It’s an old cliché that all of the waiters and servers in Los Angeles are aspiring actors and writers. While that may be an oversimplification of the situation, right now it does seem to have some truth to it.
Thanks to the recent actors’ and writers’ strikes in Hollywood, more and more entertainment-industry pros are turning to restaurant work to make ends meet, The New York Times reported on Monday. And because the work stoppages have basically shut down the filming of movies and TV shows, it’s more than just actors and writers waiting tables: There are showrunners, set decorators, production coordinators, makeup artists, and other behind-the-scenes employees applying for restaurant gigs.
“Normally, you have a day job as a server, and once you get a good booking you quit,” Chelsea Rendon, a SAG-AFTRA strike captain at Warner Bros. who took her first-ever restaurant job in May, told the Times. “I feel like I’ve had a successful career and had been able to provide for myself, and all of a sudden I can’t.”
Rendon’s experience is common among those in the industry, while others have always turned to restaurant work to supplement the income they make from film or TV. The actor and comic Elyssa Phillips, for example, has worked for nine years at Nancy Silverton’s Osteria Mozza. Phillips told The New York Times that being a server at the high-end Italian joint has given her the flexibility to be a strike captain at Disney.
Given that Osteria Mozza is popular with studio executives, she’s become well-acquainted with some of them over the years. During the strikes, however, Phillips has tried to keep her restaurant job separate from her work in entertainment. If an exec or another regular tries to talk to her about the strikes, she deftly tries to steer the subject back to food and drinks.
For the restaurants themselves, the spate of people looking for work has been a boon. Erika Rotolo, the HR director for the local chain HomeState, told the Times that the company has been flooded with applications. When searching for a dishwasher, for example, 70 people applied within just 12 hours. That interest, though, is bittersweet for Rotolo.
“We were excited to have so many applicants,” she said. “Another part of me felt badly because people were putting some of their creative and personal dreams on hold due to what’s going on.”
While the writers’ strike ended last month, the actors’ strike is still ongoing. Talks between SAG-AFTRA and the studios have been suspended, and even though the strike will eventually come to an end, it’ll be a while before production picks up, The New York Times noted. Until then, it seems likely that entertainment pros will continue to show up in L.A.’s restaurant scene—as employees rather than diners.
