Photo:Peter Marc Jacobson
Peter Marc Jacobson
AsFran Drescher’s longtime hair stylist, Jon Lieckfelt wasn’t surprised when her impassioned speech made international headlinesdeclaring the Screen Actors Guildstrike last week.
“That was authentic Fran,” he tells PEOPLE of the SAG-AFTRA president. “That’s the Fran that a lot of people don’t get to see. They see the charismatic, big-voice character Fran a lot, but that’s her real ‘I mean business’-mode. And she was very angry and impassioned about everything that’s happening with labor. It’s a really dangerous time that we’re in.”
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“I had a lot of jobs waiting for the decision of whether or not there would be a strike. Had they reached negotiations I would have made thousands of dollars this week. Rather than making thousands of dollars, I’m making none,” says the veteran stylist. “And so my entire industry is shut down, unless we’re booked on jobs involving the music industry, or reality television.”
But Lieckfelt says he and his peers stand in solidarity with the terms actors and writers are fighting for. “Our mood is exactly the mood when you saw Fran speak. We all share her rage and anger towards the big corporate mindsets.”
The threat looms for stylists, too, he says. One SAG-AFTRA negotiation proposal demands studios give extras and stand-ins a small pay increase if they are required to arrive on set “camera ready” — with their hair and makeup already done. (An earlier version of this article misstated the origin of that deal point.)
The union “shouldn’t be encouraging background actors to be doing their own hair and makeup,” Lieckfelt says, particularly as streamers depress rates for styling teams. With a majority of sets employing between six and 50 stylists, the practice of self-styling is “taking us out of the mix altogether,” says Lieckfelt, putting the onus on studios. “Which is a huge deal. You see what’s happening — slowly the greedy money people are trying to do away with our jobs."
Lieckfelt is equally worried about the threat of artificial intelligence taking over “even wardrobe, or special effects makeup, which is a huge specialty. If there aren’t laws created around AI you’re going to see an entire industry crumble, a lot of jobs lost.”
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With talks between the unions and studios at a standstill, movies fromDeadpool 3to theGladiatorsequel have shut down, and lucrative events like September’s Emmys and the fall film festivals (all packed with styling jobs) are in jeopardy.
It leaves stylists like Lieckfelt, who often hops from 16-hour days on sets to quicker-turn red carpet-glam (for which he’ll often spend days studying a celebrity’s brand or prepping vintage hair pieces), with idle hands.
“Like so many people, I didn’t expect to be in this situation,” he says. “I knew the potential for striking was there, but there’s no real way to prepare for it. (But) I think when you’re an artist, you get very used to being creative with how you make your money, and how you pay your bills. And so you get very resourceful if you have to be.”
source: people.com
