Fran Drescher addressed scrutiny of an appearance she made in Italy just before the Screen Actors Guild strike.
SAG-AFTRA President Drescher, 65, traveled to Italy last weekend for a promotional event with the fashion brand Dolce & Gabbana. The Nanny actress was spotted at the event after she appeared in a photo Kim Kardashian shared to her Instagram Story Monday.
Some took issue with the trip, calling into question Drescher’s involvement with the union negotiations, which later stalled and resulted in a strike.
At a press conference Thursday announcing that the actors’ strike will begin at midnight ET tonight, a reporter asked Drescher about the “selfie” with Kardashian that some CEOs or companies circulated on social media, she said, “That wasn’t a selfie— excuse me, I just want to set the record straight.”
Then, Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, national executive director and chief negotiator of SAG-AFTRA, spoke up and said, “Before Fran answers that, I wanna say it is outrageous that they would do that. What Fran was doing is Fran was working, which is what our members do.”
“For these employers to cynically try to turn our members against Fran because she was doing a job that she was under contract to do,” he continued, “which, by the way, she was Zooming into our negotiations after work hours, working 18 hours or more a day. It is outrageous, it is wrong, it is despicable, and they should be ashamed of it.”
Drescher then explained, “I’m a brand ambassador for a fashion company and so is Kim. I had only met Kim seconds before that publicity picture was taken.”
“It had nothing to do with being at a party or having fun — it was absolute work,” she said. “I was in hair and makeup three hours a day, walking in heels on cobblestones, doing things like that. Which is work, not fun. I’m sure Kim would’ve rather have been at home with her children in Malibu too.”
“But,” she continued, “we work. That’s what we do. And at 10:30 at night, I would leave the event, I would go to my hotel room, and I’d call in to the [union] Zoom. And when I couldn’t get through to them because I was on a plane, I was texting with [Duncan] constantly throughout the plane ride.”
Drescher said she “worked around the clock in three different time zones” since “my parents live in Florida – though I keep asking them to move here! And I manage their wellbeing as well.”
“So, you know, I think that all of the people standing behind me stand behind me,” she concluded on the topic.
Drescher said in her speech about the strike Thursday that she “went in in earnest thinking that we would be able to avert a strike” while in talks with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers.
“The gravity of this move is not lost on me, or our negotiating committee, or our board members who have voted unanimously to proceed with a strike,” she said.
She added, “… But we had no choice. We are the victims here. We are being victimized by a very greedy entity. I am shocked by the way that the people we have been in business with are treating us. I cannot believe it, quite frankly, how far apart we are on so many things.”
[via]
