The surprisingly heated, and verbally contentious, elections for the leadership of SAG-AFTRA—the union which pretty much every working actor in Hollywood belongs to—have come to their sanguine conclusion this weekend, as Fran Drescher has emerged, blood-stained and triumphant, carrying the (metaphorical) head of election foe Matthew Modine in her hands.
Which is to say: Drescher is now the head of SAG-AFTRA, after what was, by all accounts, an extremely bitter election, one that saw accusations of everything from support for the January 6 insurrection to sympathy for the NXIVM cult tossed around between rivals. Drescher was the apparent heir apparent, running on the Unite For Strength party/platform that’s run things at SAG-AFTRA for the last few years, while Modine represented the rival MembershipFirst. (God, these names.)
But all is not straightforward for Drescher’s ascent to immaculately dressed power: Her running mate, Star Trek: Discovery actor Anthony Rapp, did not win his election to the post of secretary-treasurer, which instead went to Modine ally Joely Fisher. And while that could simply mean some sort of compromise position will eventually emerge from all the arguing, it seems just as likely that we’re about to get into some real Jefferson-Burr type shit, and in a few years we’ll be writing a piece about Joely Fisher attempting to make herself the emperor of Mexico.
In the short term, though, the two sides of the issue (who stand for, in very general terms, “Let’s keep doing what we’ve been doing” and “Let’s change everything,” because politics) are presumably going to have to find a way to work together under Drescher’s lead. And who’s to say she can’t pull it off? She’s got style, she’s got flair, she’s only got, like, one tweet about how 5G cellular signals cause coronavirus…That’s how she became the SAG-AFTRA president-elect.
[via Variety]
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