Actor Brendan Fraser said he will skip this year’s Golden Globe Awards, even if he is nominated for his performance in “The Whale.”
Fraser, 53, said he will not attend because of his accusation that Philip Berk, the former president and member of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association -- an organization behind the Golden Globes -- groped him at a 2003 luncheon at the Beverly Hills Hotel, Variety reported.
Fraser revealed the alleged assault in an interview with GQ in 2018, an accusation that was disputed by Berk, according to the entertainment news outlet.
“I guess my absence was felt and I didn’t know it. It’s humbling.” Comeback of the Year Brendan Fraser reflects on his career for #GQMOTY https://t.co/szaiLRwfgG
— GQ Magazine (@GQMagazine) November 17, 2022
“Mr. Fraser’s version is a total fabrication,” Berk told the magazine in an email.
Berk was suspended from the HFPA last year after he called Black Lives Matter “a racist hate movement,” The Associated Press reported.
“I have more history with the Hollywood Foreign Press Association than I have respect for the Hollywood Foreign Press Association,” Fraser told GQ in an interview released on Wednesday. “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.”
Berk, born in South Africa, had been part of the HFPA for 44 years and served eight terms as president, People reported.
After an internal investigation, the HFPA concluded that Berk “inappropriately touched” Fraser, who in 2003 had starred in the drama “The Quiet American,” according to the AP.
But the HFPA said it “was intended to be taken as a joke and not as a sexual advance.”
“I knew they would close ranks,” Fraser told GQ. “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 no future with that system as it was.”
In “The Whale,” which opens in theaters on Dec. 9, Fraser plays a reclusive English teacher battling obesity who tries to reconnect with his estranged daughter, according to the AP.
Fraser has been nominated for outstanding lead performance at the upcoming Gotham Awards and is considered a likely best actor nominee at the Academy Awards, the news organization reported.
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