UNITED STATES: The Hollywood Film Awards season is drawing near. One of our favourite stars, Brendan Fraser, is expected to be nominated for the Best Actor category for his role in the movie “The Whale,” which has garnered the best reviews of his career.
The award show “Golden Globes” will return to NBC on January 10, 2023, but “Bedazzled” actor Fraser said he is out of next year’s award show even if he’s nominated after alleging that the Golden Globes’ former president assaulted him.
Fraser is largely viewed as the frontrunner to win the best actor award at the Oscars next year for his character of a “morbidly obese literature professor” in the film The Whale, which would normally be replicated at pre-ceremonies like the Golden Globes.
In 2018, during the “Me Too” movement, Fraser claimed that Philip Berk, the president of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which oversees the Golden Globes, had inappropriately touched his bottom during a lunch in Beverly Hills in 2003.
The alleged incident, according to Fraser, was a contributing factor in the length of time he spent away from Hollywood.
He said, “I was blaming myself, and I was upset because I was telling myself, ‘This is nothing; this guy reached around, and he got a feel.’… It made me feel isolated.”
In 2018, Berk referred to Fraser’s claim as “a total fabrication,” although he acknowledged writing Fraser an apology at the time. The HFPA found after an internal inquiry that Berk had “inappropriately touched” Fraser but that Berk’s behaviour “was intended to be taken as a joke and not as a sexual advance.”
“I was expecting them to kick the can down the road. I had a feeling they’d get ahead of the story. I felt that I obviously had no future with the system as it was,” Fraser added.
“My mother didn’t raise a hypocrite. You can call me lots of things, but not a hypocrite,” he continued further.
The previous year’s Golden Globes were cancelled as the organisation was embroiled in a scandal over ethical transgressions and the revelation that there were no black voting members in the group at the time. Many celebrities, publicists, and studios said that they would boycott the Globe.
The 80th Golden Globes will be broadcast on January 10, as per the HFPA’s earlier announcement following reforms. Fraser won’t be there, though.
In a recent interview with the media, Fraser stated, “I have a stronger connection to the Hollywood Foreign Press Association than I do to the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.”
When asked if he would participate in the event if nominated, Fraser answered, “No, I would not.”
The Globes are resuming as a televised event in January after broadcaster NBC cancelled this year’s presentation in the wake of controversy involving claims of racism, misogyny, and conflicts of interest.
Berk was booted out of the HFPA in 2021 for reposting an article that called Black Lives Matter a “racist hate group.”
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