The one story you should read today, selected by the editors of New York.
An actress who used PTO from her tech job to shoot a Netflix series. A streaming star who paid $6,000 a month for her own publicist. A writer who's thankful he got in a car accident because the payout is keeping him afloat right now. The current Hollywood strike — which unites actors and writers for the first time in over 60 years in a fight for more equitable pay and treatment — has been hardest on people at the lowest levels of the industry, who are struggling to make rent. But, as many told us, they’re used to it. “If the strike carries on indefinitely, I can live on forever, because actors are all stubborn donkeys,” as one actress put it. For this edition of our “Anonymous in Hollywood” column, 19 writers, actors, and crew members (who are not on strike but still not working) got frank about how much they make, the uncomfortable moral choices and class tensions around crossing picket lines, and why it feels unfair to be paying the same monthly SAG dues as Oprah. Their stories get to the heart of what this strike is all about.