Brendan Fraser isn’t playing ball with the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.
The Whale star said in a new GQ cover story that he would not accept a Golden Globe nomination from the group for his performance in the Darren Aronofsky film, because of his disappointment in how the HFPA handled his accusation that its former president groped him.
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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 told GQ‘s Zach Baron. “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.”
In 2018, Fraser came forward for the first time, in another GQ story, with an accusation against Philip Berk, a former HFPA president and member. Fraser said that Berk groped and assaulted him at a luncheon at the Beverly Hills Hotel in 2003. Berk has denied Fraser’s account.
At the time, according to GQ, the HFPA released a lukewarm statement that read, in part: “The HFPA stands firmly against sexual harassment and the type of behavior described in this article.”
Fraser said he refused to sign a joint statement proposed by the HFPA that would have said: “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 sexual advance.”
Berk received no disciplinary action, and he told GQ in 2018 that he had acknowledged the incident in a letter to Fraser that admitted “no wrongdoing” and included “the usual ‘If I’ve done anything that upset Mr. Fraser, it was not intended and I apologize.’”
The HFPA did not immediately respond to MovieMaker‘s request for comment on Wednesday.
Berk was ultimately expelled from the HFPA in 2021, when he shared an email to the membership referring to Black Lives Matter as a “racist hate movement.” Not long before that, it had been revealed in a Los Angeles Times story that the HFPA had no Black members. What resulted was a reckoning for the organization. NBC refused to broadcast the 2022 Golden Globes, and the HFPA promised to diversify. The awards show will be back on the air in 2023.
But Fraser says he doesn’t believe they’ve reformed.
“At the moment, no. Maybe time will tell if they’re going to… I don’t know what they’re going to do,” he said. “I don’t know.”
If the organization did want to make amends to him, he hopes it would be “some gesture of making medicine out of poison somehow,” he said. But he also believes that he’s far from the only person who has been wronged by the HFPA, and he would want the apology to be broader-reaching and to address others’ experiences as well.
“I would expect that it would be something that would be meaningful for them too,” he said.
Main Image: Brendan Fraser in 2018 courtesy of Shutterstock
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