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Screen legend and longtime activist Jane Fonda stood shoulder-to-shoulder on the picket lines outside Netflix Studios with her “Grace and Frankie” costars Lily Tomlin and June Diane Raphael on Wednesday.
Braving the brutal heat, the 85-year-old Oscar winner lambasted the studios for not paying most actors a living wage.
“Income inequality has never been greater since the Gilded Age in the ‘20s, and that’s why unions are so important,” said Fonda. “It’s why there was a real rise in strikes and unionization in all different sectors.”
“We used to be a caring nation, at least we pretended, we gave lip service to it, but no more,” Tomlin added. “Now everybody just falls in line to make the big bucks.”
One unnamed studio executive is reported to have said that he doesn’t care if striking workers lose their homes, to which actor Ron Perlman responded with a clear threat — “There’s a lot of ways to lose your house ... we know who said that, and where he f---ing lives.”
And in an especially bold and decidedly cruel move, gardeners were ordered to trim back trees outside NBCUniversal Studios in Burbank, which were providing shade to people who were picketing.
The studio defended the move in a statement while the City of Los Angeles has launched an investigation into the tree trickery.
It’s these kinds of “let them eat cake” attitudes that has the rank-and-file writers and actors fearful of a dystopian future.
Actor, director, writer and choreographer Christine Lakin started her professional acting career at the age of 11 when she was cast on “Step by Step,” a sort of ‘90s-era “Brady Bunch.”
Lakin, who is the mother of two, has since gone on to do what few child stars have — maintain a career in Hollywood, making guest appearances on hit shows such as “Modern Family,” “Bones” and different versions of the “CSI” franchise.
“I think people have a stereotype of actors … that the job is cushy, we get paid crazy amounts of money to do very little and it’s easy,” Lakin told the Daily News. “I’d counter by saying it’s not easy and it’s not actually fair in many respects.”
She has also directed and choreographed multiple episodes of the ABC hit series “The Goldbergs.”
“Making TV is fast, long hours and it’s a team sport,” said Lakin. “And any executive making a creative decision in their office without ever spending time on set or telling us our demands for health care and a living wage are unreasonable, is out of touch with what us artists do, how we hustle to make a living and what we sacrifice to do this job that we’ve spent decades grinding in.”