The Talk is no longer returning on Monday.
The CBS daytime talk show, which has been on air since 2010, has decided to delay its originally scheduled season 14 premiere following backlash for returning amid the ongoing Writers Guild of America (WGA) and SAG-AFTRA actors’ union strikes.
“ The Talk is pausing its season premiere scheduled for September 18,” CBS said in a statement on Sunday. “We will continue to evaluate plans for a new launch date.”
According to Deadline, WGA members began picketing outside the Radford Studio Center in Studio City, California, where The Talk and other CBS productions are filmed, after it was announced on Wednesday that the series would return amid the Hollywood strikes.
At the time, the outlet reported that the Daytime Emmy Award-winning series is mostly unscripted, with only one staff writer position out of 150 total jobs on the show. In compliance with the WGA strike, the staff writer position will not filled for the upcoming season and the hosts are expected to ad-lib.
The Talk — which is hosted by Akbar Gbajabiamila, Amanda Kloots, Natalie Morales, Jerry O’Connell and Sheryl Underwood — went off air in early May when WGA officially began striking.
Also on Sunday, Drew Barrymore announced that her self-titled talk show, The Drew Barrymore Show, which is also produced by CBS, will no longer premiere until the strikes are over. The news comes about a week after she originally said that she would resume production on the show.
Barrymore, 48, issued a statement on Instagram Sunday following criticism she received for initially moving forward with the show’s return despite the strikes.
“I have listened to everyone, and I am making the decision to pause the show’s premiere until the strike is over,” Barrymore wrote.
She continued, “I have no words to express my deepest apologies to anyone I have hurt and, of course, to our incredible team who works on the show and has made it what it is today. We really tried to find our way forward.”
“And I truly hope for a resolution for the entire industry very soon,” she concluded.
In a statement, a CBS Media Ventures spokesperson said, “We support Drew’s decision to pause the show’s return and understand how complex and difficult this process has been for her.”
Barrymore, who has hosted her talk show since 2020, received negative feedback for bringing the program back during the strikes. The actress initially defended the decision in a Sept. 10 statement on Instagram.
She later shared a now-deleted video on Instagram on Friday in which she apologized and maintained her stance on resuming the show. Within hours, the post was deleted from her account, along with the original announcement.
The WGA has been on strike since May 2 after the Guild and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) were unable to come to an agreement before the previous contract expired. The writers are seeking higher pay, minimum staffing requirements, residuals from streaming and regulation of artificial intelligence (AI), to name a few key issues. This marks the first dual strike since 1960.
