from googling one of the bit parts in Orange is the new black for 3 episodes was getting paid 900$ a day
How much are these people getting paid in their normal jobs? minimum wage in america seems to be anywhere from 7 to 17$
seems like a good wage for someone who was basically playing an extra
Residuals are just a bonus at these levels
Except that you might not be getting those jobs very often and then trying to live off very low wages jobs in some of the most expensive places in the country.
Something like 80-90% of actors earn under 25k a year from acting in the US*, and residuals are for many pretty much what helps them survive between jobs, whilst the industry needs that large pool of actors otherwise you get 80's "Downunder" syndrome where you recognise half the extras in every Aussie show from being on every other show, or like in the UK when you'd recognise someone as being in The Bill one week, Casualty the next, and London's Burning if they got the triple in the 80's here.
It's worth noting that that is likely for a speaking extra, not for a non speaking one, and the latter out number the former by a huge margin.
It's also worth noting that out of that $900 a day the actors will be paying their agent 10% as standard, paying taxes, paying for their own healthcare etc (remember this is the US and if you don't earn enough to get the SAG healthcare), hopefully putting money aside for retirement, paying to get to and from auditions etc and spending time practicing for that audition. From what I've read it can take several days of an actors time, unpaid to get one paid role and that role might be at ~$900 a day for the time they spend on set, but they can easily spend several times that just getting it. Then you've got the roles they spend time/money trying to get but don't.
And to give you an idea of how much worse it's got under current streaming contracts than it used to be, there was a guy who was an extra in Pitch Perfect pointing out that for his "Singing extra" role he got paid several thousand dollars, then his first residual check when the DVD's came out covered his first term (or was it year?) of accommodation at University, current contracts were written based on the idea that Streaming was an extra and would promote the TV or physical release and thus the residuals are far smaller and with no independent oversight - so there is no way to tell if a Netflix or WB show has been seen by a million people in a week or 100k unless the streamer is making a big thing about it.
Then there is the thing where the streaming services (looking at WB especially) have basically decided to just blackhole productions of entire films and series, which means that any plan by the people working on it to hope for residuals to help bring in an income long term is utterly destroyed, meanwhile the execs who get paid far more and with no risk keep getting a payrise and bonuses for "saving money" on residuals. Not to mention the blackholing also means that actors work isn't seen, so they've spent potentially months working on something and there is nothing to show to future clients and no chance a casting director will see them in it and think "that's who I want for my next show".
So yeah, you might get a nice daily rate, but you might only get that for 20-30 days a year with several times that spent trying to get roles,** unless you're a regular on a show and even then you're probably not working in acting more days than you are unless you're main cast. IIRC the old ambition of many more aware actors in the US wasn't to be a huge name, but to get a part as a regular (even as small reoccurring speaking part) in a show that ran for several seasons and got into syndication and reruns, as that was the true way to any form of financial stability for the vast majority of actors.
Screen Writers are in an even worse way, because their work tends to be even more sporadic and whilst it usually pays out far more per job than an actor, that is for far more time spent on it and potentially months or years after they've done the work, I've seen so many jokes from Writers about the strike basically saying "yeah 3+ months without a paycheck from writing is the norm, the system has trained us to cope with this"
WB save £100m due to writers strike delaying flops
And then probably paying even more when they finally start production up again
I honestly don't think the WB exec who made the comment about they money they were "saving" had a clue about what happens to the income for the company when the stuff they've got ready to go is all used up, or if he was joking or bluffing hard. I remember the last writers strike and it took something like a year or more for things to get back to something like normal as it threw everything out of sync, and IIRC nearly caused one of the studios to go bust due to the disruption to their income.
*It might be a lower amount of money and a higher percentage don't make it, but the actors etc know because of the SAG dues, and you need that ~25k earned to pay enough into SAG to be fully covered by it's benefits (the key one being healthcare).
**There is a reason for the stereotype of the jobbing actor working in things like bars, and it's because that's the sort of work that lets you fit it in around unpaid auditions and prep time.
variety.com
