The titans of late night are teaming up to talk shop on a new podcast — all in an effort to support their striking employees — and at least one union is totally cool with that plan … on certain conditions.
A rep for SAG-AFTRA tells TMZ … the just-launched “Strike Force Five” show — featuring Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, Seth Meyers and John Oliver — is all good in their book … assuming they stay within guidelines set forth by strike regulators.
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This is how a SAG spokesperson put it … “As long as the podcast does not promote struck work, it appears to be in adherence with the SAG-AFTRA TV/Theatrical/Streaming strike rules. Given that it falls within the strike rules, it is fine for them to produce this podcast during the strike.”
In other words, it sounds like the hosts have their blessing to proceed … but they should probably steer clear of certain topics if they wanna stay in the actors union’s good graces. Obviously, the podcast itself isn’t a straight-up promo of anything, but the challenge will be not sounding promo-ish if they discuss a certain movie or show that’s in the zeitgeist.
Considering that’s what they do as part of their normal jobs — talk about certain films/projects — it might seem like it will be tough to stay in SAG’s good graces … but, remember, the pod isn’t live. They can always edit if the convo strays into promo land.
The podcast is a good thing, big picture — any money earned is being donated directly to the late-night hosts’ own writers … who, of course, haven’t been working since May.
“Strike Force Five” is currently slated for 12 episodes, which will be hosted on Spotify. They haven’t really said what they’re going to talk about … but ya gotta figure the ongoing strikes will be topic #1. The podcast launched Wednesday, and there’s more to come.