David Roel writes to ask…
What are the rules regarding who gets to be a "series regular" and featured in the opening credits? Is it entirely the producers' decision, or can actors' agents negotiate that? Is the difference in what an actor is paid significant? If an actor is not a series regular, is the actor contracted for every individual episode? Have there ever been any fights about this?
I'm thinking about the actress who played Tara on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, who, starting from her first episode, was in essentially every episode, had just as much to do as anyone else, but didn't become a series regular, featured in the opening credits, until her very last episode, the episode when her character was killed off. I think I'd be pretty upset if I spent years on a show, did just as much work as any other actor, and never got paid as well as the others, and couldn't put the "series regular" credit on my CV. Could her agent have demanded her promotion?
Payment in excess of union scale is negotiated. The number of episodes appears in is negotiated. Billing in the opening credits is negotiated. (SAG-AFTRA has some rules about billing in the end titles — sadly not about how long a name has to be on screen. Evelyn Wood in her prime couldn't read the end credit on some shows.)
Sometimes, those are very simple negotiations. The actor is offered roughly the same money as others with comparable participation in that show or a comparable show and most of the time, the agent asks for a little more and then they settle on some number in-between. (Where it can get complicated and even nasty is when the show's a hit and the performer wants to renegotiate. Sometimes, the actor winds up like a member of the cast on Seinfeld. Sometimes, the actor winds up like Suzanne Somers.)
Often, the actor is guaranteed all episodes produced. Sometimes, they're guaranteed a certain number or at least a certain number. Usually, you don't get your name in the opening titles unless you're in all the episodes. (I don't recall if Andy Kaufman, who only wanted to be in X episodes of Taxi per season was an exception.) Again, once the actor has some clout and they're afraid of doing the show without him or her, renegotiation may occur.
Most of the time, billing in the opening titles is pretty standard, though there are exceptions. Famously, Russell Johnson and Dawn Wells weren't in the opening titles for the first season of Gilligan's Island but were added as of Season Two. And once upon a time, Jonathan Harris was in every episode of Lost in Space but he was always billed as a "Special Guest Star."
I wanted some more recent examples so I called an agent I know and he said, "There aren't many squabbles these days over billing in the opening of the show. The networks and the producers are pretty good about it and since opening titles are now shorter and less fancy, the actors care less about that." He also said the fights now are rarely about whether someone will get billed but rather over the order of the names and/or who gets single-frame. ("Single-frame" means one name on the screen at a time.)
There's an old saying I just made up about Show Business: "When you're a nobody, nothing is negotiable and when you're a somebody, everything is negotiable." Depending on the contracts, there may have been a point where the agent representing that Buffy actress could have demanded better billing or she'd leave. And then it becomes a question of whether she wants it badly enough to leave the show if she doesn't get it. Since billing doesn't cost them anything, she probably would have gotten what she wanted, just as Jonathan Harris did.
