"Melissa Gilbert should be apologizing to the WGA."

Frances Fisher is reacquainting herself with Los Angeles geography. The actress, who's in the midst of working on "The Oaks" for showrunner Shawn Ryan, has hit five different picket lines in first three days of the WGA strike -- Universal and Prospect on Monday, Fox and Raleigh Manhattan Beach on Tuesday and Paramount on Wednesday.

She allowed that she'd been on the Paramount lot a decade ago for a pre-release screening of "Titanic," in which played the mother of Kate Winslet's Rose Bukater. "All this walking is a great way to stay in shape," she said.

Fisher, who was walking the line at Paramount with fellow SAG board member Valerie Harper, was reflecting on the roots of the strike. And she blamed the SAG national board, led by then-president Melissa Gilbert, for its decision in early 2004 to agree to a one-year extension of its deal -- which effectively de-linked with SAG's expiration date from the WGA's and placed in synch with the DGA's.

The SAG and DGA contracts both expire next June 30; the WGA's expired on Halloween.

"What we did was put the WGA in a less powerful position, which led to this strike" she added. "And I think Melissa Gilbert should be out here apologizing to the WGA."

-- Dave McNary

Photo of Frances Fisher by Todd Williamson/Wireimage.com.

Comments

[MitchNY]

That's a laugh...Frances Fisher asks for an apology from Gilbert? She who along with the other MFers at SAG Hollywood killed merger a few years back saying (among many other lies) that SAG and AFTRA were not in competition? She and the MFers who hired Pisano AS A CEO (!?!) at a million bucks a year and then, when he rightly realized that the best thing for all was to merge, then she and those other MFers turned on him and fired him at the cost of a million and a half dollars of my dues money? She and the other MFers who told Hessinger they had his back and then took him into a trap at a meeting and fired him too, costing us another half a million? And she wants Gilbert to apologize? Puh-leeze! (Hey Dave...do your homework!)