a good rhythm between us together with her as the author and me because the actor that simply labored. By way of what an oddball Kirk is, that simply grew in some unspecified time in the future. I don’t know the place that comes from. It made sense to me someway.”

Whereas Gunn — who made a cameo in the final season of Sherman-Palladino’s The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel earlier this yr — has fond reminiscences of working with the Palladinos on set, he’s over studio CEOs not offering equal pay to their staff.

“I believe when [Disney CEO] Bob Iger talks about what a disgrace [the strike] is, he must do not forget that in 1980, CEOs like him made 30 occasions what their lowest employee was making,” he quipped to the Associated Press on Friday, referring to the highest government at Walt Disney Studios. “Now, Bob Iger makes 400 times what his lowest worker [makes] and I believe that’s a f—king disgrace, Bob. Perhaps it’s best to have a look within the mirror and ask your self, ‘Why is that?’ And never solely, ‘Why is that?’ however ‘Is it OK? Is it morally OK?’”

Gunn added: “In case your response is simply, ‘That’s simply the best way companies work now,’ properly, that sucks and that makes you a s—ty individual, if that’s your reply.”

Gunn has additionally labored for Disney’s Marvel Studios, starring in all three of his brother James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy movies.