The Golden Globes will come back on January 10, 2023, after this year’s boycott due to the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) scandal of corruption and lack of diversity. With a new set of policies and new owners, the awards want to recover their prestige with A-listers. However, one actor that won’t be seen in the ceremony is Brendan Fraser.
Fraser has been nominated for Best Actor in Drama thanks to his performance in “The Whale,” which has brought a renewed interest in his career. The actor is one of the favorites to get his first Oscar nomination, after he already took home the Toronto International Film Festival Tribute Award.
While the Golden Globes are trying to fix their damaged reputation, Fraser has a history with the HFPA. In an interview with GQ, he said that he won’t participate in the ceremony saying his mother “didn't raise a hypocrite. You can call me a lot of things, but not that." But, what happened?
The reason Brendan Fraser won’t attend the Golden Globes 2023
In 2018, also in a profile for GQ, Fraser said that Philip Berk, a former HFPA president and member of the group, groped and assaulted him in 2003. The organization then released a statement in which they said they “stand firmly” against harrassment.
However, Fraser said that the HFPA told him they would investigate and then proposed to him a joint statement the actor refused to sign. According to him, it said that they concluded Mr. Berk “inappropriately touched Mr. Fraser, the evidence supports that it was intended to be taken as a joke" and not as an advance.
Berk was expelled from the organization in 2021 after sharing an article describing Black Lives Matter as a "racist hate group,” per the Associated Press. That same year, Los Angeles Time published an exposé in which it was stated that there were no Black members among the HFPA's 87-member votership.
After that, multiple artists (including Scarlet Johanson, Tom Cruise and more) and studios boycotted the awards. Also NBC canceled the broadcast, and the 2022 ceremony took place closed doors without any celebrity in attendance.
