Movies

Brendan Fraser won’t attend Golden Globes after HFPA boss groped him

November 16, 2022

Brendan Fraser is a favorite to land a Best Actor Oscar nomination thanks to his acclaimed performance in Darren Aronofsky’s ‘The Whale’. But you rarely get to an Oscar nomination without stopping at other big, precursor awards first, including the Golden Globes, which will be back in full force on NBC in 2023.

Fraser confirmed to GQ magazine that he would not attend the Globes if nominated for ‘The Whale’ due to his accusation that Philip Berk, former president and member of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, groped him during of a lunch in 2003 at the Beverly Hotel des Collines. Fraser revealed the alleged assault in a 2018 GQ interview. Berk later disputed Fraser’s allegations.

“I have more history with the Hollywood Foreign Press Association than I have respect for the Hollywood Foreign Press Association,” Fraser told GQ in his new cover story. “No, I won’t participate… It’s because of the history I have with them. And my mother didn’t raise a hypocrite. You can call me many things, but not that.

Fraser said her experience with Berk “made me withdraw” from Hollywood. It also made him feel like “something had been taken away from me”. Following Fraser’s 2018 accusation, the HFPA said in a statement that it “strongly opposes sexual harassment and the type of behavior described in this article.” The organization also opened an investigation into the matter, which GQ said ended with the HFPA offering Fraser to sign a joint statement which read: ‘Although it was concluded that Mr. Berk touched Mr Fraser inappropriately, the evidence supports that he was intended to be taken as a joke and not a sexual advance. Fraser refused to sign, and Berk remained a voting member of the HFPA.

“I knew they would close ranks,” Fraser said. “I knew they would kick the box on the road. I knew they would get ahead of the story. I knew I certainly had no future with this system as it was.

The Globes and HFPA have since gone through their own upheaval, starting in 2021 when the Los Angeles Times published a report revealing the group had no black members. Berk was later kicked out of the HFPA after sending an email to members criticizing the Black Lives Matter movement as a “racist hate movement”.

Why didn’t the HFPA drop Berk after Fraser’s initial charge? “I think it was because it was too thorny or pointy or gross for people to want to come first and emotionally invest in the situation,” the actor said, adding that “at the moment” he doesn’t. believes in any of the reforms the HFPA made in the last year.

“Maybe time will tell if they’ll…I don’t know what they’ll do,” Fraser added. “I do not know.”

Fraser said he was ready to reconsider his relationship with the HFPA and the Golden Globes until the organization wanted to make amends. “According to the rules of engagement, it would be my responsibility to take a look at it and make a decision at that time, if that became the situation,” he said. “And it would have to be, I don’t know, what’s the word I’m looking for…sincere?” I would like a gesture to turn poison into medicine in one way or another. I do not know what it is. But that would be my hope. But it’s not about me.

“The Whale” opens in theaters December 9 from A24.