Ben McKenzie and Morena Baccarin made a rare public appearance together to support the SAG-AFTRA strike.
The married couple hit the picket line on Tuesday, August 22, outside WarnerMedia offices in New York City. Their romance started while working on the Batman-prequel TV series Gotham, which is owned by Warner Bros.
Baccarin, 44, wore black and white striped pants with white sandals and a black T-shirt that read “SAG-AFTRA Strong.” She had her hair tied back and her sunglasses. Meanwhile, McKenzie, also 44, donned a “Writers Guild on Strike!” shirt and matching pin with dark wash jeans and sneakers and pin while holding a SAG-AFTRA strike sign.
McKenzie is a member of both the actors union and Writers Guild of America as well as the Directors Guild of America.
“I support my union; I stand with my brothers and sisters in the union and we’re just looking for a fair deal,” he told The Washington Post in July. “As to the primary sticking point, to be honest with you, I think it’s difficult to nail it down to one. My understanding from leadership is that we are significantly apart from the producers on a number of issues.”
Some of the top issues that both the writers and actors guilds are fighting for are restrictions about artificial intelligence, residuals from streaming and increased transparency about streaming data.
McKenzie, who has a Bachelor’s degree in economics, recently switched gears to focus on his new anti-cryptocurrency book, Easy Money, which he wrote with journalist Jacob Silverman. He admitted to The Ringer last month that he “may have scared the s–t out of” Baccarin when he told her his plan. “Because I was like, ‘Look. I’m going to write about what I think is the biggest Ponzi scheme in history. The face of it’s really buffoonish and funny, but behind it are some, like, serious criminals, potentially,’” he said last month.
McKenzie and Baccarin met in 2006 when the actress had a three-episode arc on The O.C. They reconnected nearly a decade later when they starred on Gotham, which launched in 2014. They welcomed daughter Frances, 7, in 2016 before they quietly tied the knot in June 2017. The pair share son Arthur, 2, and McKenzie is also the stepfather of Baccarin’s son Julius, 9, whom she shares with ex-husband Austin Chick.
Since their dad has been busy writing, McKenzie revealed that his kids didn’t realize he was an actor — and he didn’t want to let Baccarin get all the cool parent points.
“I haven’t been working in the last couple years because I’ve been doing this stupid book thing, and so they [the kids] think that their mom is cool because she’s in movies, but they’re not aware of my work,” McKenzie explained in a May episode of the “Welcome to the O.C., Bitches” rewatch podcast.
The actor decided to let his daughter watch The O.C. — which he quickly realized wasn’t the best plan.
“So, I let Frances watch The O.C. at 7 years old … bad idea, bad idea. She, of course, loves it. Like, absolutely loves it,” he revealed. “I had to cut it off after two episodes because I was like, ‘Oh, my God, I forgot about the smoking.’ I remembered the drinking. And there’s cocaine.”
