Another actor has come forward to criticize the Screen Actors Guild over its health plan policies. Drake Bell, star of the Nickelodeon series Drake & Josh, denounced SAG on Instagram after learning he had been booted from the plan for failing to meet income minimums. “Do not become an actor. Do not join SAG,” Bell wrote on Instagram Stories. “You can work steadily for 35 years, and they still say [middle finger emoji].”
Bell is far from the first to publicly criticize the union’s health care plan. Last month, Teenage Sex And Death At Camp Miasma star Jack Haven and Wednesday star Heather Matarazzo shared their precarious health care situations on social media. Haven, the star of one of the year’s biggest and most successful indies, pled for work on YouTube to meet minimums, and Matarazzo said she and many others were in the same boat, reminiscing about a time before minimums were needed in a profession where work is hard to come by.
Beneath Bell’s comments, he posted a screenshot of the SAG-AFTRA health care plan site informing him “you do not qualify for Health Plan coverage at this time.” The reason? Bell’s reported earnings “did not meet minimum eligibility requirements.” According to the plan’s site, he would need to generate another $11,452.47 to meet the plan’s minimum of $28,933. Bell tagged the union and its president, Sean Astin, and wrote, “Really though [Sean Astin] you’re doing a bang up job. How about stop using actors to run things maybe? They literally just know how to say words in front of a camera [peace emoji].”
The reports of health plan woes come at a difficult time for actors. As the industry continues to shrink into four or five companies, studios and networks will produce fewer and fewer projects. As it did last year, when Skydance acquired Paramount, Skydance will likely start laying off thousands to pay down the $80 billion in debt it assumed in its $110 billion Warner Bros. acquisition. Though it pinky-swore to produce 30 movies a year, it hasn’t explained how it will do that. Fewer projects on the screen means fewer jobs for working actors.
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