LOS ANGELES (Legal Newsline) – The woman claiming discrimination has a history of racist remarks, the group that runs the Golden Globe Awards says in response to her lawsuit.
On Oct. 5, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association moved to dismiss the lawsuit filed earlier this year by Kjersti Flaa, urging a federal judge not to let her overhaul the 87-member group’s criteria for admission.
Flaa’s antitrust lawsuit says the HFPA discriminates against members of foreign press outlets.
“According to Flaa, members should not have the opportunity to vote ‘no’ to her membership application regardless of their reasons for doing so,” the motion says. “It matters not to Flaa that certain members are deeply offended by her demonstrated ageism, history of racist remarks, and multi-year campaign of bullying and harassment against members she perceives opposed her application.”
The HFPA pointed to an incident in 2018 when Flaa interviewed Ezra Miller and Claudia Kim about the movie “Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald.” She’d asked the two about their first exposures to the Harry Potter book series.
"Do you remember your first encounter with the book?” Flaa asked, to which Claudia Kim replied, "Middle school. Korea. Asked my dad's friends to get me the book from the U.S."
Flaa asked “But you read it in English then? So you did speak English when you…”
Miller cut her off – “She still does even now. She speaks English very well. It’s incredible. I only speak English. My Korean is so bad.”
When the two performers spoke a few Korean expressions, Flaa asked, “Oh, you were speaking Korean?”
Miller replied, “Yeah dude. What do you think I’m speaking? That’s a language. It’s not gibberish. It’s Korean. Okay?”
Flaa’s Aug. 3 lawsuit in Los Angeles federal court complains that the Hollywood Foreign Press Association fails to provide a benefit to the workers it purports to represent.
“Instead, the HFPA engages in very substantial and shocking discrimination against them for the benefit of its members,” the lawsuit says.
Among the allegations are that the HFPA:
-Allocates foreign markets among its members;
-Requires applicants to pledge not to offer to write for any publication or its rival claimed by a member;
-Won’t admit qualified applicants who might compete in a market against an existing member;
-Pays travel expenses for members but not non-members to attend film festivals and press junkets; and
-Leverages its status created by the Golden Globes to monopolize interview slots for popular directors and actors.
“The NFPA is so focused on protecting its monopoly position and tax-free benefits that it has adopted bylaw provisions that exclude from membership all objectively qualified applicants who might possibly compete with an existing member,” the suit says.
Flaa, of Norway, has been denied membership to the HFPA.
“The salacious and inflammatory complaint is a far cry from a good faith use of the judicial system,” the HFPA’s lawyers wrote. “A cursory review of the sweeping, often incoherent, and internally inconsistent allegations, particularly when coupled with the international press tour Flaa and her counsel launched after filing two months ago, reveals Flaa’s bad-faith motives for this lawsuit: to garner publicity, intimidate HFPA members into voting her into the membership, and publicly shame members who did not blindly support her membership application.
“But Flaa comes nowhere close to stating a viable cause of action.”