Announcer: Listener-supported WNYC studios

[music]

Tiffany Hanssen: This is All Of It. I'm Tiffany Hanssen in for Alison Stewart. Alison will be back tomorrow. As the actors' and writers' strikes continue, some shows have announced that they will be returning, talk shows that is. Drew Barrymore has faced heat for deciding to come back on the air without writers and her staff has removed people from the audience who were supporting WGA pins. Barrymore isn't the only talk show host who's announced that they're resuming filming. Jennifer Hudson, Sherri Shepherd, Bill Maher, and the hosts of The Talk, have all said they'll resume filming in the fall.

Meanwhile, Late Night Talk Show host Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, Stephen Colbert, Seth Meyers, and John Oliver have joined forces, no pun intended, to raise money for their staff through the new podcast Strike Force Five. This all comes at a rough time for Tonight Show host Jimmy Fallon who has been the subject of a critical Rolling Stone investigation into his role creating a toxic workplace culture. Meanwhile, The Daily Show has yet to announce a new host after Trevor Noah left that role. Given all of these updates, we thought it'd be good to break it all down. What the heck is going on with these talk shows with the strikes? We're talking with NPR TV critic Eric Deggans. Hi, Eric, welcome.

Eric Deggans: I feel like you've covered it all. I'm just saying.

Tiffany Hanssen: I know, I just said [crosstalk]

Eric Deggans: Good night everybody. [laughs]

Tiffany Hanssen: We did it.

Eric Deggans: Have a good Thursday.

Tiffany Hanssen: Thank you. Listeners, we also, I should say, we want you to know New York Public Radio has a collective bargaining agreement with SAG-AFTRA in a different branch from the actors. We're not required to strike. Listeners as well, we want to hear from you. You have an opinion on all of this business around the talk shows around Drew Barrymore around Strike Force Five going back to work, give us a call, you can text us, 212-433-9692, 212-433-9692. I invoked the name Drew Barrymore so let's just start there, Eric. She's been getting a lot of heat. She just got booted from the National Book Award. I've seen all kinds of nasty memes on the internet about her. Are they true?

Eric Deggans: It's a controversial move. There's a few things that's interesting to me about this, I don't understand why she's taking so much heat when The Talk and The Jennifer Hudson Show and Bill Maher have all also said they're coming back without writers. To me, it seems even more incredulous that somebody like Bill Maher says he's going to do his show with no writers. Now, I think he claimed on social media that he's not going to have a monologue and he's not going to do the comedy bits at the end that obviously require writing.

Still, even doing the show is going to require the people who work on it probably to cross picket lines. I think that, ultimately, is a big issue for the striking unions. Drew Barrymore Show the same way, they may not have to hire writers to script what's going to happen on that show, but somebody's got to write something down. Somebody is going to be doing a job that technically is a writer's job and they're requiring everybody who works on the show to cross the picket lines in order to make it happen. It's a mess.

We saw something like this happen during the last Writers Guild of America strike, way back in the mid-2000s, when David Letterman cut a separate and distinct deal with the WGA for his show, and for the show that came after him that he owned. Jay Leno started doing The Tonight Show and said that he wasn't using writers, that he was doing everything himself. Again, something that people were very skeptical about, but they came back. I don't remember Jay Leno getting half the criticism that Drew Barrymore is getting now though.

It just points to the fact that the strike has been going on for a very long time. A lot of people in Hollywood are hurting. There doesn't seem to be an end in sight. I think the striking guilds that represent actors and writers are both very worried about an erosion of support that may make it more difficult for them to be out. There's going to be a lot of attention trained on people who might be doing things that seem to erode that support.

Tiffany Hanssen: To be clear, The Drew Barrymore Show, Bill Maher, we're not talking about interim agreements that they have negotiated. What they're saying here is, within the confines of the strikes, all of the necessities around that we are able to work. I can imagine that puts not just Drew Barrymore, but as you're talking about her other staff, who are working on that show, in a really bad place that they may not want to be. I know that speculation, but do you think some of what we're hearing is because they are in a position of power, and they are using it to put people in really bad spot in a situation that is tough for everyone?

Eric Deggans: I just think it's hard for people who are following this to really get a sense of what might undermine the case of the striking guilds, and what is activity that won't. There's a ton of people who are not part of either of the striking guilds who have been put out of work by the strikes. I feel like the people you're talking about, for example, who might work on The Drew Barrymore Show, they are caught between a rock and a hard place regardless of what happens because they haven't been-- Well, Drew's show, I think is a little different because I think Drew's show, has technically been on hiatus.

Tiffany Hanssen: That's right.

Eric Deggans: It went on hiatus before the strike started and now it's coming back for its scheduled return. Basically, what she decided was that she wasn't going to delay bringing the show back to new episodes the way it had always planned, but like Bill Maher's Show, for example, on HBO, all the people who work on that show were forced to stop working when the strikes happened and now at least they will get paychecks again. They're also put in a situation where some people in some of the other guilds may resent them for working during the strike, even though technically, they didn't have much choice. If they're told to go back to work, and they don't go back to work, they'll likely be replaced, and then they lose their job.

It is putting a bunch of people who are not part of the striking unions and don't really have much control over what's happening in very awkward positions regardless of whether the shows come back or not.

Tiffany Hanssen: To that point, Jeff in Brooklyn texted us and said, "The people who do the writing craft services et cetera, need to eat too. If you want them to not cross picket lines, include them in your demands." Listeners, we want to hear from you on this issue about the strikes, talk shows coming back. Call us, 212-433-9692 or you can text us at that number 212-433-9692. I want to talk to Faith in Sussex County. Hi, Faith.

Faith: Hi, how are you doing?

Tiffany Hanssen: Good.

Faith: I think it's a little bit simpler for some of the talk shows to come out and freewheel and improv their shows unlike a lot of the TV shows that need their storylines, they need their writers. People are looking for their TV shows to come back. This strike, people need to look at what the bigger problem here is, and it's always the top dog, it's always the producers, it's always the big guys that have the ideas, they make all the big money and it's high time that the core of all of where their money is coming from are coming from those writers. Those writers deserve to get a piece of the big pie that these guys are all receiving.

I don't have as much of an opinion on TV talk shows. It's interesting I was listening to the last caller and interesting to hear his perspective on all of that but I understand his point on all those people worried about losing their jobs and maybe that's why Drew Barrymore is doing what she's doing so that least some of her people get paid. I don't know what. I don't know if she's come out and she's spoken about that piece of it, but ultimately really the biggest black-and-white issue of this whole thing is that the core of that industry are the writers. The writers deserve to get paid.

Tiffany Hanssen: Eric, Faith gets very passionately at what is truly become the center for at least the strike, well actually on the SAG side too. SAG and WGA both are saying we need a fair wage and all the money that is made on this content shouldn't just go to the producers in big glass offices.

Eric Deggans: Sure. The traditional structure that TV used to compensate writers and actors has broken down. The new system that was cobbled together largely because of streaming services has not adequately replaced it in terms of payments that go to writers and to actors, and that's why they've drawn the line with this really long, extended strike. One thing that I will say, just to speak to the idea of people working on shows needing to earn a paycheck and wanting to work, that's certainly very true, but there's also the sense that by them going back to work, by these shows going back to production, they are limiting the pain that the studios are feeling because of the strike because those shows will return to making money. They will return to generating money.

What will happen, the guilds say, the Writers Guild and the Screen Actors Guild, they say that these shows will help extend the strike because it'll make it easier for the studios to resist cutting a deal because they will be earning some money on shows that are in production just without writers. In an odd way, they'll have a bunch of people who they don't have to pay because they're not there. The shows might in the short term even become more profitable. There's wide-ranging impacts to these decisions that people might not consider.

Tiffany Hanssen: Why are we worried about their profit at this point? We look at the headlines and they're making billions of dollars.

Eric Deggans: Well, the guilds are worried about the studios being able to maintain their profits so they're not hurt by the strike, so they have less incentive to cut a deal, and so the work stoppage may last longer. The whole point of a strike is to make the people who receive your labor feel the pain of not having your labor so they have to come to a deal and make compromises they wouldn't normally make. If you allow them to earn some money on some shows that come back, then that pain is lessened, and there's less of an incentive for people to come to the table. That's the argument that the guilds are making.

Of course, there's the other point of view where people are saying there's all these people who are being hurt, who are not part of either guild striking. If it's possible to do the shows without writers, why not do them? My skepticism comes in. You have to write something down. Drew Barrymore is not going to go out and do an interview with somebody with nothing written down. If she writes out the questions she's going to ask, then the question arises, is that technically performing the job that a writer should be doing?

Tiffany Hanssen: Definitely.

Eric Deggans: If she's doing that, then technically, she's a scab. I think all of these issues are things that have very technical answers and you have to know a lot of details about what they're doing, but it just creates a lot of skepticism that these shows can come back without technically allowing people who are not writers to do the job of writers, which is not supposed to happen.

Tiffany Hanssen: I want to read part of a statement that Bill Maher posted on X, formerly Twitter. "Real-time is coming back. Unfortunately, sans writers or writing," which to your point Eric, can't happen, right? Something has to be written.

Eric Deggans: I just say I'm skeptical.

Tiffany Hanssen: Yes, it could all be extemporaneous. Could be. "It's been five months. It's time to bring people back to work. The writers have important issues that I sympathize with and hope they are addressed to their satisfaction, but they're not the only people with issues, problems, and concerns. Despite some assistance from me, much of the staff is struggling mightily." I want to hear from Billy in East Orange. Billy, you want to talk a little bit about Bill Maher. What have you got on that?

Billy: Well, his net worth, I don't know, is it 100 million? If he was really concerned with people going without paychecks, then just pay them, period. Donít make them cross picket lines. It is a nasty thing to do. Drew Barrymore could do the same thing. Lots of those folks could do the same thing. Send them checks. We've heard a lot of Bill Maher. I don't personally miss him for this time period. Some of this stuff is interesting, politically important, but I could go without him for quite a while, but his people need money, so Billy pay them.

Tiffany Hanssen: Eric, I want to go right to the opposite opinion here to Vincent in New Rochelle. Vincent, you're pro-Bill Maher.

Vincent: Oh, yes, absolutely. I disagree with the caller that just left off. To use your word, I think the best part of Bill Maher's show is the extemporaneous part of the show. I think it's just the perfect space to have these discussions in. I think we need Bill Maher. I think he provides something. First of all, it is news. Other than the aspects of the show that are written, I don't even look at it as a talk show or a comedy show. He thinks himself, at the head of the show, that it exists for the people who don't have time to catch up on the news all week. I've been really craving, seeing people in a more provocative space discuss these things on a show such as his.

Tiffany Hanssen: Eric, yes.

Eric Deggans: First of all, as a critic, let me just say very plainly that Bill Maher's show is not a news show. Bill Maher is not a journalist. I don't know what he may be claiming that he performs some journalism function, but he has proven time and again that he is not a journalist, and that is not news. If that is where you're getting your news, you really need to make an effort to actually consult a journalism source, a source of journalism. Bill Maher is an entertainer and what he presents is entertainment. I would also hazard a guess that a great many things that you think are extemporaneous that happened on that show are actually written by writers. You may discover the difference when he starts doing a show without them.

Tiffany Hanssen: The other issue that came up here in our calls was, why aren't these guys, and they are guys, why aren't they just paying their people?

Eric Deggans: Some of the late-night hosts actually did pay their people for weeks but if you listen to the Strike Force Five Podcast, you will learn that hundreds of people work on this show. I think I would hazard a guess that every one of them employs more than 200 people. Even someone who's really wealthy cannot afford to pay the paychecks for over 200 people for weeks and weeks. I'd also say that to speak to what Bill said in his statement and what the supporter of Bill recently said, the whole point of a strike is to cause pain to force a settlement.

If these groups went on strike and nobody noticed, there would be no point to it. The point of it is to remove things that you want in your entertainment life so that pressure is put on both sides to come to the table and come up with an agreement. Using as your argument, "Hey, people should be allowed to break the strike because we missed these shows." Well, that's the whole point of it. You're supposed to miss the shows. You're supposed to be uncomfortable. You're supposed to be feeling loss because the whole point is to create pressure to make two sides make compromises that neither side wants to make. Using that as an argument to allow people to evade the rules and come back and pretend they're not using, pretend that they don't have staffers who are actually performing the function of writers is, I think, not a sound, logical argument.

Tiffany Hanssen: If you're just joining us, we're talking with NPR TV critic Eric Deggans about talk shows coming back, about the strikes, and about Strike Force Five. If you don't know what that is, it's a podcast with Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, Seth Meyers, Stephen Colbert, John Oliver. They've joined forces for a podcast which is meant to raise money to help pay their staff during this time. During this time, Jimmy Fallon has come into the headlines not just for Strike Force Five but for some reporting done by-- Is it the Rolling Stone? I'm looking at my-- Speaking of writing.

Eric Deggans: Yes, Rolling Stone did the story.

Tiffany Hanssen: Speaking of writing, the Rolling Stone. Tell us about that. What do you know about that, and have they talked about it on the podcast?

Eric Deggans: As far as I know, they have not. I was halfway through listening to the most recent one when we started talking [laughs] but I don't think they have spoken about it yet. Rolling Stone put together a story that was based on talking to several people who either work at the show or had worked at the show. They were kept anonymous. I think all of them were kept anonymous, or most of them were kept anonymous. They alleged an emotionally toxic environment at the show where people were constantly belittled and Jimmy Fallon's behavior was erratic, and there was these implications that maybe he might have a hangover from drinking the night before or whatever.

A lot of the accusations were vague and not hearing them come from specific people, of course, it's hard to judge what exactly is being alleged by whom and why they might be saying what they're saying. At any rate, the story comes out. These late-night shows are notoriously difficult to produce anyway. Even when you have a boss that's considered a good manager, they're difficult to pull off. To have someone running the show who's alleged to be erratic and in fact, they have had many showrunners over the run of Fallon's hosting The Tonight Show, that makes it even tougher.

What's interesting is that I think because the show, The Tonight Show, isn't in production right now and isn't airing new episodes, Fallon isn't necessarily out there as much publicly as he would be if he was hosting the show and it's possible that this whole controversy might pass before the show even comes back to new episodes. It's an odd time to be talking about a story like this because it may have limited impacts on the actual program.

Tiffany Hanssen: Before I let you go, I want to just take a little bit of a left turn about Late Night. These hosts that I mentioned, the Jimmy's, Fallon, Kimmel, Seth Meyers, Stephen Colbert, John Oliver, all straight white guys. We lost Sam B.

Eric Deggans: We did.

Tiffany Hanssen: Is there any effort--

Eric Deggans: Well, we didn't lose her.

Tiffany Hanssen: We didn't lose her.

Eric Deggans: We know where she is.

Tiffany Hanssen: We know where she is. We do know where she is.

Eric Deggans: [laughs] She's awesome.

Tiffany Hanssen: But she's not on Late Night anymore. She's not on Late Night.

Eric Deggans: Yes, her show was canceled.

Tiffany Hanssen: Yes. What are you hearing about any effort to diversify Late Night, if at all?

Eric Deggans: Well, the big rumor is that Hasan Minhaj is going to be hired to host the Daily Show when it comes back to new episodes. I haven't heard anything official from the people at Comedy Central about that, but I did know that that was a rumor even before it was reported so it's possible that he might get that job. Otherwise, I think Late Night is a genre that has been challenged a lot by loss of viewership and a loss of impact in pop culture and these jobs are the kind of jobs that people don't leave them often of their own accord. We saw James Cordon leave his show recently, but before that, the last--

Tiffany Hanssen: Another straight white guy.

Eric Deggans: Yes, exactly. I pointed out when David Letterman retired and they hired Stephen Colbert and they needed to find somebody to host the show after Colbert because Craig Ferguson also decided to leave, they had an opportunity. They had an opportunity when David Letterman retired to diversify that job and then even after they hired Colbert, they had an opportunity to hire somebody to come in and host the show after Stephen Colbert on CBS, and they went the way they went.

James Corden is a talented guy, but that was also a missed opportunity and now we're hearing that they're not even going to program another traditional late-night show that they may put the satirical game show at midnight there. It's a diminishing genre just as it was starting to become diversified. It's contracting now and women and people of color are losing what little prominence they had. Amber Ruffin, who hosts an amazing late-night style show on Peacock, she should be the next host. Whoever hires a host, they should hire her, really. Will she ever move to cable or network television and if she does, would it matter all that much? Would it be better for her to have a perch on Netflix or a major streaming service rather than trying to move to CBS or NBC or ABC?

I think the genre needs to be reinvented and I think CBS basically took a buy and decided not to take on that task. They could have tried to reinvent Late Night with whoever they hired to replace Corden, and instead, they pawned it. Now, it's up to whoever gets the daily show to take on that cast because the guys who are hosting these shows now, they do what they do and I can't see they're going to change all that much.

Tiffany Hanssen: That's a good place to leave it. Eric Deggans is NPR's TV critic. Eric, thanks so much for joining us.

Eric Deggans: Thank you.

Copyright © 2023 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.