Residuals are one of the issues at the center of the SAG-AFTRA strike hitting Hollywood. Traditionally, when a show re-airs on TV, an actor gets a small amount of money for their work. But when a show is released on streaming platforms, there is no set standard for calculating residuals.
Cast members from the hit Netflix show “Orange is the New Black” have spent years speaking out — on social media — about the low pay.
In a recent TikTok, Kimiko Glenn (who played the talkative idealist Brook Soso) shares that her residuals were worth cents, and fellow actors worked second jobs to survive.
The New Yorker’s Michael Schulman wrote that “Orange is the New Black” is a case study for what’s at stake in the SAG-AFTRA strike.
Schulman interviewed 10 actors from the Netflix series, including Glenn. Many of them played major roles.
“These are people who are really a major presence on the show. … In the years since, they are looking back and realizing that they are getting these $20 residual checks. And given how successful the show was, what a phenomenon it was, how it helped build Netflix as a brand that created its own streaming content, they just don't feel they were ever paid in a commensurate way,” Schulman tells KCRW.
Netflix splashed onto the original content scene in 2013 with “Orange” and its political thriller “House of Cards,” which as Schulman describes, helped the platform enter the realm of prestige TV.
That overnight success turned into a big break for actors. “Fans would be chasing them down the subway platform asking for pictures. … It was this creative, progressive breakthrough and they were overnight famous. And yet, some of them were still working second jobs. They were being paid, some of them, the SAG minimum fee.”
At first, Schulman says the actors were willing to go along with the system. That quickly changed.
“People started to get disgruntled because they realized they weren't making the kind of money that they thought they should be making for a show that was such a huge hit,” he explains.
Schulman points out that “Orange” was produced by Lionsgate, which set the actors’ pay and green-lit some raises. However, it wasn’t enough.
He points to Emma Myles, who played Leanne, a woman who got hooked on drugs after leaving her Amish community. Myles says she was paid the SAG minimum while on the show, and has made about $20 in residuals this year. It’s a far cry from the hundreds of dollars in residuals she receives from appearing on a few “Law and Order: Special Victims Unit” episodes.
Today, as Schulman explains, the residual pay process for streaming TV is complicated.
“Basically, it comes from a portion of what Netflix paid Lionsgate for the license fee to air [‘Orange is the New Black’]. … It's just a minuscule amount of money compared to what these actors have made on traditional broadcast and cable shows.”
Another point of contention amid negotiations: viewership numbers on streaming platforms. To date, at least 100 million Netflix subscribers have watched at least one episode of the show. These numbers, however, are typically kept private. In contrast, metrics are available for other parts of the industry, such as box office sales and Neilsen ratings, Schulman explains.
“That's how ad rates are set. That's how creative people negotiate for their pay. And this streaming economy, I think, on a really macro-level, is a lot about tech companies taking over Hollywood. And tech companies don't like to make their data public. And so Netflix is like this black box for the people who are creating their programming.”