The Writers Guild of America has been on strike since May, resulting in most late-night TV shows and movie productions coming to a grinding halt. The strike may continue until the WGA reaches an agreement with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. One of the first major TV shows to shut down due to this reason was The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon . Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, Seth Meyers, and John Oliver are some of the famed hosts who have been on indefinite hiatus during this period.
They have now started their own podcast show called Strike Force Five on Spotify to discuss the effects of the ongoing strike. During the first episode, Kimmel revealed that his longtime friends Ben Affleck and Matt Damon offered to pay his staff’s salaries during the ongoing writers’ strike.
” Ben Affleck and the despicable Matt Damon contacted me and offered to pay our staff for two weeks,” Kimmel said. “A week each, they wanted to pay out of their own pockets our staff,” the late-night host said of the Good Will Hunting stars. However, Kimmel said he turned down their generous offer saying, “I felt that that was not their responsibility.”
As per People , Kimmel also shared during the podcast episode that he was ready to retire in the wake of the WGA strike in May, “I was very intent on retiring right around the time where the strike started,” Kimmel said. “And now I realize, oh yeah, it’s kind of nice to work. When you are working you think about not working,” he added. Meyers then quipped in, “Kimmel, c’mon, you are the Tom Brady of late night … you have feigned retirement… Are we to take you at your word?” To which Kimmel replied, “I was serious. I was very, very serious,” also confessing that he likes to take summers off when he’s getting paid.
Matt Damon talks about the potential actors’ strike while at the “Oppenheimer” photocall in London. pic.twitter.com/sFzy77PKPN
— AP Entertainment (@APEntertainment) July 12, 2023
Damon has stood in solidarity with the writers so far; during a red carpet event for Oppenheimer in London, he told the Associated Press , “We got to protect the people who are kind of on the margins,” The Martian actor had said at that time. “26,000 bucks a year is what you have to make to get your health insurance, and there are a lot of people who residual payments are what carry them across that threshold. If those residual payments dry up, so does their health care, and that’s absolutely unacceptable.”
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As per the Independent , the Strike Force Five limited podcast series is set to run for 12 weeks. The hosts disclosed the motivation behind the podcast, which is a commendable cause: all show revenues will be given to the cast and crew of each host’s unemployed chat series. “Could it be transferable?” Meyers jokingly responded to Kimmel, followed by Colbert, who quipped, “Could you just say yes and then give your money to us?” The writer’s union’s chief demands include increased wages, higher streaming residuals, and improved working conditions.