Sheryl Lee Ralph Evokes Rihanna in Impassioned Speech to Striking Actors

Sheryl Lee Ralph delivered an impassioned speech that evoked Rihanna during a rally for striking writers and actors Wednesday in Los Angeles.

“You know why we’re here. You know what we deserve. And in the words of one of our SAG members, ‘Pay us what you owe us. Don’t act like you forgot. Shot shot shot,'” Ralph said, paraphrasing Rihanna’s 2015 hit “Bitch Better Have My Money.”

(Rihanna, as an actress in films like Battleship, Oceans 8, and Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, is a member of the Screen Actors Guild.)

“We are the heartbeat of the entertainment industry. You might try to recreate us with AI, but ain’t nothing going to be as fabulous as the human beings that we are,” Ralph continued.

The Abbott Elementary actress added of her speech after it went viral on Twitter, “What can I say…the spirit of Queen @rihanna got to me.”

Ralph is among the hundreds of SAG-AFTRA union members/Hollywood stars to take to the picket line and demand wage increases, revenue sharing, and better protections against AI and “digital replicas.” Wednesday marked exactly two months since the actors union voted to go on strike on July 13. Since then, combined with the writer’s strike, Hollywood has largely been shut down, although a few shows have begun to defy solidarity.