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West Wing cast members to hold out?

CNN.com

NEW YORK (Reuters) — On the day that "The West Wing" received 18 Emmy nominations, there was no popping of champagne corks, but rather the figurative sound of a line being scratched in the sand as four of the show's Emmy-nominated cast members contemplated holding out until their salaries are raised.

Variety reports that Peter Nelson, the attorney who was retained by Allison Janney, Richard Schiff, Bradley Whitford and John Spencer to renegotiate their deals on the prestige drama, indicated that unless their per-episode paydays are brought in line with those of their co-stars, the quartet would skip work on Monday, the day which Warner Bros. and John Wells Prods. have declared will mark a breach of contract if the actors don't show up.

"This is not a typical negotiation, in that they are not asking for raises because the show has become a hit," said Nelson, a partner in the firm Nelson Felker Levine & Dern. "What they are asking is merely for Warner Bros. to make good on what it promised when they made their original deals. The best way to put it is, the actors are fully prepared to meet their work obligations Monday, assuming Warners meets its obligation to them."

Nelson denied the quartet deliberately ducked out of this week's scheduled table readings and rehearsals as a show of defiance, claiming that the actors got mixed signals from the producers that led two of them to make other plans.

Their absence, however, brought to the forefront a salary negotiation that had been brewing since late May. And indications are the studio and actors aren't close on the numbers.

A wide gulf between numbers

While WB has offered to double the cast salaries to about $65,000, and add annual bumps of $10,000 per season, Warner wants two additional years beyond the six in the original pact. The actors want around $90,000, but want that figure to escalate to $200,000 by the seventh season. They are reluctant to agree to an eighth. WB has vowed to greet any walkout with prompt legal action for breach of contract.

Nelson wouldn't go into salary specifics, but said his clients took less than their fair market value going in, were told that the show's budget was high, the subject matter a risky proposition. They were also told, he said, that nobody would be making more than $40,000 an episode.

"They subsequently discovered that was not true, a fact confirmed by the studio when those cast members went back to the studio, which acknowledged the original statements made weren't true and that they'd try to fix it," said Nelson. "Two years later, each of those actors have been Emmy nominated, and Richard and Allison have won Emmys."

Because Martin Sheen wasn't expected to be a regular in the original configuration, the actor they seem to be seeking parity with is Rob Lowe, who the studio admits was hired at a higher rate, given his feature track record.

Other sources said that Lowe had a high quote from an overall TV deal with Paramount and cut his price significantly to do the show. From the studio's standpoint, Lowe and Sheen's presence had been considered a strong reason audiences tuned in initially, before show creator Aaron Sorkin's ensemble built that audience base.

Profitability not ensured, says studio

The "Wing" quartet doesn't make the same salaries, with episode paychecks ranging from just below $30,000 an episode to slightly higher. Lowe's salary started around $65,000 and is said to be in the low $70,000 an episode range, while Sheen earns six-figures.

The salary dispute seems small compared to the record salary signed by Kelsey Grammer, who's believed to now be making $1.75 million an episode ($1.25-million-per-episode base salary plus a $500,000 advance against syndication revenues) for the Paramount cash cow "Frasier."

But "The West Wing" has two years left on its license fee deal and will lose money until then, with the studio unconvinced its political subject matter will make it the kind of syndication cash machine that "ER" is.

Will the "West Wing" foursome hold out?

"We would never use the term 'hold out,' but talks that were moving along suddenly seem to have become unproductive, and to date, Warner Bros. hasn't fixed the problem," said Nelson. "But I'd rather not make predictions at this point."

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