I’m curious about the timing of this, because it seems to me that doing this while the writers are striking gives the actors less leverage. A bunch of productions are already shut down due to the writers’ strike, so the actors on those productions also being on strike doesn’t delay production or cost the studios any additional money.

Obviously not all productions were already shut down, so the strike does hurt the studios, but if I were a studio exec, I’d much rather have all the strikes happen at the same time to minimize the cost to me.