Craig Ferguson knows a thing or two about strikes. The comedian hosted CBS’ The Late Late Show during the 2007/2008 writers strike.
As a member of the WGA, SAG-AFTRA and the DGA, the Scot has urged the studios to “make a fucking deal”.
“I support the strike wholeheartedly,” he told Deadline. “You have one job as a producer and that’s to make a fucking deal. That’s really the whole ethos of being a producer and they’re not making a deal, and I can’t understand that. Any good producer finds a way to make a deal that everyone walks away feeling kind of good about so I can’t imagine why an association of producers can’t get together with a bunch of people who want to work and say, ‘All right, we have to find a deal’.”
Ferguson has now entered the podcast business, striking a deal with iHeart to host Joy, A Podcast. It launched in July and the first two episodes featuring Grabiel Iglesias and Kathie Lee Gifford have now aired. Ferguson told Deadline that it’s about how people cope, how they see their way out of the darkness and how they shake off their demons.
Of the current writers and actors strike, he added, that it feels different to 2007/08. “If I think back, it was not about a seismic change in the industry. It was about unfairness. Strikes are always about unfairness, but I think that this one is about a real change. There’s a real shift, it’s like sound coming to the movies. It’s a big deal,” he said.
He empathizes with the current crop of the late-night hosts like Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers.
During the 2007/08 writers strike, the late-night shows returned two months into the walkout. On December 28, 2007, David Letterman, whose production company Worldwide Pants ran The Late Show and The Late Late Show, struck an interim agreement with the WGA, which allowed both shows to return to air with writers under terms that the WGA had proposed to the AMPTP.
While other shows such as NBC’s The Tonight Show also returned to air on January 2 2008, alongside the CBS shows, they didn’t have writers.
Ferguson praised Rob Burnett, who was an exec producer of The Late Show with David Letterman and President of Worldwide Pants, for pulling that off. “Rob was a producer and he made a deal with the union. That’s all you had to do. All I see right now, and I’m no expert in what’s going on, but it does seem a horribly unfair system.”
One of the WGA’s demands in this negotiation involves late-night. The guild wants to get rid of entirely negotiable rates and apply MBA minimums to comedy variety programs made for streaming, as outlined in its pattern of demands.
Ferguson hosted The Late Late Show between 2005 and 2014, with James Corden taking over after he left. But the comedian admitted that late-night is like snooker to him.
“I’ll be honest with you, I didn’t watch late night before I was doing it. I certainly didn’t watch it when I was doing it. and I fucking don’t watch it now. It’s a weird thing, it’s kind of like snooker to me. I never watched snooker on TV. I’m happy to play it, but I’m not going to watch it.”
