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‘It’s starting to feel like anything is possible’: Comedian Adam Conover on the next phase of the writers’ strike

The WGA negotiating committee member reflects on one month of the Hollywood writers’ strike—and what happens if directors and actors join the picket lines.

‘It’s starting to feel like anything is possible’: Comedian Adam Conover on the next phase of the writers’ strike

Adam Conover

BY David Salazar5 minute read

When comedian and writer Adam Conover started staffing up his 2022 Netflix comedy-documentary series The G Word, which explores the U.S. government, the precarity of Hollywood writers was hard to ignore. Conover recalls a meeting with the show’s producers: One of them noted that, because the show was streaming, they weren’t bound by the same pay minimums and contract length requirements for writers as a network show. If the producers wanted, they even could pay writers California’s minimum wage.

“All of the other producers in the room were like, ‘Oh, goodie!'” says Conover, who also created and starred in TruTV’s Adam Ruins Everything. “My heart sank, because I knew what this meant for my profession.”

The gaps that streaming writers fall into is one of the reasons that the Writers Guild of America (WGA) has been on strike for the past month, after its contract lapsed with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP). There’s a real possibility that the strike could expand: AMPTP is also negotiating with the Directors Guild of America and will soon enter discussions with actors’ union SAG-AFTRA, whose many famous members are urging one another to authorize a strike in the event a contract isn’t hashed out.

As part of the WGA negotiating committee (and a member of SAG-AFTRA), Conover spoke to Fast Company from the picket line about how the industry got to this point, how it can move forward, and why actors have been some of the writers’s biggest allies. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

Fast Company: Most people’s main frame of reference for a writers’s strike is the 2007-08 strike that lasted 100 days. Given that this one is taking place amid streaming’s ascendancy, do you think it’s significantly different?

Adam Conover: The angle of ‘the way people consume content has changed so much’ as either the cause of this strike or the problem with it is an oversold narrative. It’s about something fundamental: We’re the people who make the product, and companies are not. And they need us—and they’ve forgotten that over the last 15 years.

There’s a new bunch of executives, like [Netflix co-CEO] Ted Sarandos, who don’t understand that the creators of these products are a big power because they didn’t go through the last strike. They’ve been able to tell themselves that they don’t need writers and directors and actors, but actually they do. 

On the earnings calls with stockholders, they’re saying, ‘Oh, we’re going to be fine, we have a plan.’ But look at what they were saying before the strike. [Warner Bros. Discovery CEO] David Zaslav was saying, ‘You should invest in Warner Bros. Discovery because we’ve got 10 years of Harry Potter and 10 years of DC movies planned out.’ No you don’t—if you don’t have any writers.

Fast Company: But certainly the profession is changing because of streaming. One of the sticking points in negotiations has been the writer’s room. Can you talk about the role it plays in TV and how it’s been shifting?

AC: For decades, there have been norms that have protected writers and made sure that we could make a living. A good example of this is the writer’s room. It can take a year to get a job in this industry, but the writer’s room ensured that once you did have that job, you would be working for the better part of the year. You would write, go to set, go to post [production], and be part of the creation of the show.

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Companies have tried to separate writing from production and end the writer’s room, through small cuts at first. But it’s clear that’s where they’re going. One of the things we’re on strike for is a requirement that there be a writer’s room, so that we’re not moved onto a freelance basis.

I’m a comedy/variety writer, which covers late night and informational comedy, like I do on Adam Ruins Everything and The G Word. Part of our contract—which also covers daytime talk and soap operas—has a provision that people are hired on 13-week contracts. That’s already pretty short. I think most working professionals wouldn’t accept waiting to find out if they’ve been fired every three months. But that’s at least some measure of security. Here’s the problem: None of the terms that protect us in television apply to streaming.

One of the reasons I wanted to be on our negotiating committee was to make sure that we get the same terms applied to streaming that we had in television. There’s no reason writers for Amber Ruffin—she makes The Amber Ruffin Show in the same format and same studio as Seth Meyers, but her show is on Peacock and his is on NBC—shouldn’t have a guaranteed contract. They’re doing the same fucking work. And in negotiations, companies said they would establish a minimum payment, but they wanted to be able to pay writers on a day rate in streaming. 

FC: Actors have been very vocal in their support of the WGA strike and have picketed with writers throughout. Are some of the issues that writers face also a problem for actors?

AC: If we were to allow the erosion from 13-week contracts to one day at a time, late-night writing would cease to be a career. That’s not a living anymore—it’s gigification, and that’s what’s happening to every other sector in the business.

Part of the idea of gig-ification is that the companies put costs onto the workers. Look at SAG-AFTRA—one of the biggest problems actors have is the rise of self-tapes. It used to be when you had an audition, you’d go in and do it in front of a casting director. Now, they ask you to do a self-tape at home with a good camera—in costume and off book, so you need to have rehearsed and you need someone to read the other side and do a good job. These are expensive for actors to do, and they have to do all those things in order to get a job.

I’ve cast a show. You don’t watch every single tape. You need 100 people so you can show 10 to the director and they can show one person to the network. The practice is revolting if you think about how much money and time is being spent by actors who never even get cast.

That gigification is a theme throughout the entire industry. That’s why on my picket line today at Warner Bros., we’ve got as many actors as writers. There are people here in SAG-AFTRA shirts because they’re fired up and angry about this—and they see our struggles as the same. It’s one of the things that’s put wind in the WGA’s sails, because we know that if they end up striking, then we’re through the looking glass. This situation is quickly becoming so unusual that it’s starting to feel like anything is possible. 

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

David Salazar is an associate editor at Fast Company, where his work focuses on healthcare innovation, the music and entertainment industries, and synthetic media. He also helps direct Fast Company’s Brands That Matter program More


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