Content Warning: Topic of abuse is mentioned
Ke Huy Quan. Jennifer Coolidge. Brendan Fraser. All have been having great years with their respective projects and deserved award-season praise. Twitter and other entertainment news platforms have hailed 2022 and 2023 as the years of their comebacks, and rightfully so.
I watched Brendan Fraser’s acceptance speech at the Critics Choice Awards and had to hold back a few tears. His genuine love for his craft and pure gratitude for the people who gave him even an ounce of an opportunity was a heartwrenching watch. It seemed like a reoccurring theme amongst these actors and their adamant need to acknowledge the directors and writers that hired them for the projects that they were in. When Jennifer Coolidge finally won a Golden Globe, even in her moments of humour, she made sure that everyone in the amphitheatre and back home knew how much Mike White and the White Lotus show revitalized her love for her career. I have a soft spot for Ke Huy Quan because of my endless love for Everything, Everywhere, All at Once and the Indiana Jones movies. When he said that he had begun to fear that he would never surpass what he had achieved as a kid, my heart ached at such a sentiment. The feeling that you’ve passed your prime even before you could even comprehend what you could offer is something that feels all too close to home.
After watching all of these good people receive good things, I sat with my own thoughts and genuinely believed that maybe, just maybe, this was progress. That Hollywood has finally realized they needed to right their wrongs and that this was how they’d do it. The naivety in me wanted to wholeheartedly believe in that and go to bed. But I stayed up and continued thinking. And thinking… and thinking… and as it always does, my nihilism consumed me. Hollywood is a paradoxical business model and the reason why these actors needed a “comeback” in the first place was that they were wronged by the same institution that has pat itself on the back for incremental progress. Hollywood was responsible for the circumstances that made Ke Huy Quan and Jennifer Coolidge lose out roles for years before getting into projects they genuinely loved again. They were misunderstood and misrepresented by the flimsy projects they had been given. Brendan Fraser, on the other hand, was sexually assaulted and blackballed by his own assaulter which sent him into a depression. A progressive institution would’ve never let these things happen.
“But it was all in the past! Like you said, maybe this is a step in the right direction!” No, it isn’t a step in the right direction when on the same night Ke Huy Quan and Jennifer Coolidge won their awards, other winners had stood on that stage admiring and stroking the ego of alleged abuser Brad Pitt. His own “comeback” story post domestic abuse allegations from his children and Angelina Jolie only happened a couple of years ago, and he was let back with open arms. It disheartens me that even one of the biggest names in Hollywood, Angelina Jolie, could make claims of abuse against another powerful name in Hollywood and still have members of the elite rally to protect him and his image without an ounce of remorse, especially in a post-Me Too era.
I wish that this was real progress. I wish that women, people of colour, and other victims could reclaim a position in Hollywood the same way these actors have. As happy as I am to see these people succeed, it’s only a matter of time before Hollywood praises and awards abusers under the same roof as their victims.