SAG-AFTRA president Fran Drescher was a model of fearlessness last year during the union’s 118-day strike — the longest in its history — facing down the leaders of the major studios, while maintaining membership solidarity on the picket lines. But she’s quick to admit that the “unrelenting stress” took its toll. Two months after the union ratified its new contract with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, her body is still paying her back for what her brain put it through. Recently recovered from a “cold from hell” she brought back to Los Angeles from New York, she’s now dealing with a torn meniscus in her knee.
“I try to be a superwoman, but sometimes my body reminds me that I’m not,” says Drescher, a multi-hyphenate actor-writer-producer-women’s health advocate (a uterine cancer survivor, she founded the nonprofit Cancer Schmancer Movement), who was previously best-known as the star of the long-running sitcom “The Nanny.”
She’s much more bullish about the status of the guild, post-strike. “We went from being like third banana on a sitcom to the stars of an Oscar-winning feature film,” she notes.
The deal, worth more than $1 billion over the three years of the contract, includes a 11% bump in minimum pay during the first year, a 153% effective increase in relocation payments, increased contributions to health and pension/retirement funds, improved sexual harassment prevention, and new rules covering hair and makeup equity and even auditions.
“Not really respecting [the time] that an actor [needs to] prepare had really run amuck,” says Drescher. “Now, they have a limitation as to how many pages they have to read for the early audition process.”
The contract’s most talked-about deal points address how advances in technology are rewriting industry business models. It created a $40-million-a-year residual bonus for actors on streaming shows, with 75% going to those working on the most-watched programs and 25% going to a fund jointly administered by the SAG-AFTRA and employers that will be distributed more broadly to actors appearing in streaming content. There are also new rules regarding the use of artificial intelligence, including provisions requiring producers to get “clear and conspicuous” consent from an actor to create a digital replica of their likeness and pay them for the number of days it would’ve required to shoot the scenes with the actor on a live set, as well as residuals.
“Nobody ever expected us to walk away with a $1 billion deal,” says Drescher. “I’ve been told that by the CEOs themselves. They didn’t see this coming; they didn’t see me coming. But they’ve had a come-to-Jesus moment that this is going to be one of those contracts that they have to lean into and make big changes.”
Drescher is now working with politicians in Washington, D.C., to lobby for the Artificial Intelligence Fake Replicas and Unauthorized Duplications (No AI FRAUD) Act, a bipartisan bill sponsored by Reps. María Elvira Salazar (R-Fla.) and Madeleine Dean (D-Pa.) that would establish a federal framework to protect Americans’ individual right to their likeness and voice from being the subject of AI-generated fakes and forgeries.
“Making a contract is one thing. Having federal regulations to protect not only our industry but all others is quite another,” says Drescher. “It’s important that we build on this success.”
Drescher has committed to leading that building process through September 2025, when her second two-year term as SAG-AFTRA president ends. But don’t expect her to be around to lead the negotiations when the current contract expires on June 30, 2026.
“This a very difficult and demanding job if you want to do it the way I do it, because I don’t know how to do anything by half,” says Drescher. “I think that by the end of this tenure, I’ll be ready to walk away.”
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