Forget it, Alan Rosenberg! The Screen Actors Guild president’s request to publicists, made during a teleconference session two days ago, that they keep clients who’ve been nominated for a Critics Choice Award from attending Monday night’s awards ceremony, appears to be dead in the water. Or so I’ve been told.

I learned this morning that since Rosenberg made his request on Friday, not one single publicist has contacted officials of the Broadcast Film Critics Association, which votes for the awards and stages the event, with news that their clients won’t be attending tomorrow night.
The Critics Choice Awards and the VH1 broadcast of the event are both going ahead as scheduled late tomorrow afternoon (red-carpet arrivals starting at 4:30 Pacific, the show itself starting at 6 pm Pacific) and the whole gang is coming, or so I’m told.

Why have the publicists ignored Rosenberg’s request? Because Bob Bain Prods. and VH1 aren’t WGA signatories and therefore there won’t be WGA pickets. The only thing that scares talent is the idea of crossing picket lines so the issue is moot, despite what Rosenberg has asked for. And because, as one insider speculates, “the publicists can see right through Rosenberg’s agenda in wanting the SAG Awards to be the only award show that comes off without a blemish or interruption.”
The insider says that “talent was always going to come anyway to the Critics Choice Awards” and that Rosenberg’s request for them to not attend has simply fallen on deaf ears.

UEST