With a damning accusation hanging over the Golden Globes, the organizations that put on the annual awards ceremony responded by ducking the issue.
"It's business as usual," one publicist related to the show said Monday, hustling off to prepare for the nominations that will be doled out early Tuesday morning.
A letter from the Globes former PR chief Michael Russell surfaced over the weekend accusing the show's host organization, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, of "unsavory business practices." Raising those practices to HFPA president Phil Berk got Russell fired, he said in the letter.
Asked for their reaction, Dick Clark Productions, which produces the Golden Globes, had no comment.
Neither did officials for NBC, the network that airs the telecast to the tune of millions of dollars in annual advertising.
A spokesperson for the Beverly Hilton, which is hosting the awards, didn't return calls for comment.
"This doesn't change anything," noted one individual close to the Globes.
Read also: Globes PR Chief Said HFPA Must End 'Unsavory' Dealings
Of course, things could change if the specifics around what Russell called "questionable business practices of the HFPA" became known. The letter to HFPA President Phil Berk was obtained by TheWrap and exclusively published over the weekend.
In that letter, Russell — who headed PR and handled sponsorship and marketing for the Globes for 17 years before abruptly announcing his parting from the awards in March — accused Berk of terminating the relationship after Russell brought to light business practices that could harm the "legitimacy and integrity" of the HFPA.
But the details regarding those practices remain a mystery.
While conceding he wrote the letter, Russell has refused to clarify what it is exactly that HFPA did wrong.
In a response to TheWrap on Sunday, Berk called the accusations "undocumented" and "wrong."
