Jul 2, 2026
A musician who lent her voice to an early 2000s box office flop that later became a cult film is speaking out about residuals she says she’s owed and was never paid.
Singer-songwriter Kay Hanley performed vocals for the character Josie McCoy, played by Rachael Leigh Cook, in the musical comedy “Josie and the Pussycats”.
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Hanley told Vulture that she has, to date, been paid only for one day of labor, “when her work amassed to nearly a full month,” the report says.
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‘I had no idea,’ artist says
Hanley, who was also the front woman of 1990s band Letters to Cleo, told Vulture that before “Josie and the Pussycats”, she had never done voice-over or acting work before.
Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds was executive producer of the film’s soundtrack, and when Hanley got the job, she told Vulture, no footage of the movie had been shot yet.
“When I got the Josie job, I was approaching it as being the lead singer of a band. I would go into the studio every day and we would try out different things,” Hanley told Vulture.
“I had no idea that what I was doing was a job called ‘voice-over artist,’ because I didn’t know it was a job. My only experience was with my band or films using my music as needle drops. I didn’t know there was any difference. My manager and attorney weren’t thinking about it, either.”
Hanley told Vulture she didn’t know she was supposed to be getting “day sheets that were reported to the union” and “compensated with a daily union scale.” Instead, she says she’s received “less than $1,500,” for her work.
By comparison, Hanley told Vulture, for her work in another teen comedy from the same era, “10 Things I Hate About You”, in which she appears, she’s made “about $50,000 in residuals.”
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Hanley told Vulture that she hopes other artists learn from her ordeal. “Ultimately, you have to know if your voice is going to be on film. What are your rights there? If your voice is being broadcast anywhere, your fee pays for that first use. Any recurring use after, the production gets paid, and you get paid for that. But my simple advice for anyone in this industry is to make sure you’re filling out your SAG paperwork.”
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What are residuals?
According to Backstage, residuals are “ongoing compensation payment[s] granted to both members and nonmembers who work on SAG-AFTRA contracts for continued use of a project beyond its original scope.”
For television, this can mean when a show begins reruns, is released as physical media (such as DVD or BluRay), or appears on a streaming service; for film, this includes release as physical media, airing on TV or a streaming service.
Earning residuals could also, as noted by Vulture, mean the difference between actors meeting the annual wage requirements to keep their SAG-AFTRA health insurance.
Vulture reported that Hanley was set to lose her SAG-AFTRA health insurance on July 1, “because she didn’t make enough earnings for the calendar year; her insurance rate of $725 a quarter will go up to about $2,100 a month, and she’ll have to kick her son off her plan,” the report says.
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SAG-AFTRA members must earn $28,090 over four consecutive quarters, or have at least 108 “eligibility days” to keep their insurance coverage.
Actor Noah Wyle, star of “The Pitt”, recently called attention to this issue at a media event for the HBO Max series, when discussing the large number of background actors the show uses.
“Most of our background artists are SAG actors who need to get their insurance and their days up. So when they come to work, they come to play. And the relationships they engage in in the background, the specificity of the tasks that they involve themselves in, gives you that realistic texture. Everybody on that set is performing, really performing,” Wyle said to applause from the Los Angeles crowd.
A separate report by Vulture details the struggles that musicians can also face when it comes to health insurance.
It notes that while artists on three major labels can qualify for SAG-AFTRA health coverage, “the only options for most artists are expensive plans from the Affordable Care Act marketplace, usually with high deductibles and little preventative coverage.”
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Rebecca Payne has more than a decade of experience editing and producing both local and national daily newspapers. She's worked on the Toronto Star, the Globe and Mail, Metro, Canada's National Observer, the Virginian-Pilot and Daily Press.
