In addition to George Clooney, Ben Affleck, Tyler Perry, Bradley Cooper and more Hollywood stars reached out to Fran Drescher following news that a deal was reached, bringing an end to SAG-AFTRA strike after 118 days.
Stars across Hollywood and beyond couldn’t be happier now that the SAG-AFTRA strike has come to an end.
Helmed in part by president, Fran Drescher, the SAG-AFTRA reached a tentative agreement Wednesday for a new three-year deal with studios, bringing the contentious 17-week strike to a close.
Following the good news, some of the biggest names in Hollywood reached out to Drescher, including George Clooney, who had quite the message for The Nanny star.
“George Clooney said, ‘I would have bet my house and lost that you couldn’t get the deal that you got, that you wouldn’t have gotten past a billion dollars.’ And that just made me so happy,'” Drescher told Extra Thursday.
She also received a call from Tyler Perry, who said, “I’m so, so proud of you.”
Hollywood Reacts to SAG-AFTRA Strike End as Studios and Actors Reach Agreement
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Drescher was contacted by several other big names, like Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez, Ryan Reynolds, Laura Dern, and Kerry Washington — all of whom congratulated the actress for striking such a monumental deal.
She also heard from Bradley Cooper, who used to moment to thank Drescher for the kindness she showed him when he was a young hotel employee showing the then-Nanny star to her room.
“Bradley Cooper, he said to me that many, many years ago, when I was still on The Nanny and he was working at a hotel… and he maybe brought my bags up to my room with me and we talked the whole way up, and he said, ‘I never, ever forgot how kind you were, how much you made me feel seen, and how you talked to me like I was an equal, and I’ll never forget that, and I’m just glad I had the opportunity to thank you now,'” Drescher shared.
Detailing what ultimately brought the strike to the end, Drescher told Extra, “It was moving all the way through… We had reached a threshold where we crossed the billion-dollar mark and ended at a [$1,011,000,000], which is quite historic in terms of the size of the contract in this industry.'”
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That number was reached after two weeks of intense negotiation between the performers’ union and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, bringing the strike officially to an end at 12.01am on Thursday.
In a statement following the news, the union said that its negotiators had voted unanimously to approve the tentative deal, which will proceed to the union’s national board on Friday for “review and consideration.”
The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) also released a statement following the news, saying the agreement “represents a new paradigm.”
The studios said the new agreement “gives SAG-AFTRA the biggest contract-on-contract gains in the history of the union, including the largest increase in minimum wages in the last forty years; a brand new residual for streaming programs; extensive consent and compensation protections in the use of artificial intelligence; and sizable contract increases on items across the board.”
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While it’s surely time for celebration, the deal still needs to be ratified by union members before it officially takes hold.
The Hollywood strikes first began when the WGA went on strike on May 2. The actors joined the picket line on July 14, creating a complete work stoppage across television and film. The writers finally reached an agreement on September 27 after 148 days, with SAG striking for 118 days before finally reaching their agreement.
