This story was originally published on Passionfruit.
You might not know the names of the actors who started a movement protesting the working conditions and pay in Dhar Mann Studios, but you’ll definitely know their faces.
On his official YouTube channel, which pumps out four moral fable-type videos a week for its 17 million subscribers, Dhar Mann, 38, says that he and the actors are “not just telling stories, but changing lives.” With their protests, it looks like actors Mair Mulroney, Charles Laughlin, Colin Borden, and Michael Vaccaro took that advice literally.
The four actors have accused Dhar Mann Studios of underpaying them; inadequate food and water; expecting them to attend a publicity event for free; conducting a “smear campaign” against them in the wake of their protests; having 10-hour work days for child actors; and of perpetuating a “culture of fear” in the workplace that led to actors feeling silenced, unable to take on other roles and unable to give feedback out of fear that the studio would withhold acting jobs from them as “punishment.”
