Dispatches From WGA Picket Lines Day 14: Neil Gaiman Among 200 Writers Picketing NBCUniversal Upfronts
deadline.comThe NBCUniversal Upfront presentation was the center of Day 14 of the writers strike on the east coast. Good Omens novelist and showrunner Neil Gaiman was among more than 200 writers and supporters that stretched around Radio City Music Hall in New York City.
Gaiman walked alongside Fargo actor David Foley in a line of sign-waving picketers who streamed along Sixth Avenue in midtown Manhattan, and back and forth underneath Radio City’s famous marquee — emblazoned on Monday with “Welcome to the NBCUniversal Upfront” for hundreds of attendees who went inside the Art Deco concert hall adjoining the network’s headquarters at 30 Rockefeller Plaza.
The fantasy and sci-fi novelist and screenwriter had a message of his own: “Pencils the f*ck down,” printed in block white letters on his red t-shirt. “I’ve spent my life as a writer,” Gaiman told Deadline. “Right now, I’m showrunning three shows, and we need contracts.
These people need contracts.”“These people need contracts… for me, the biggest thing was just wanting there to be another generation of TV writers and showrunners…” Neil Gaiman tells Deadline outside of NBCUniversal Upfront today #WritersStrike pic.twitter.com/AOb3WZSXcN Gaiman said he was “incredibly fortunate” to finish the new season of Good Omens before the strike. “We handed it in at the end of March and it’ll be out July 28th,” he said.
Read more on deadline.com