Hollywood Actors to Start Voting Tuesday on Contract Deal

The union that represents movie and television actors said on Friday that its 76-member national board had voted with 86 percent support to send a tentative contract with studios to members for ratification.

The ratification process will start on Tuesday and end the first week in December. Actors can go back to work immediately, however.

Members are expected to approve the contract, which Fran Drescher, the union’s outspoken president, valued at more than $1 billion over three years. She highlighted the “extraordinary scope” of the agreement, noting that it included protections around the use of artificial intelligence, higher minimum pay, better health care funding, concessions from studios on self-taped auditions, improved hair and makeup services on sets, and a requirement for intimacy coordinators for sex scenes, among other gains.

“They had to yield,” Ms. Drescher said at a news conference during a 28-minute monologue that touched on Veterans Day, Bela Lugosi’s Dracula costume, her parents, the Roman Empire, studio stubbornness, Buddhism, Frederick Douglass and her dog.

The union, SAG-AFTRA, which represents tens of thousands of actors, and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which bargains on behalf of studios, reached the tentative agreement on Wednesday. It followed a bitter standoff that contributed to a near-complete shutdown of production in the entertainment industry. At 118 days, it was the longest movie and television strike in the union’s 90-year history.

The tentative deal was also historic, according to the studio alliance, which said it reflected “the biggest contract-on-contract gains in the history of the union.” In a statement, the alliance said it was “pleased” that SAG-AFTRA’s board had recommended ratification.