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As Hollywood’s unprecedented and ongoing strikes continue, the handling of COVID-19 vaccine mandates and union spending is taking center stage in another battle in the entertainment industry.
Maya Dunbar, of The Mentalist, Harry’s Law, and Southland, is taking on megastar Fran Drescher, best known for her role as The Nanny, for the real life role of president of the actors union SAG-AFTRA.
In an interview with The Epoch Times, Mrs. Dunbar talked candidly about her disgust for the way the COVID vaccine was forced on actors and portrayed as something that everyone in the industry supported.
Mrs. Dunbar said she is tired of the coverup of vaccine injuries of members by SAG-AFTRA and the lack of science to support the aggressive jab or job ultimatum that actors faced without any push back from their own representatives—add to that what she called a reckless scripting of pro-vaccine propaganda in storylines.
“We as a nation have been psychologically assaulted, and abused, and lied to for three years,” said Mrs. Dunbar, who has her own religious beliefs about the COVID vaccine, “and the guild has played a huge role in cherry picking the truth.”
Mrs. Dunbar is not alone.
Peter Antico, a stunt double for mega celebs like Sylvester Stallone and nominated for the best fight sequence on the big screen, is looking to unseat SAG-AFTRA Secretary-Treasurer Joely Fisher of the famous Fisher family, which includes her late-half sister Carrie Fisher of Star Wars fame.
Mrs. Fisher is best known for her role on the 1990s’ show Ellen starring Ellen DeGeneres.
Like Mrs. Dunbar, Mr. Antico told The Epoch Times he believes current union leaders like Mrs. Dresher and Mrs. Fisher can no longer be trusted to represent actors or the industry.
“They behave more like actors than union leaders,” he said.
Mr. Antico pointed to Mrs. Fisher’s social media posts that heavily promote the vaccine and mask wearing as a sign that she does not represent all SAG-AFTRA members.
He also charged that Mrs. Drescher and Mrs. Fisher both acted like the majority of SAG-AFTRA members who supported the vaccine mandate when less than 10 percent of the 166,000 SAG-AFTRA members participated in a questionnaire used to set COVID mandates in the entertainment business.
Add to that, Mr. Antico said, that only a little over 26 percent of SAG-AFTRA members voted in the 2021 SAG-AFTRA election.
In it, Mrs. Drescher beat out actor Matt Modine of Full Metal Jacket for the job as president and Mrs. Fisher beat out Anthony Rapp of Rent.
Mrs. Fisher did not respond to requests for interviews by The Epoch Times. Mrs. Drescher responded to only an emailed question about what to do about the threat Artificial Intelligence (AI) poses to actors.
“In a nutshell, a lot of consent and compensation,” she said in an emailed response and then added her signature saying “Love is Love.”
With the writers and actors strikes making national headline news, Mrs. Fisher and Mrs. Drescher, both Golden Globe Award winners, have had media exposure beyond the usual entertainment outlets.
Mrs. Drescher was recently blasted on social media when pictures emerged in the media of her on a trip in Italy with pal Kim Kardashian on the eve of the union strike.
A group of A-list actors, including Hunger Games Jennifer Lawrence and Ben Stiller, had just days before penned a vow to strike if SAG-AFTRA didn’t negotiate better terms.
“Unless the bargaining table has moved to Italy (along with the dress code), this is a terrible look for a union president,” Fleishman In Trouble creator Taffy Brodesser-Akner posted on Twitter.
Some actors were especially outraged that she was with Ms. Kardashian, who had been seen crossing a picket line to continue filming American Horror story, as reported by The Hollywood Reporter.
Mrs. Dunbar told The Epoch Times that in conversation she herself had with Mrs. Drescher about the COVID-related mandates on sets, Mrs. Drescher told her that she and actors were “victims of producer’s privilege” when it came to the jab or job ultimatum on set.
At a recent press conference on the strikes, Mrs. Drescher made strong public statements in support of the actors. “What’s happening to us is happening across all fields of labor, by means when employers make Wall Street and greed their priority and they forget about the essential contributors that make the machine run.”
Mrs. Fisher has not been as vocal, although in a July 14 interview with Fox, she blasted Disney CEO Bob Iger for calling strikers disruptive and a disturbance.
“They are profiting on our backs,” she said. “And if we want a tiny sliver of that ongoing, it is not unreasonable.”
Mr. Antico and Mrs. Dunbar accused Mrs. Fisher and Mrs. Drescher of talking “out of both sides of their mouth.”
While Mrs. Drescher publicly embraced freedom of choice, Mrs. Dunbar said, she sat silent while unvaccinated members were barred from SAG-AFTRA events in their own union buildings that they were paying dues to support.
Mrs. Dunbar said she was especially offended by being required to eat alone on set, even prohibited from using utensils while forced to wear a lanyard around her neck with a badge indicating she was unvaccinated. “It was like the Scarlet Letter,” Mrs. Dunbar said. “This industry says it’s so against discrimination; it doesn’t get more discriminatory than that.”
Mr. Antico also said Mrs. Fisher oversaw more contradictions of Hollywood’s righteous stances, including what he called “highly questionable financial doings” by SAG-AFTRA.
He shared evidence with The Epoch Times showing that $10 million Paycheck Protection Program funds, better known as PPP money, awarded to SAG-AFTRA during the pandemic lockdowns, were used towards the purchase of the union’s location-rich Lincoln Center building in Manhattan.
He also provided evidence that $43 million was spent on furniture during the pandemic “when everyone was at home, out of work, and certainly not in the office in need of new furniture.”
Worst of all, he said, during the pandemic, union executives voted themselves in a retirement package that tripled their pension over union members, including mega stars.
“Tom Cruise will get less of a pension than a union executive who has earned $200,000 a year for the last five years of his contract—if he retired at 55. It’s crazy,” Mr. Antico said.
