• Anthony Anderson did it last year with Law and Order and Blackish. Most broadcast isn’t 22 anymore.

Yeah he was only able to do that because Blackish finished shooting their final season in December. He was completely free to do what he wanted. And Law and Order started filming in early 2022.

The point is that they're the default, and so the studio can negotiate terms favorable to themselves when an actor wants to do multiple shows.

Well, this specific new provision is only for a 3 month period immediately after a show finishes production on a season. Most shows aren't going to start a new season less than 3 months after the last one wrapped. So most shows aren't going to see an impact from this new rule.

But yes, typically actors are going to have contracts with varying priority. This is a movie example, but think of Henry Cavill and his shooting of Justice League and Mission Impossible: Fallout; when JL went for extensive reshoots, MI:F had priority on Cavill's time, since he was scheduled to be shooting with them at the time. Now, they did work together and free up some time for Cavill to do some reshoots, but that infamously meant he had to keep his MI:F moustache during those reshoots, since he had to go back and finish filming MI:F, requiring WB to digitally remove his moustache in post.

It's more likely

Christopher Meloni was the first one I thought of with L&O:SVU and Oz.

Actually now that I think about it, Shemar Moore did do this a few times, but the work load was probably light.

He's on SWAT right now, but he did guest star in an episode of Criminal Minds, his old show, a few years ago after his character had already left.

and also he guest starred on a multi-episode arc on The Bold and the Beautiful while on SWAT, his old soap opera, a few years ago to honor his friend Kristoff St. John who played his brother on the show and died that year.

I believe these are also all CBS shows, right?

Yes all the same network.

I believe actors were allowed to do this before IF they got permission - and naturally, the bigger the star/the more important they were to the show, the more likely they got that permission. This is more helpful to supporting actors who are signed onto series for multi-year contracts.

I think Michael Boatmen did both Spin City and Arli$$ as well.

It's not unheard of, just rare and uncommon.

Isn't it weird that Michael Strahan has such a high profile Mon-Fri job at ABC, but also works for FOX on NFL Sundays?

ETA: I know it's not the same as appearing as AN ACTOR on multiple shows, so don't bother mentioning that.


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