LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: As SAG-AFTRA announced the end of its 118-day strike following a tentative deal with AMPTP, George Clooney reportedly told union president Fran Drescher, "I would have bet my house and lost that you couldn’t get the deal that you got, that you wouldn’t have gotten past a billion dollars."
Drescher appeared on 'Extra' and told host Billy Bush that she spoke to Clooney right after the news of SAG-AFTRA strike ending broke out in public.
She shared that passing the billion dollar mark on the deal seemed impossible to Clooney and mentioned that his remark after the agreement made her "so happy."
"And that just made me so happy," Drescher said while discussing her reaction to the A-list actor's comment on SAG-AFTRA's tentative deal with the studios.
Was George Clooney part of SAG-AFTRA's contract negotiations?
While Clooney was one of the many stars to celebrate the end of SAG-AFTRA's strike and the union's new three-year deal with AMPTP, he was not officially a part of the contract negotiations, as per Huffpost.
However, the 'Ocean's 11' star was eager to help break a deal between the union and the studios when talks appeared to stall in October.
Clooney and several other A-list stars reportedly proposed to raise membership dues for the highest-earning members of SAG in order to bridge the gap between the AMPTP’s offer and the cost of union health benefits.
"A lot of the top earners want to be part of the solution," Clooney told Deadline in October, adding, "We’ve offered to remove the cap on dues, which would bring over $50 million to the union annually."
"Well over $150 million over the next three years. We think it’s fair for us to pay more into the union. We also are suggesting a bottom-up residual structure — meaning the top of the call sheet would be the last to collect residuals, not the first," the Oscar winner continued.
"These negotiations will be ongoing, but we wanted to show that we’re all in this together and find ways to help close the gap on actors getting paid," he added at the time.
Fran Drescher believes the new SAG-AFTRA deal is 'historic'
Following SAG-AFTRA's tentative agreement with AMPTP, president Drescher shared that the deal is so strong that some celebrities could hardly believe the negotiation.
She also called the deal "historic" and said that "It was moving all the way through."
"We had reached a threshold where we crossed the billion-dollar mark and ended at a $1.01 billion, which is quite historic in terms of the size of the contract in this industry," Drescher explained.
While SAG-AFTRA did not share full details of the deal ahead of the meeting of the National Board which will review the tentative agreement, the union revealed a few key deal points.
The deal includes, "more than one billion dollars in new wages and benefit plan funding, a streaming participation bonus, minimum compensation increases that break the so-called 'industry pattern,' consent and compensation guardrails on the use of AI." It also includes for the first time, "raised pension and health caps that will channel more value into our funds and critical protections for diverse communities."
