Actors ‘Blacklisted’ For Unvaccinated Status Speak Out

Actor Dorian Kingi has spoken out about an unofficial ‘Blacklist’ that movie studios have created for people with unvaccinated status.

Due to his vaccination status, actor, stunt performer, and director, Dorian Kingi claims he hasn’t had a work in the entertainment sector for three years.

The Emmy-winning actress Lindsay Wagner and stuntman Henry Kingi are the couple’s parents. At the age of 11, Mr. Kingi joined the Screen Actors Guild-American Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) in recognition of his performance in the 1994 movie “Double Dragon.”

His final jobs in the realm of “creature acting” were as the extraterrestrial Demogorgon in “Stranger Things” and the vicious bounty hunter Cad Bane in “The Book of Boba Fett,” before he started to be turned down due to his religious exemption.

Mr. Kingi and others continue to lose their jobs due to an unofficial “blacklist” that movie studios have created for people who haven’t taken the vaccine or kept up with the booster schedule, despite SAG-AFTRA’s pledge to protect its members from discrimination and the purported expiration of its vaccine mandate in May 2023.

“With the union’s overall stance on inclusion, diversity, and anti-discrimination, it’s just disheartening that there’s been no middle ground regarding this issue,” Mr. Kingi said.

The SAG-AFTRA is “committed to the broadest employment and involvement of our members,” among other things, regardless of ethnicity, political affiliation, or disability, according to the union’s constitution.

“We are proud to be a model of inclusion, democratic organization and governance,” its constitution reads.

However, Mr. Kingi noted that this should not apply to private medical decisions. People have been under pressure to obtain the vaccination and booster or to get false identification cards prepared to maintain employment due to the mandate’s ongoing implementation.

He claimed that some of these individuals had died and some had suffered serious injuries.

‘Neither Logical Nor Scientific’

Bekka Prewitt, an actress and SAG-AFTRA member, started having negative reactions to the vaccine twelve hours after receiving it in May 2021; some of these effects are still present in her.

“I took the vaccine at 4 in the afternoon, and at 4:00 in the morning, I woke up sick to my stomach and collapsed on the bathroom floor,” she said. “I immediately felt the lack of ability to control my body. I couldn’t lift my head. That’s when I started to feel like someone was jabbing me in the stomach with a knife.”

She claimed that for hours, her body was shaking, convulsing, and perspiring as it attempted a thorough evacuation.

But according to her, it went beyond.

“For months, I would have rotating pain throughout my body,” she said.

She claimed that even though the discomfort ultimately subsided, her monthly cycle was never the same.

A complicated, multi-pronged cyst, larger than a golf ball, was found during a pelvic ultrasound, she added.

She claimed that even though most of these symptoms have subsided, she still experiences irregular menstruation cycles and has been identified as having Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, an autoimmune condition that results in hypothyroidism.

Her rheumatologist concurred that receiving a booster wouldn’t be safe, so she wrote her a medical exemption after her first doctor rejected the idea that the vaccination was the cause.

According to an exclusive report by investigative journalists Lee Fang and Jack Poulson, Moderna has been reported to hire former FBI agents to secretly control the vaccine debate.

Despite her background, studios rejected her, and in October 2022, she lost her job on a television program for not receiving a promotion.

Even though Ms. Prewitt ran the risk of being shunned even more, she used social media to raise awareness of her situation.

“It’s very established now that the COVID-19 vaccination and boosters do not prevent the spread of COVID,” she said. “You can get or give COVID regardless of your vaccination status, so it’s neither logical nor scientific. But it doesn’t matter to the entertainment industry because there’s now this belief system that’s been indoctrinated into our culture that claims if you aren’t vaccinated, you are deadly to yourself and others.”

SAG-AFTRA Lawsuit

In a complaint against SAG-AFTRA, which was filed in December, Ms. Prewitt and Mr. Kingi are two of the 100 plaintiffs alleging negligence, violation of contract, and breach of fiduciary duty of fair representation.

The group Protecting the Educational Rights of Kids (PERK), which advocates for medical independence and parental sovereignty, filed the action with Gerard Fox Law’s help.

SAG-AFTRA members who have faced prejudice and lost their jobs are “taking matters into their own hands,” according to PERK President Amy Bohn, to “preserve their medical freedom, bodily autonomy, and freedom of choice.”

SAG-AFTRA members “had a right to expect that its Union would protect them, negotiate with the studios, producers and other hiring officials on their behalf to prevent prejudicial treatment for exerting their philosophical, religious, medical or disability-based reason for not taking the COVID-19 vaccine,” according to the lawsuit, citing their contract with the union as support.

“SAG-AFTRA had a continuing obligation to collectively work with their signatories to comply with applicable provisions and satisfy meet and confer opportunities as discussed in the Collective Bargaining Agreement before implementing forced vaccinations, however, they failed and, resultingly, failed their members,” the lawsuit states.

Mr. Kingi said he couldn’t just watch from the sidelines, even though he understood he would run the risk of being blacklisted once more for his involvement in the litigation.

“It just felt wrong to me,” Mr. Kingi said. “This has crossed lines in more ways than one.”

Ms. Prewitt, whose last movie role was in 2021, has only been cast in commercials, which she claims have less strict vaccination restrictions than film and television because her injuries has made it risky for her to be boosted.

“But my heart, soul, and passion have always been in TV and film,” she said. “Not being permitted to work in that has been heartbreaking. It’s heartbreaking to finally start getting some auditions booked, then be kicked to the curb because of an inability to get a booster.”

Like Mr. Kingi, Ms. Prewitt acknowledged that she was aware that her involvement in the litigation could result in additional blacklisting, but she was unable to remain silent.

“So many people have suffered so much and have had grave consequences from taking this vaccination,” she said. “How could I not stand up for those people and the people who are afraid to come forward? I don’t want to be on the wrong side of history and stand up for what matters.”

According to Ms. Prewitt, her vaccination harm will probably require her to take medication for the rest of her life.

“I’ve spent so much of my time and money at doctor’s offices trying to figure out what’s happening with my health,” she said. “What they did was wrong, and they can’t be allowed to do this again in the future. This is my hope.”

SAG-AFTRA stated that it will “seek their dismissal” and that the claims “are without merit” in response to a request for comment.

“The union has already defended and obtained dismissal of other charges brought against it before the National Labor Relations Board relating to the return-to-work agreement.”

Hollywood 4 Freedom

Tatum Shank co-founded Hollywood 4 Freedom, a group dedicated to “creating a parallel economy Hollywood” free from COVID regulations after he was sacked from a television show in October 2021 for refusing to take the vaccine.

“We wanted to create a safe space for people to share ideas,” Mr. Shank said. “Over the last couple of years, we’ve built a database of over 500 like-minded industry professionals. We’re a connection point between anybody who can get a job done and the production companies. We’re not a production company but more of a connecting point for those two sides.”

According to Mr. Shank, one of the 100 plaintiffs in the case against SAG-AFTRA, he is still subjected to discrimination because of his vaccination history.

“I just got audition notes the other day asking for my vaccine status, so it’s still going on out there, and if they start trying to push another pandemic, they’ll just bring all of this back,” he said. “That’s why this lawsuit is so important because if we win and show people what they did, it can keep it from happening again.”

‘A Class System’

The plaintiff in the case and member of the New England chapter’s SAG-AFTRA board, Chuck Slavin, has been “‘advocating on all fronts’ for SAG-AFTRA board members.”

He said that Mr. Slavin is not speaking for the New England chapter and that his views are not typical of it.

He claimed that he chose to advocate for this cause on his own.

“SAG-AFTRA conspired with our employers to formally allow all manner of infringements upon our members and then claim it was the right of the employers to do so, which sets a dangerous new precedent they call producer’s privilege,” Mr. Slavin said.

By “preserving and expanding members’ work opportunities,” SAG-AFTRA established a class system within the union; those with vaccinations have seniority and will be hired, in contrast to keeping its pledge to uphold equal employment opportunities. The unvaccinated, meanwhile, continue to be unemployed, he claimed.

Mr. Slavin stated that he is hoping that the action would result in the restoration of justice and equal opportunity.

“Ultimately, SAG-AFTRA needs to be held accountable in these matters,” Mr. Slavin said. “It failed its members. Even members whose doctors were telling them not to get the vaccine were told they had to or they wouldn’t work, and that’s just insane.”

Mr. Slavin brought up actress Katarina Pavelek of “The Mindy Project,” a member of SAG-AFTRA, who died in July 2023 of assisted suicide following a protracted illness she said was brought on by the COVID booster shot: myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome.

“I know members who didn’t want to get the shot but had to just to work, then got injured or killed,” Mr. Slavin said. “It’s not a far leap from Harvey Weinstein’s Hollywood, where you’re told: ‘If you don’t do this, you won’t get your job.’ That’s a scary point in the industry.’”