Though he spent much of the past season drugged out and on the run from the law, Jason Isaacs had a few ideas about how to get the country’s most influential legislators to bend to his will.
“Be focused on the task and let’s not talk about ourselves,” said Isaacs, the Brit who played embattled banker Timothy Ratliff on the recently concluded season of the The White Lotus. “Not ‘we’re so great and this is the fifth season of our Netflix show.’ It’s what this money does.”
It was last Thursday night at a hotel near Washington’s Dupont Circle, and Isaacs was exhorting the room on ways to win over skeptical Republicans on the matter of arts funding. The actor had joined nearly two dozen of his performing peers — they included stars from Yellowjackets and The Walking Dead, The Goldbergs and The Shield and The Sex Lives of College Girls — for a marathon Friday at Congressional offices. There the group would meet with the staffers who held the access code to their bosses’ minds —and, in turn, to the federal pocketbook. The National Endowment for the Humanities had just been gutted by Elon Musk’s DOGE, and these celebrities, brought together by the NY- and LA-based nonprofit The Creative Coalition, wanted to ensure the same didn’t happen to the National Endowment for the Arts and its $207 million annual budget.
Over a buffet dinner in an anodyne conference room, the group strategized over what arguments would work — people who’ve spent their lives convincing producers and studio executives to hire them figuring out which of those skills ported to the C-SPAN set.
A veteran lobbyist, Dykema’s Andy Buczek, had scheduled the meetings and was guiding the actors. He told them to emphasize small rural grantees; noted that in these tariff-heavy times entertainment ran at a surplus; reminded that past Congressional efforts to defund the NEA had been bipartisanly defeated; and urged them not to get discouraged if staffers seemed terse.
“Just because you’re not getting a robust dialog doesn’t mean it’s not an important dialog,” he said. Buczek also told the group not to be daunted if the people across the table seemed youthful. “Capitol Hill staffers look a lot younger than people expect. But they carry enormous weight.”
“Like assistants at agencies,” said Michael Chiklis, star of The Shield and The Comish.
“If the assistants also wrote the scripts,” Buczek replied.
The actors had questions. Are there landmines to avoid? “I don’t think we want to turn this into a fight about DEI,” Buczek said. Should they emphasize art’s spiritual value? “That’s not the most persuasive thing for people on the fence.” Did personal stories make sense? “Sprinkle stardust; they’re excited to meet you. But keep it relatable.”
These are delicate times in Washington, where the presence of Hollywood personalities could do more harm than good. The actors would be walking a fine line, trading on their star power to get staffers’ attention but playing up their everyday qualities so as not to seem like elites. “I can talk about how regular I am,” deadpanned Alex Borstein, a wry standup who also won two Emmys for her portrayal of Susie Myerson on The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.
The Creative Coalition has made this trip every year for decades, through all kinds of administrations, almost always aiming at moderate Republicans who could provide swing votes. “We already have most Democrats and we’re not going to get Marjorie Taylor Greene,” said its longtime CEO Robin Bronk before the meeting. “We want people we can sway.”
While there’s currently no legislative proposal to eliminate the NEA, that could change at any moment, and in any event this year’s budget could be slashed. The anti-NEA calls have been increasing in conservative circles after the NEH carnage. A blog post from the Cato Institute several weeks ago called on Congress and DOGE to “end” the program, advancing a hodgepodge of class, libertarian and cultural criticisms. “There is no robust argument on constitutional or economic grounds for the NEA to exist,” the post said. The actors had come to say there was.
The NEA was founded by President Lyndon Johnson 60 years ago this fall. Despite its caricaturing by some conservatives as a twee organization supporting the likes of Lincoln Center and the L.A. Philharmonic, in fact most NEA grants (given to states or local organizations) clock in in at under $50,000 and support grassroots programs, from a Shakespeare festival in Idaho to a senior-center music program in Baltimore to a history museum in Birmingham.
Buczek pointed out this fact. A moment later Isaacs circled up to a reporter. “I guess,” he said, “we have some small-town research to do.”
**
More than 4,300 tour buses ride around D.C. each year, but it’s safe to say very few of them feature Young Sheldon doing a spot-on Trump impression. As the bus rumbled down I Street early Friday morning, Iain Armitage, star of that show, did that impression from his seat, causing a few actors to turn around and wonder if the president had made a surprise appearance. Satisfied with the reaction, Armitage grinned, then started a “Wheels on the Bus” roundelay.
Sonequa Martin-Green, star of Star Trek: Discovery and The Walking Dead, smiled ruefully. “He sure does love doing that impression.”
Armitage is, unexpectedly, the grandson of Richard Armitage, Deputy Secretary of State under Colin Powell in the first George W. Bush administration, and he was wearing his tie clip to pay tribute. “My grandfather died a week-and-a-half ago,” Armitage said, showing off the clip. “I know it would have meant a lot to him that I was doing this.”
A few rows behind him sat the actor-comedian Tig Notaro talking to Rachel Bloom, the Crazy Ex-Girlfriend star, about Los Angeles school choices for their kids. Chiklis sat near Breaking Bad actor Dean Norris. Chiklis, who can be described as voluble, was joking about the resemblance he shared with Norris, who cannot. Sean Giambrone, the longtime lead of The Goldbergs, talked about his post-ABC career to an inquiring reporter. In another part of the bus Pauline Chalamet, who plays the ingenue Kimberly Finkle on The Sex Lives of College Girls, reviewed some facts to her seatmates about federal arts grants that she had recently researched.
The bus pulled up to the Capitol and the actors piled off to split into color-coded teams; wristbands dictated who was going where. Cyrus Artz, senior policy advisor to House Speaker Mike Johnson, greeted one group of actors in a conference room in the Capitol Building. “The Speaker is a man of culture,” Artz said, noting that before he became an advisor he too had performed in student theater, including in a production of Hello, Dolly. Artz gave no easy quarter to the celebrities. He told the group that the economic argument against the NEA paled in comparison to the cultural one; many members of the Republican conference simply couldn’t support funding productions that felt at odds with their values. Several actors noted that many of these grants were for the likes of Shakespeare. Artz agreed that wasn’t political.
Shortly after, at a meeting in the office of Andrew Garbarino — a Republican Long Island, NY, congressman who sometimes jumps over the divide to vote with Democrats — chief of staff Deena Tauster told the actors the Congressman was a fan of the NEA. Notaro described how the arts redeemed her as a troubled kid in Mississippi; Isaacs tearfully talked about a homeless youth he met on the streets of DTLA who had been saved by books; Bloom spoke of how her husband found hope as a kid in a public-school arts program on Long Island. Tauster smiled encouragingly through it all.
Isaacs leaned into the conservative bona fides of NEA grants. “One of the misconceptions of the funding is people don’t know where the money was assigned. It’s small grants that are all about endorsing traditional American values like the American songbook or just kids playing instruments,” he said, adding, perhaps in response to the Johnson meeting, “It would be very helpful if the Congressman understands and could persuade other people that the money actually goes to things they agree with.”
Tauster nodded knowingly. “Something that’s particularly helpful in this environment is if the Creative Coalition is open to creating a document of myths and facts.”
“That’s a brilliant idea,” Isaacs said.
“We’ve talked about some of the myths here today — are they any we should be aware of or try to counter?” Buczek asked.
“Talk about how investment money is matched and leads to a small business that leads to other business,” Tauster responded. Unlike Artz, the chief of staff said she felt the spending issue was a much bigger barrier for most Republicans than the cultural one. The actors took it all in, then huddled up for a group photo.
At several meetings, it was Chalamet who worked up the most impassioned rhetoric. “We live in such partisan times,” she said at one meeting. “We have these ideas — ‘oh, the NEA money is going to big cities or funding the opera houses, culturally they don’t really align with a lot of different constituencies around the country’s beliefs and values.’ But the thing is, it’s actually funding arts programs and educational programs in a lot of rural communities.”
The most skepticism came with a meeting of four male staffers for the Michigan Republican Lisa McClain, who during her first two Congressional campaigns in 2020 and 2022 received strong nods of support from Donald Trump. After the actors explained that NEA grants in a project usually attracted further private investment, Erik Kinney, policy director for McClain, offered the most direct challenge to the group. “My boss might ask the question, ‘well if there’s a private investor out there, why would you need a federal grant?'” he said.
Chalamet was ready. “I think it’s a great question,” she said. “What the NEA does — it’s a seal of approval. It’s saying to someone ‘this project was validated by an official organization. Invest your money here, there’s something here.'” She cited the Lexington Bach Festival, an annual classical music celebration in the Canadian border city of Port Huron, in McClain’s district, that last year won a $10,000 NEA grant and has been an economic boon for local business.
“In the past Congresswoman McClain has voted against NEA funding. My question to you is, ‘what do you think it would take to prove to her the necessity of the continuation of this program?'” Chalamet asked Kinney.
“As a businesswoman she thinks in investment. So if you guys can bring those actual numbers” — Kinney said — “that it brought in five, six, seven times the economic activity, that would change her perspective.”
“Thank you — that’s very clear,” Chalamet said. “We can absolutely provide that.”
But the mood darkened when the group met with a Republican and Democratic staffer on the Appropriations subcommittee for the Interior, which oversees the NEA. Rita Culp, the Democratic Clerk for the subcommittee, red-pilled the actors who had asked about the outlook. The real decision-making power these days, she said, lies outside Congress. “We hear DOGE is at NEA right now,” she said, to some gasps from the room.
“Any way to get an audience with DOGE?” Borstein asked dryly.
There was more murmuring among the actors. “We’re in unchartered territory,” Culp said, admitting no one really knew how to stop the Musk group from slashing and burning like it did with the National Endowment of the Humanities, even with its principal’s much-ballyhooed stepback from Washington. “But we think you’re doing the right thing educating members and bringing home the figures associated with the NEA,” added Maggie Earle, Culp’s Republican counterpart on the committee. “Sometimes it’s just about education.”
“Are you hopeful?” Notaro asked. “Short term or long term?” Culp said. On the latter, she was; many members of Congress, she seems to believe, would outlast this Trump slashing wave. She didn’t say anything about the short term.
“A few of us are going to the White House,” Borstein noted helpfully.
“Yeah, any advice?” Isaacs asked.
“Hang in there?” Culp replied.
In a smaller meeting that afternoon, some actors would indeed make the pilgrimage up Pennsylvania Avenue. A reporter was not allowed in, but people who attended the meeting said it was polite if not warm, with staffers taking down some of the figures the group provided. While President Joe Biden once stopped by to meet with the actors during his term, Trump was at the Vatican that day.
As some actors were at the White House, others met for a briefing with Congressional assistants in a basement room of the Capital. Several dozen 20-somethings streamed into the room in casual Friday dress to take notes for their bosses. It was a Democratic-leaning crowd, a diverse set representing the likes of AOC, and the actors were feeling their oats.
“I’m from a really small town in Australia, and without government initiatives I wouldn’t have made my way to Hollywood,” said Courtney Eaton, who plays Lottie on Yellowjackets.
“I was pretty nameless as a kid until I found theater,” said Alan Ruck, star of Succession and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. “And then I felt like I was home.”
“My first exposure to theater was actually watching my grandpa do three unpaid standups at convalscent homes around Southern California,” said Bloom. “To me the arts aren’t this thing up here.“
Perhaps tired from holding back on more personal stories in favor of dollars and cents, the actors continued to let loose. “I was an immigrant kid from the Caribbean with a thick accent,” said Orange Is The New Black star Lorraine Toussaint. “Somewhere around 11 years old I wandered into an acting class of a company funded by the NEA … there I was with this outlet in theater.” She would go on to a performing arts high school with Gina Belafonte, who sat next to her on the panel.
Toussaint passed the mic to Martin-Green. The performer noted that she got her start at Sundance, a classic NEA success story. “Y’all are beautiful,” the Star Trek actress said as she gazed around the room. “It means a lot that you came here and you’re sitting here with us. We will always have this room and we won’t forget you.”
Maybe it was their youth or maybe it was just the heartfelt stories from some of their favorite actors, but the audience members stirred enthusiastically. They crowded the stars afterward, a more personal response from folks who grew up with the intimacy of social media than shown by their older buttoned-down colleagues. Several staffers for AOC came up to hug Eaton and talk Yellowjackets, while an aide to the newly elected Alabama Democrat Shomari Figures approached Bloom. “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is one of my favorite shows,” she said, as the two shared a moment. The bond formed with people who will be in Washington long after Donald Trump is gone seemed like the best investment of the day.
**
When Paul McCartney and John Lennon first wrote “With A Little Help from My Friends” for The Beatles’ 1967 record Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, they had many ideas in mind. None of them, to be sure, included streaming stars getting together in a D.C. ballroom to let off steam after a day trying to save the soul of America.
On Friday night, with all the talking points talked, the analytics analyzed and the childhood tales told, the actors gathered with donors in a ballroom for the Creative Coalition’s annual fundraiser. Bronk and the group’s president, Wings and The Sopranos star Tim Daly, took to the front of the room to try to raise money. Then a cover band began to take shape.
And that’s how it was that on an April night in Washington, Pauline Chalamet, Gina Belafonte and several other famous names sang “With a Little Help From My Friends” while The Comish backed them on the drums and Cameron from Ferris Bueller filmed them and Jason Isaacs filmed him. The performance was exuberant, a little bit of a release after so many hours of trying to tell politicians who built their career on decrying Hollywood that Hollywood wasn’t so bad.
The song’s title carried layers of meaning — the actors helping each other out, and the programs needing help, and maybe even the Congressional representatives being helpful and a friend to the arts, a We Are The World for the federal-slashing age. There comes a time when we heed a certain call, when streaming stars must come together as one.
Also true of “With a Little Help from My Friends” is that at the time of its release more than a half-century ago, Spiro Agnew, then the governor of Maryland, unsuccessfully sought to have the track banned because he thought it promoted drug use — a reminder that there is nothing new about the current battle. Leaders come and go, but in this part of the country a politician has always picked a fight with artists, and probably always will.
Would the current generation be able to win its round? Would all their running through the sub-basement of Congressional buildings mean anything?
Would hope prevail in a political culture so intent on tearing down ideas it finds loathsome, even if those ideas are just underprivileged kids taking dance classes and retirees playing musical instruments?
From the back of the ballroom, Culp, the appropriations committee staffer, looked on as the impromptu musical performance unfolded. “Was I too harsh today?” she asked a reporter. No, she was assured; the people in the meetings wanted to hear what they were up against. “OK good,” she answered, adding after a thoughtful pause, “I really do think we’ll be alright in the long term.” At the front of the room the actors were finishing their crooning, reaching the crescendo of “I’m gonna try with a little help from my friends,” Chiklis giving one last bang of the drums as Chalamet and Belafonte belted out their final notes, seemingly content that, on this day at least, they couldn’t try any harder.