Fran Drescher’s very public takedown of Disney’s $40 million man

When Walt Disney chief executive Bob Iger was brought out of retirement last November, the aim was to stabilise the company after a wave of missteps under his replacement Bob Chapek.

Six months later, Iger is himself a cause celebre for all the wrong reasons, at the centre of a perfect storm of changing business dynamics and industrial action, and in the crosshairs of two striking unions.

“Quite frankly, very disruptive.” Disney CEO Bob Iger.Credit: AP/Mark Lennihan

The walkout, by Hollywood’s writers and actors, might have struggled to get traction in the national conversation in a country accustomed to dismissing such groups as elites. Then union boss Fran Drescher delivered a devastating polemic. And Iger replied with an interview seen by many as dismissive scorn. Let them eat cake, anyone?

The dynamics of the double strike – the first time both unions walked off the job at the same time since the 1960s – are relatively simple: the studios are holding the line on smaller-than-asked-for residual payments and want a free hand with artificial intelligence (AI) in film and TV production. The unions disagree.

Then Iger, 72, sat down for an interview with CNBC presenter David Faber at the “summer camp for billionaires” in Sun Valley, Idaho, an event hosted annually by the investment bank Allen & Co. You don’t need a degree in PR to see that the optics of such a conversation were terrible from the outset, given the context of the strike.

“I understand any labour organisation’s desire to work on behalf of its members to get the most compensation and be compensated fairly based on the value that they deliver,” Iger said. “[But] there’s a level of expectation that they have that is just not realistic.” The strike, Iger added, was “quite frankly very disruptive”.

SAG-AFTRA president Fran Drescher on the strike frontline in Los Angeles.Credit: Reuters/Mike Blake

The public face of the actors’ union, actor Fran Drescher, responded almost immediately, branding his comments repugnant, out of touch and tone-deaf. “If I were that company, I would lock him behind doors and never let him talk to anybody about this,” Drescher said. “It’s so obvious that he has no clue as to what is really happening on the ground with hard-working people that don’t make anywhere near the salary that he’s making.”

Drescher then compared Iger to a “land baron”. Married to the media pictures of the scores of private jets parked at Sun Valley’s Friedman Memorial Airport for the conference, and headlines highlighting Iger’s salary – a breathtaking US$27 million ($39.8 million) a year – the effect was devastating.

No longer a steadying hand, the distraction of Iger’s commentary has become an obstacle to finding a peaceful outcome for the two sides, the Writers Guild of America (WGA) and Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA), and the industry’s negotiating body, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP).

Several days later, in an online interview with US independent senator Bernie Sanders, Drescher’s attack continued. “There he is, sitting in his designer clothes and just got on his private jet at the billionaire’s camp, telling us we’re unrealistic when he’s making US$78,000 a day. How do you deal with someone who’s so tone-deaf?

“We need someone with character and courage to go into those boardrooms and say, listen, we’re doing this all wrong, why are we doing this anyway?” Drescher added. “We’re in business with these people. They are who we are building our business off.”

What makes Iger’s transformation to Disney villain so astonishing is this: he was, until this moment, a studio executive who rarely put a foot wrong. He was brought out of retirement to steward the company through the most difficult chapter in its 100-year history, entangled in a war with Florida governor Ron DeSantis.

Last year DeSantis signed into law the Parental Rights in Education Act – the “Don’t Say Gay Bill” – which prohibits classroom discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity. Disney’s then-CEO Chapek criticised the bill, provoking DeSantis. “If Disney wants to pick a fight, they chose the wrong guy,” DeSantis said.

That’s where things get messy. DeSantis tried to take back Disney’s “special tax status”, granted in 1967, which effectively gave it planning control of its 25,000-acre Disney World site. But in doing so, DeSantis had not anticipated the burden of covering fire protection, policing and road maintenance, plus about US$1 billion in bond debt carried by the district, would fall to taxpayers.

DeSantis then tried to take over the board controlling the Disney-controlled district with state-based appointees, but before the new board took control, the Disney-controlled board effectively handed back control to Disney in an agreement which continues in perpetuity. Score at halftime: Disney 1, DeSantis 0. And the parties are still feuding in the courts.

To some extent DeSantis should be taken with a grain of salt. He is a grandstanding would-be presidential candidate whose competitive edge is thinning dramatically in the polls, and Disney makes a politically convenient punching bag in the “culture wars”.

In US politics, such fires are frequently stoked for use as a campaign fundraising tool. Another stunt, for example, blocking funding for a baseball facility after the team made a donation to a gun violence prevention program, was used to curry favour with the gun lobby. Off the back of his war with Disney, almost US$100 million poured into DeSantis’ campaign coffers.

The WGA and SAG-AFTRA picket line outside Paramount Studios in Los Angeles.Credit: Bloomberg/Jill Connelly

Disney, meanwhile, considered the public war of words, and being enmeshed in a manufactured “culture war”, damaging enough to take Chapek out of action and bring Iger out of retirement. But while Iger may have been the man to temper the fight with DeSantis, he did not do so well with Drescher, the working-class, Queens, New York City-born former star of the sitcom The Nanny, and now the boss of SAG-AFTRA.

On the eve of the strike, Drescher ignited public interest in the dispute with a speech equal parts Erin Brockovich and come-to-Jesus. “What is happening to us is happening across all fields of labour, when employers make Wall Street and greed their priority, and they forget about the essential contributors that make the machine run,” Drescher said.

“We are the victims here,” Drescher continued. “We are being victimised by very greedy [entities] … how they plead poverty, that they’re losing money left and right when giving hundreds of millions of dollars to their CEOs. It is disgusting. Shame on them. They stand on the wrong side of history.”

How the six key players in the room – Disney, Universal, Paramount, Warner Bros. Discovery, Sony and Netflix – can resolve the strike remains to be seen. Optimistic predictions of a speedy end to it have now turned into whispers that it could last until November.

Disney still brings enormous influence to bear, but now feels like the studio least likely to win a charm offensive. Netflix, on whom the sins of the streaming world are usually hung, is the studio equivalent of trust fund kids sipping lattes in a hipster cafe. Warner Bros. Discovery is too dollar-focused, and Universal too artist-focused. Which leaves Paramount and Sony, who may have the correct balance of innovation and understanding needed to bring the strike to a close.

“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has, and it never will,” Drescher told Bernie Sanders this week, quoting the American abolitionist Frederick Douglass. “Nothing has changed,” Drescher added. “There is a need for people that are in a position of power to belittle, demean, dishonour and disrespect the people down at the bottom. And I cannot tolerate that.”

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