Brendan Fraser is currently an awards-season front-runner for his leading role as Charlie in Darren Aronofsky’s The Whale, and he has been doing the rounds at various Oscar-precursor film festivals throughout the fall. But if Fraser gets invited to the Golden Globes, even if’s gets nominated for Best Actor, he will not attend the ceremony to scoop it up. “I have more history with the Hollywood Foreign Press Association than I have respect for the Hollywood Foreign Press Association,” Fraser says in a GQ profile. “No, I will not participate.” That history refers to a 2003 incident in which Fraser says former HFPA president Philip Berk groped him in an alleged sexual assault. When Fraser came forward with this story during the Me Too movement in 2018, the HFPA conducted an internal investigation and dismissed the incident as “not an intended sexual advance.” The group did not fire Berk, and Berk did not offer a genuine apology to Fraser. “It’s because of the history that I have with them,” Fraser continued. “And my mother didn’t raise a hypocrite. You can call me a lot of things, but not that.”
Fraser was an early whistleblower against the HFPA, which was outed in 2021 as having no Black members; Berk was publicly expelled that same year after sending an anti–Black Lives Matter email. In response, NBC did not air the 2022 Golden Globes. The broadcast will return in 2023 following some changes to the membership and HFPA rules. But Fraser will still boycott while he has his eye on the bigger prize: the Oscar.
