Sarah Rafferty Instagram – I love this photo and everyone in it. Two of the loved ones have birthdays this weekend. @amandaschull yesterday and @halfadams today. Happy birthday to these two rays of light. ❤️🎈 I took this photo when we all gathered on the WGA picket line back in May, before the actors also went on strike. Before the show that we all spent almost a decade working on had a mind boggling resurgence on a streaming platform. The gratitude in my heart that this show is being enjoyed to such a degree is unparalleled. To collaborate with these wild talents and to be a part of something that is being streamed weekly at the rate of BILLIONS of minutes, is beyond the wildest dreams of thelittle frizzy & freckled red headed girl that lives baffled inside me. I’ve been invited to speak about the actors strike in the press. Frankly, I’ve been waiting until my nervous system was more regulated to speak up. I’ve been working (with so much help from my friends❤️) and waiting for some of the outrage to dissipate….I’m not there yet. And I don’t want to put even a little bit of the second syllable of that word out into the world. That’s not good for anybody. So I’d like to amplify the words of professional wordsmiths. I’ve posted in my stories from our writers before, but I’ll leave some bits here in grid. (Please swipe or better yet read the whole LA Times op-Ed online) Ethan Drogin, who wrote for our show for 8 of the 9 years, revealed that all the writers were COLLECTIVELY paid 3,000 dollars this summer for their work on the show that has broken streaming records. The actors are in not the exact same boat, but a similar one, and in the same ocean. That ocean where the creative relationships are symbiotic. We actors know we are nowhere without great words and what are the words without breath? Sure, there are very well paid “a-listers” and creators in this industry for whom we need not lose sleep. And then there’s everyone else on the field who makes an assist and contributes meaningfully. Their financial participation is different than that of the MVP of course, but still should be commensurate with the team’s collective success. Too many in our industry are suffering, (cont.)