SAG-AFTRA president Fran Drescher delivered an impassioned livestream interview with Sen. Bernie Sanders on Tuesday evening, where they discussed the dual strikes that have brought Hollywood to a standstill.

Drescher tore into the studios’ executives and their negotiating body, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. The union chief also criticized Disney CEO Bob Iger, who called the actors’ demands “not realistic” on July 13 while attending an exclusive media mogul gathering in Sun Valley hosted by an investment bank.

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“He stuck his foot in it so bad that you notice none of the other CEOs are opening their mouths,” Drescher said. “There he is, sitting in his designer clothes and just got on his private jet at the billionaire’s camp, telling us we’re unrealistic when he’s making $78,000 a day. How do you deal with someone like that who’s so tone-deaf? Are you an ignoramus? I don’t understand. We need someone with character and courage to go into those boardrooms and say, ‘Listen, we’re doing this all wrong. Why are we doing this anyway? We’re in business with these people. They are who we are building our business off of.’”

Drescher also described the studios’ negotiating committee as lacking empathy.

“I was looking even at the people across the table in the room, and I’m thinking, ’Who are you?’” she said of one AMPTP negotiator. “Maybe he’s a great family man, maybe he makes donations, maybe he supports his community, but his job is to screw me and my members. … You got to be consistent in your life with how you treat other people.”

Drescher said the last thing she said to the studios’ negotiating committee before the strike was: “Well, now you haven’t been able to make deals with two unions, congratulations, we’re outta here!” 

The Writers Guild of America has been on strike for more than two months, having called a work stoppage May 2. On July 13, SAG-AFTRA called a strike as well, its roughly 160,000 members making history as this is the first double strike of actors and writers since 1960. The last writers strike was in 2007-08, lasted 100 days and cost California’s economy an estimated $2.1 billion. A far higher toll is expected this time, now that both unions have halted work.

The WGA and SAG-AFTRA have many similar goals, with both organizations fighting for higher wages, greater compensation from streaming, and protections against the encroachment of artificial intelligence.

In a defiant note during the interview with Sanders, the SAG-AFTRA president invoked the name of a famed abolitionist. “Frederick Douglass said, ‘Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has and it never will.’ And nothing has changed,” Drescher said. “There is a need for people that are in a position of power to belittle, demean, dishonor and disrespect the people down at the bottom. And I cannot tolerate that.”