Orange Is The New Black star Kimiko Glenn says her castmates kept second jobs while acting on the critically acclaimed Netflix show.
Glenn unpacked the exploitative nature of the streaming industry in a TikTok on Saturday, just days after SAG-AFTRA members initiated a strike that has all but shut down the entertainment industry in tandem with the Writers Guild of America’s earlier work stoppage.
“My tits live on in perpetuity; I deserve to get paid for as many fucking streams as that shit gets,” Glenn said of her appearances on the groundbreaking show, which followed inmates at a women’s prison in upstate New York and also starred Taylor Schilling, Laura Prepon, Uzo Aduba, Laverne Cox, Danielle Brooks, Natasha Lyonne, Samira Wiley and Taryn Manning.
“Second of all, we did not get paid very well, ever,” Glenn said. “And when I say ‘did not get paid very well,’ you would die.”
“People were bartenders still; people had their second jobs still,” she revealed. “They were fucking famous as shit, like internationally famous, couldn’t go outside, but had to keep their second jobs because they couldn’t afford to not! We couldn’t afford cabs to set, you guys!”
Glenn also talked about her time on Orange Is The New Black for a piece in The New Yorker published last week, where she said the residual arrangements were “just so sad.”
Actor Alysia Reiner, who played warden Natalie “Fig” Figueroa, echoed Glenn’s account, telling The New Yorker, “I can go anywhere in the world and I’m recognised, and I’m so deeply grateful for that recognition.”
“Many people say they’ve watched the series multiple times, and they quote me my lines. But was I paid in a commensurate way? I don’t think so.”
One star, Emma Myles, reported she was paid SAG-AFTRA’s minimum day rate of below $900 a day for her work.
Myles, who spent six seasons playing ex-Amish meth addict Leanne Taylor, remembered producers saying, “They could and would pay us the absolute bare minimum, and there was really no wiggle room.”
Members of SAG-AFTRA voted to authorize a strike on Thursday after coming to a standstill during negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, the trade organization that represents studios and producers.
In addition to asking for a rehaul of the residuals model, actors are asking for protections against artificial intelligence.
During a press conference on Thursday, SAG-AFTRA’s chief negotiator, Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, said the executives had proposed a plan to take digital scans of background actors and pay them a day wage in return for rights to their images and likenesses in perpetuity, “with no consent and no compensation.”
“If we don’t stand tall right now, we are all going to be in trouble. We are all going to be in jeopardy of being replaced by machines,” SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher said during the same press conference.