Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav felt the effect of the WGA strike while delivering a commencement speech at Boston University, getting jeered and facing chants of “pay your writers” while he was trying to speak.
“Late Night with Seth Meyers” writer Mike Scollins posted a video of one moment during the address in which the chant was loud enough to make Zaslav pause in the middle of his speech. Scollins captioned the video “Zaslav getting hit with a Pay Your Writers chant in Boston. This is so good.”
In a statement after the speech, Zaslav expressed gratitude to the university where he earned his law degree in 1985. He didn’t reference the Writers Guild of America strike at the commencement, but he did afterward.
“I am grateful to my alma mater, Boston University, for inviting me to be part of today’s commencement and for giving me an honorary degree, and, as I have often said, I am immensely supportive of writers and hope the strike is resolved soon and in a way that they feel recognizes their value,” Zaslav said.
Additionally, photos on social media showed WGA writers and members of other unions picketing outside of the graduation ceremony.
Zaslav spoke about the strike on May 5 after the release of the company’s Q1 earnings report.
“In order to create great storytelling, we need great writers, and we need the whole industry to work together,” he said during an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” “And everybody deserves to be paid fairly. So our number one focus is, let’s try and get this resolved. Let’s do it in a way that that the writers feel that they’re valued, which they are, and they’re compensated fairly. And then off we go. Let’s tell great stories together.”