Mandy Moore is the latest celebrity to speak up about the meager pay actors often receive for streaming content.
Moore joined fellow members of SAG-AFTRA, a union representing TV and movie actors, on the picket lines outside of Disney’s Burbank studios on Tuesday. In an interview from the picket line, she told The Hollywood Reporter about receiving checks for mere cents after her hit show “This Is Us” began streaming.
The “Tangled” star called residual pay “a huge issue” for the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. The guild’s 160,000 actors began a work stoppage last week after contract negotiations stalled with the industry trade group the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers.
Moore noted that royalties have gone from a reliable stream of income to the occasional pocket change.
“We’re in incredibly fortunate positions as working actors having been on shows that found tremendous success in one way or another … but many actors in our position for years before us were able to live off of residuals or at least pay their bills,” she told The Hollywood Reporter, joined by fellow actor Katie Lowes, who was on “Scandal.”
Though she was a lead on “This Is Us,” Moore said she’s received “very tiny, like 81 cent checks” while her business manager told her he’d seen streaming residuals for as small as “a penny and two pennies.”
Hulu acquired the streaming rights for “This Is Us” in May 2017 following the end of its first season, which aired on NBC.
Unlike many peers on streaming-only shows, Moore and her co-stars also receive residuals for the show’s broadcasts on traditional network television, where the show regularly earned millions of viewers.
She was reportedly paid $250,000 per episode starting in Season 3 of “This Is Us.” Series regulars also earned $2 million bonuses before the sixth and final season, according to a 2021 report from Deadline.
Moore acknowledged her privilege in a follow-up statement on Instagram on Wednesday, telling fans, “I fully acknowledge the profoundly lucky and rarified position I’m in as an actor at this moment, one that I don’t take for granted and one I also don’t assume to be in forever.”
“Ours is a fickle industry and in my 20+ years of being a performer, my career has ebbed and flowed,” she explained. “I’ve had very lean years where I couldn’t get a job and those are precisely the moments when in years past, actors could rely on residuals from their past work to help them get by. The world and business have changed and I’m hoping we can find a meaningful solution moving forward.”
Moore was outside of Disney studios last Friday during the first full day of the strike.
Posting an Instagram from the picket line, she said, “Day 1. Proud to stand with my fellow @sagaftra and @wgawest members demanding a fair contract.”
Television and film writers of the Writers Guild of America have been on strike since May. They are pushing for similar reforms to the residual system, as well as protections against the use of artificial intelligence, which is another key issue for actors.