As the Writers Guild of America (WGA) strike crosses the 100-day mark, Liv and Maddy star Joey Bragg has revealed that the House of Mouse is abusing a contractual loophole to avoid compensating their Disney Channel stars the full WGA rates.
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The Call Me Mother star exposed the House of Mouse’s financial exploitation of their Disney Channel stars during an appearance on the Cash Cuties podcast, where Bragg revealed that neither him nor his Liv and Maddie co-stars were compensated residuals for the show currently streaming on Disney+.
“That’s one of the things we’re striking about,” Bragg said after pointing out that Liv and Maddie is currently available on Disney’s streaming platform.
“Because my show was like Netflix’s No. 1 watched show, when it was on Netflix, and then it got bought… those streaming rights got bought by Disney for like millions, upon millions, upon millions of dollars, and the creators… nobody saw any of that money.”
Cash Cuties co-host Fumi Abe pointed out, “You also tell me that Disney — sneaky old Disney — you can explain this better than me, but you’re saying that they have this rule where they don’t have to pay you 100% of the WGA rates for three seasons,” further inquiring, “So that’s why every three seasons they reboot it under different names or something?”
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“Yeah, like Hannah Montana Forever and Suite Life On Deck,” the actor noted, before elaborating, “They have a deal with… I don’t know if it’s the unions or the IMF… whatever the f—k the WGA is arguing with right now… but they had a deal where the first three seasons of a show you get paid 88% of scale.”
He went on, “So it’s 88% of like minimum wage, pretty much, for the crew. And then the idea is: you work on a show, it becomes popular, you go four, five, six seasons, and you get 100%, or whatever that is.”
“But then they — by the third season, even if the show’s popular — they reboot it as a brand-new show,” he further explained. “So, we were Liv and Maddie for the first three seasons and the last season was Liv and Maddie: Cali-Style — when we moved to California.”
Abe interjects, “And it’s technically a new show, so they can go back to paying you like s—t,” to which Bragg responds, “Yeah, exactly. But it’s in our contracts that we can’t renegotiate unless everybody decides to renegotiate.”
“So it’s a bunch of little like… very smart lawyers over there in the Mickey Mouse club house. That South Park episode of Mickey Mouse being like a mob boss, like, ‘Don’t f—king talk to me like that!’ That’s exactly what it feels like up there,” alluding to ‘The Ring’ episode from South Park‘s 13th season.