Brooke Shields surprised a lot of people, myself included, when she decided to run for president of Actors’ Equity, the union that represents more than 51,000 actors and stage managers on Broadway and in regional theaters across the country. She has appeared on Broadway a handful of times throughout her career, but you wouldn’t call her a “stage actor” the way you would Audra McDonald or Sutton Foster. Still, Brooke handily won the election at the end of May, appeared at the Tony’s as the newly-minted Madame President in early June, and then spent the summer learning the ropes of her new role. Now Brooke seems ready to launch. She’s just done two high profile interviews with The Hollywood Reporter and Washington Post, respectively, that promote her new job as union leader as if it were her new film. But it works! In these pieces (I’m excerpting from both below) Brooke articulates why she ran, how her fame will be an asset, and the agenda priorities she’s getting right to work on:
What a shocker, Trump’s 2017 tax laws negatively impacted stage actors: Shields’s top legislative priority is getting a bill passed to make non-reimbursed business expenses tax deductible again, which would help stage actors’ ability to keep more money that goes to things they need to do their job, like voice lessons and agent fees. That Trump-era tax policy change has meant some actors owe thousands of dollars in tax each year, they have said. She will also lobby to raise the National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities to the Senate’s recommended $209 million for the 2025 fiscal year.
On protecting arts & education funding: Shields plans to spread the message that arts and entertainment are an economic driver, not only in big cities like New York and Chicago, but also in much smaller cities like Birmingham, Ala., and Grand Rapids, Mich. “When it comes to politics, it’s always interesting to me how the arts and education are the easiest ones to cut,” Shields said. “We can’t lose sight of that, otherwise we become the type of country we don’t want to be.”
Big talks are happening with Disney & the Broadway League: The union is negotiating its first contract for California’s 1,700 Disneyland performers. The union plans to meet with management in October to demand better pay, safe and sanitary workplaces, and job security. Meanwhile, stage actors paused all developmental work — the workshops and readings of plays and musicals before they hit the main stage — in a strike that began in June against the Broadway League, the trade industry for the theater industry. The top sticking point is fair compensation. – From The Washington Post
Why she ran: It wasn’t so much a lightning bolt moment, as it was a continuing conversation that I have with friends who are stage managers and ensemble friends from when I did Grease. These are friendships that have been constant in my life, and just the conversations and talking to them and seeing certain issues be talked about. The piece that I think was missing is we need access. We need direct access to like the [National] Press Club and have it be seen. And we need the messaging to be extended in a way that not just people across the bargaining table are aware, but the public are aware.
Using her fame for good: This is a very good example of the feeling that I get by being a conduit to a bigger picture, a bigger reason, and then it also makes me not resent the pressures of being in the public eye, which is constant, and it sometimes can make you want to hibernate. But when you have something like the union to represent, I don’t resent it. I want to use it, and make it have a value. Because there’s really no point to it, in my opinion. There’s no value to it unless it’s being used for good. – From The Hollywood Reporter
[From Washington Post and The Hollywood Reporter]
I must admit, I was one of the skeptics when Brooke originally announced her candidacy. (Though to be fair, I was highly distracted during her campaign video by a perplexing piece of art hanging behind her depicting a cornucopia of desserts in a field. That painting remains unexplained to this day.) At first blush it seemed like a celebrity, more known for film & TV, making a go for a consequential position on a lark. Thankfully, I am woman enough to acknowledge that I was wrong in my first judgment (about Brooke as a union leader; I’m still 100% correct on everything I’ve said on record about the mysterious cake art). These articles did exactly what they were supposed to, which was to explain how her visibility as a celebrity is pricelessly why she will be effective leading the union. She also clearly laid out the top agenda items she’s tackling — changing the law back to make non-reimbursable expenses tax deductible, getting the new contract for Disneyland performers, negotiating the Broadway League strike so actors are fairly compensated during development periods, and the eternal, Sisyphean struggle to secure government funding for the arts. Brooke is certainly not saying “Let ‘em eat cake,” to her 51,000+ union members, questionable dessert art notwithstanding.
Photos credit Janet Mayer/INSTARimages.com, TheNews2/Cover Images, Getty and via Instagram
Interesting.
It’s also the first step of dictators and other tyrants for thousands of years – as if they all took the same prerequisite Control the Population 101 and walked away with the same takeaway: eliminate any creative or critical thinking.