Hollywood star Brendan Fraser said his “mother didn’t raise a hypocrite” as he explained why fans won’t see him at the 2023 Golden Globes awards despite talk of him being nominated because of his role in “The Whale.”
The 53-year-old actor talked about his history with the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which puts on the Golden Globes, and said that its response to his sexual assault accusations against its former president and member Philip Berk is the reason why he wouldn’t attend, GQ magazine reported.
“I have more history with the Hollywood Foreign Press Association than I have respect for the Hollywood Foreign Press Association,” Fraser shared when asked if he would attend if invited. “No, I will not participate. 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 told GQ that Berk had allegedly groped and assaulted him during a lunch they had in 2003. The former president of the organization disputed the accusations. Fraser shared that, at that time, the alleged assault “made me retreat,” sharing that “something had been taken away from me.”
Presenting our final #GQMOTY 2022 cover star: Brendan Fraser.
Four years ago, he opened up to GQ about his supposed disappearance from Hollywood. Now, he’s an Oscar favorite — and reckoning with the kind of comeback you only see in movies: https://t.co/ySB4Le6kOy pic.twitter.com/uHF5ICaCEN
— GQ Magazine (@GQMagazine) November 16, 2022
In the new article, the actor said after the accusations came out, he heard “from college friends, people I hadn’t worked with or seen going back 30 years of my career.” He said finding out the story had trended on Twitter made him feel like people had seen him “naked.”
“It’s like people know what you look like, they know the story about you,” the “Blast From The Past” star shared, but admitted that in the end, he found telling his story to be “liberating” and a “weight removed.”
The HFPA promised to do an inquiry into his allegations. After it was completed, they wanted to issue a joint statement with Fraser that read, according to the actor, “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.”
However, Berk wasn’t removed as a member and Fraser said the former president told him he faced no disciplinary action, “None at all.”
Fraser refused to sign the joint statement and said that he “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 2021, Berk was kicked out of the group after sharing a piece labeling Black Lives Matter as a “racist hate movement,” the outlet noted.