Celebrity
Brendan Fraser Announces He Will Not Attend The Golden Globes Following Assault Claim
“My mother didn’t raise a hypocrite. You can call me a lot of things, but not that,” Brendan insisted.
Canadian-American actor Brendan Fraser has said he will not attend January’s Golden Globes even if his forthcoming movie “The Whale” receives a nomination. The decision is a result of his accusation that Philip Berk, former president and member of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, groped him at a 2003 luncheon at the Beverly Hills Hotel.
Brendan had in a 2018 GQ interview revealed the alleged assault but Berk [pictured] disputed it.
At the time, the actor explained Berk amid a crowded room reached out to shake his hand but instead grabbed his b*tt. He was eventually ousted from the organization in 2021 as a board member after sending an email that called Black Lives Matter a hate movement. The HFPA issued also issued a statement at the time of the 2018 interview stating they are against sexual harassment.
Due to the alleged incident, Brendan is making it clear and loud that he won’t attend the 2023 Golden Globes if nominated on December 12.
He told GQ Magazine in a new cover story: “I have more history with the Hollywood Foreign Press Association than I have respect for the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. No, I will not participate. 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.”
Brendan insisted his experience with Berk made me retreat from Hollywood and also made him feel like something had been taken away from him.
The HFPA at the time of the incident opened an investigation into the matter, which GQ reports ended with the HFPA proposing Brendan sign a joint statement that read: “Although it was concluded that Mr. Berk inappropriately touched Mr. Fraser, the evidence supports that it was intended to be taken as a joke and not as a s*xual advance.” Fraser didn’t sign the statement.
He said of the signing: “I knew they would close ranks. 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 not future with that system as it was.” When asked why the HFPA didn’t drop Berk after the allegations, Brendan said he thinks it was because it was too prickly or sharp-edged or icky for people to want to go first and invest emotionally in the situation.
The actor added that at that moment, he doesn’t believe in any of the reforms the HFPA has made in the last year.
“Maybe time will tell if they’re going to. I don’t know what they’re going to do. I don’t know,” he told GQ, adding that he’s willing to reconsider his relationship with the HFPA and the Golden Globes pending the organization wanting to make amends. “According to rules of engagement, it would be my responsibility to take a look at it and make a determination at that time, if that became the situation.”
Brendan concluded: “And it would have to be, I don’t know, what’s the world I’m looking for. Sincere? I would want some gesture of making medicine out of poison somehow. I don’t know what that is. But that would be my hope. But it’s not about me.”
Both the Globes and the HFPA have, however, since gone through their upheaval, starting in 2021 when the Los Angeles Times published a report revealing the group had no Black members. On the other hand, the Whale opens in theaters on Dec. 9 from A24 and it sees Brendan plays a reclusive English teacher living with obesity who attempts to reconnect with his estranged daughter.
