Brendan Fraser won’t be attending 2023 Golden Globes, says he's not a 'hypocrite'
BEVERLY HILLS, CALIFORNIA: As the Golden Globes sets to soon return next year to NBC on January 10, 2023, Brenand Fraser will not be among the attendees as he remains the possible contender for being nominated for his role in the upcoming movie 'The Whale'.
'The Mummy' actor seems to despise HFPA for the claims he had made in 2018 about the former president and member of the Hollywood Foreign Press Associatation, the organization which runs the show, Philip Berk who had gropped and sexually assaulted him in a luncheon at Beverly Hills Hotel in 2003 which caused Berk to be blacklisted from Hollywood, as per IndieWire.
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“I have more history with the Hollywood Foreign Press Association than I have respect for the Hollywood Foreign Press Association,” Fraser, 53, said in a GQ cover story. “No, I will not participate.” He added, “It’s because of the history that I have with them. And my mother didn’t raise a hypocrite. You can call me a lot of things, but not that.”
"His left hand reaches around, grabs my a** cheek, and one of his fingers touches me in the taint, and he starts moving it around," Fraser claimed previously. He said that though sharing about the incident had brought him some peace, but “That doesn’t mean I don’t get triggered every now and then, but then I come hang out back here.”
After investigation, the organization ultimately came back to him and proposed issuing a joint statement that, according to Fraser, would say, “Although it was concluded that Mr Berk inapproprtately touched Mr Fraser, the evidence supports that it was intended to be taken as a joke and not as a sexual advance.” Berk remained a voting member of the HFPA. "When I asked him in 2018 if he faced any disciplinary action from the organization, Berk told me: 'None at all,'" claimed the 'No Sudden Move' actor.
Fraser refused to sign the joint press release. “I knew they would close ranks,” Fraser said. “I knew they would kick the can down the road. I knew they would get ahead of the story. I knew that I certainly had no future with that system as it was,” he told the magazine.
Following the Los Angeles expose in 2021 which revealed HFPA was "notoriously secretive" with "no Black members," which in turn resulted in the backlash as multiple studios broke its ties with the organization. Berk was publicly expelled from the organization in April 2021, after sharing an article decrying Black Lives Matter as a “racist hate movement.”
Ultimately, NBC, the HFPA’s broadcast partner, declined to broadcast the 2022 Golden Globes. (The HFPA staged an awards show anyway, with no talent in attendance.) But in response to a number of reforms proposed by the organization, including an expansion of the membership and new rules against accepting gifts, NBC said in September that it was bringing the show back.
The 2023 Golden Globes will be aired live in January 2023, reinstating the show onto the awards calendar in its usual spot ahead of the Academy Awards, a report said.