The return of some shows in the midst of a strike is dividing Hollywood

Drew Barrymore — the daughter of a proud acting dynasty — is producing and presenting the new season of her talk show despite protesters outside her studio and three of her main writers on strike.

“This strike has been going on for about four months: no wonder there are defectors,” said Michael H. says LeRoy, professor of labor and employment relations at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

“Everybody has a breaking point in a labor dispute,” he adds.

The True Barrymore Show It’s not just the daytime show that needs a reboot. display Returned on 27th^e Season on ABC, Tamron Hall and Live with Kelly and Ryan New episodes have also been produced. The Jennifer Hudson Show And Speech It will resume on Monday.

As long as hosts and guests do not discuss or promote works covered by television, film or streaming contracts, they are not technically on strike.

In fact, talk shows are contracted separately from actors’ or writers’ contracts. The deal also covers reality TV, sports, morning news, soap operas and game shows.

Against the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which represents Disney, Netflix, Amazon and others, the Writers Guild of America and the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists.

The return of animators, producers and studio teams will lead to subtle exchanges, predicts author Zayd Ayers Dohrn, professor and director of the MFA in Writing for Screen and Stage at Northwestern University.

30 years of studying worker-employer struggles Mr. LeRoy warned that TV shows like Drew Barrymore could pay a long-term price for not using union writers.

“No member of the Authors Guild will work on the series again,” he said. It’s a short-term feel-good moment or retirement moment for Drew Barrymore and others, but in the long run, in my opinion, they’ve really retired themselves early. »

He pointed to other strikes that have left decades of bitterness behind, such as the 1999 Major League Baseball umpires strike. New referees were hired and integrated with veterans, but tensions persisted.

Bill Maher, who announced his return to his late-night talk show, explained that he wanted to help his entire staff, saying that criminals were “not just people with problems and concerns.”

Mr. Dohrn doesn’t believe it. “They talk about wanting to support people who are struggling. But Bill Maher and Drew Barrymore and the hosts display They can very easily side with their industry colleagues and say they’re not going to feed the studio pipeline unless they make a fair offer. For complicated reasons, they decide to return to work and eventually break the strike. »