(Los Angeles) Late-night shows in the United States are returning after a five-month hiatus caused by a Hollywood writers’ strike, as actors begin negotiations that could end their long work hiatus.
The Late Show With Stephen Colbert on CBS, Jimmy Kimmel Live! on ABC and The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on NBC were the first shows to go off the air when the writers’ strike began on May 2. They will now be among the first to return Monday evening.
Comedian John Oliver was the first to get the ball rolling on Sunday night on his HBO show Last Week Tonight, in which he gave his full support for the strike.
Oliver happily recaps the news from the past five months before turning serious, calling the strike an “extremely difficult time” for everyone in the industry.
“Let me be clear, this strike happened for good reasons. Our industry has seen its workers severely strained in recent years,” he argued.
“So the screenwriters guild went on strike and, fortunately, won. But it took a lot of sacrifice from many people to achieve this. »
Warner Bros. Discovery, owner of HBO, is among the studios on the other side of the table in the writers’ and actors’ strikes.
On Monday evening, Colbert will host astrophysicist and author Neil deGrasse Tyson on his first show. Kimmel will host Arnold Schwarzenegger, while Matthew McConaughey will be on Fallon’s couch.
The animators have not remained completely inactive in recent months. They teamed up for a podcast, Strike Force Five, during the strike.
Screenwriters were allowed to return to work last week after their union, the Writers Guild of America (WGA), reached a three-year contract with the alliance of major studios, video-on-demand services and industry production companies.
Union leaders presented the agreement as a clear victory on issues such as wages, workforce size and the use of artificial intelligence. The writers themselves will vote on the contract during a week-long vote that begins Monday.
Meanwhile, the actors’ union, the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA), will begin negotiations with the studios, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, for the first time since ‘they joined the writers in a historic double strike on July 14.
The actors walked out over many of the same issues as the writers, and SAG-AFTRA leaders said they would closely examine the gains and compromises of the WGA deal, but stressed that their demands would remain the same as at the start of the strike.
Late night shows will have significant limits on their guest lists. Their livelihoods, actors who promote projects, will not be allowed to participate if the films and shows are destined for studios affected by the strike.
But there are exceptions. McConaughey, for example, will be on Jimmy Fallon’s show to promote his children’s book Just Because.
And SAG-AFTRA has granted interim agreements allowing actors to work on many productions, giving them the right to promote them publicly.
