During an interview with Variety on Thursday, film producer Brian Grazer revealed that he received “blowback” from his peers in Hollywood after it became known that he voted for President Donald Trump in 2024.
When asked how people in the “liberal town” of Hollywood reacted after his vote for Trump was made public, Grazer said, “There was blowback.”
The interviewer followed up, asking Grazer whether his political views had caused others to not want to work with him.
“No. I am what I am. I haven’t changed,” he responded. “I don’t know if I should say anything more than that.”
Grazer was seen with Trump and his entourage in a VIP box at a football game this summer — a moment that was featured in the Fox Nation documentary “Art of the Surge.”
The New York Times reported that the Hollywood producer is shown posing for a photo with the president and telling others in the room that he had voted for Trump that year.
Although those in Trump’s box didn’t mind how he voted, Grazer said that when he told “some women he knows” that he planned on voting for Trump, the outcome was also as if he were “getting canceled,” the Times quoted him as saying.
“All the women looked in and go, ‘You mean, you’re not voting for Kamala?’ And I go, ‘I just can’t do that.’ And then, one of them leaned in further, and said, ‘Are you voting for Trump?’ And I said, ‘I am.’ I swear!” Grazer told the group, according to the Times.
When the Times contacted him following the football game, Grazer provided some context as to why he voted for Trump over former Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024.
“As a centrist, it was because I could feel and see Biden’s deterioration and the lack of direction in the Democratic Party at that time,” he told the outlet.
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Another “polarizing” topic the Hollywood producer touched on during his interview with Variety was artificial intelligence (AI) — specifically its impact on the film industry. Wrapping up the interview, the outlet asked whether he was optimistic or fearful about the technology.
“It’s a great collaborator in building stories. It’s never going to provide a soul into your movie,” he asserted. “AI doesn’t have a point of view; it doesn’t feel pain or love or understand what it’s like to recover from injury or humiliation. It has no conception of life-or-death stakes, and you need those to build a great story.”
However, Grazer told Variety that he uses ChatGPT “all the time” and that “It’s so fun.”
