Ron Perlman said he got “heated” with a previous social-media message to studio executives — one exec in particular — but pleaded for the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) to show a “degree of humanity” in its dispute with the actors and writers currently on strike.
On Friday, the Sons of Anarchy actor addressed the anonymous studio executive who told Deadline last week that the AMPTP’s endgame — amid the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) and Writers Guild of America (WGA) strikes — “is to allow things to drag on until union members start losing their apartments and losing their houses.”
Speaking on a now-offline Instagram Live video that day, Perlman said, “Listen to me, motherf–ker. There’s a lot of ways to lose your house. Some of it is financial, some of it is karma, and some of it is just figuring out who the f–k said that — and we know who said that — and where he f–king lives. … You wish that families would starve while you’re making 27 f–king million dollars a year for creating nothing? Be careful, motherf–ker. Be really careful.”
In a follow-up Instagram video, Perlman admitted that he “got quite heated” in his first message. He also clarified that he doesn’t “wish anybody any harm.”
“But when you start going around and saying we’re not even going to bargain with these f–king d–kheads until they start f–king bleeding and their families start bleeding…” he rued. “I mean, if you want to talk about some of the s–t that makes people so cynical and so pissed off with our current climate… I mean, this strike is just sort of… it’s a symptom of a struggle that’s way bigger than the strike itself. It’s a symptom of the soullessness of corporate America and how everything has become corporatized in this country.”
The Emmy-nominated actor — also known for his roles in the TV series Beauty and the Beast and the Hellboy movies — also said that corporations only care about the bottom line.“When you co-opt something that deals in beauty and the human experience like film and television does, like any of the fine arts do, but it’s being run by people who only care about one thing and that is money, it makes for some very strange bedfellows,” he said.
But Perlman, 73, is also seeking an amicable resolution to the labor conflict. “We all must try to get along, and we must all try to understand you have your value in giving us the resources we need to make content, and we have our value as storytellers because of the effect we have on people when we tell our stories beautifully and properly, on the people that come to see them,” he said.
He went on: “Let’s maintain a degree of humanity in all of this, OK? It can’t all be about your f–king Porsche and your f–king stock prices. There’s got to be dignity if we’re going to hold a mirror up and reflect human experiences, which is what we do as actors and writers. … All you’re doing is you’re f–king killing what’s beautiful in this country by putting a price on everything.”
This story originally appeared on TV Insider
