Brendan Fraser talks The Whale with Adam Sandler, denies “comeback” claims, and addresses obesity controversy: “I felt empowered to be their voice”
The actor also spoke about working with Darren Aronofsky and the pressures of filming during COVID in his Variety Actors On Actors interview
Aux News The Whale
Don’t call it a comeback, because Brendan Fraser never actually considered himself gone. “I’m hearing a lot about this being a comeback for me, but I was never that far away,” he told Adam Sandler, in the first released interview from Variety’s highly anticipated, much-memed Actors On Actors series.
“I’ve always kept working, busy doing something. I would lose my mind if I wasn’t working. There’s so much content in the world, a lot of that can slip off the radar,” he continued.
The “comeback” role in question is of course the lead in Darren Aronofsky’s upcoming The Whale, a film which even before widespread release has received a massive amount of feedback, equal parts negative (Fraser plays a 600-pound man, which has been controversial, to say the least) and positive (people, including Variety interview partner Adam Sandler, really, really love Brendan Fraser. The movie “made me cry a lot, because you’re my buddy,” Sandler told him.)
Fraser addressed the controversy surrounding the weight of his character Charlie, who in the movie has only five days to live and “needs to redeem himself in the very little amount of time he has left.” The actor famously wears prosthetics for the film (which he says “contained combinations of those little airsoft pellets, maybe dried beans, marbles”), but he still draws a distinction between this depiction of obesity, which “obey[s] the laws of physics and gravity, because we don’t see that in films” and fat-suits of old, which were “all in the service of a mean joke.”
He continued: “It’s important to say this, because there are those who live with this disease. I felt empowered to be their voice and to be as honest as I could and as authentic as I could in the portrayal. Look, my weight has been all over the map. I put on weight to play this role, and it wasn’t enough—so the body had to go on top of that, and the two worked together.”
Fraser and Sandler also discuss how they met on the set of the movie Airheads in 1994, Fraser’s earlier body transformation for George Of The Jungle, working with Aronofsky, and shooting under the “existential threat” of COVID. You can read the full text of the interview here.
The Whale premieres in theaters on December 9.
16 Comments
“Obesity controversy”. What controversy? Don’t tell me making movies about fat people are off limits?Or wait…no…you, you can’t be telling me folk are mad they didnt get someone who actually weighs 600 lbs to play the role? That can’t be real life.
Yes, there was controversy among the crowd who dont understand that all acting is pretending to be someone you’re not. Sane people were not upset.
My understanding is that he doesn’t spend the entire movie being 600 lbs and is a lot smaller for part of it (not sure if he gains weight and becomes that big or starts that big and loses weight). So do you get a guy that big then have him lose weight during production or do you find someone who can gain enough weight so that he is 600 pounds by the end. Either of those options sound incredibly dangerous.
Yeah its just silly. Robert Downey Jr isn’t really a genius inventor, I’m offended. Also I’m 99% sure ScarJo is not a sterilized Russian assassin. And Fraser was never a caveman.
“equal parts negative”No.
The most I’ve been able to unearth about this movie supposedly being “controversial, to say the least” was an actor from Mean Girls who used the movie to express his frustration at not being cast in things. So… can you maybe say more?
A less evolved version of myself might had said something snarky like they wouldn’t have had to use as much prosthetics if they had cast a hamster in the role.
Considering the legacy of anti-hamster fatphobia among the gerbil community, I admire your growth.
We’re all pocket pets in the end. (No gerbilling puns intended.)
People demanded they hire only an actor with six day to live but they couldn’t keep that alive.
(Fraser plays a 600-pound man, which has been controversial, to say the least) Honestly, this one smacks more of people wanting it to be ‘controversial, to say the least’, as most anyone with half an ounce of common sense realises full-well why there ain’t any actual 600-lb actors headlining major movie productions and won’t be any time soon. That’s in the ‘genuinely life-impeding and live-threatening, can barely leave the house, literally shaving entire decades off your life-expectancy’ weight-class.
In the comments of last article about this “controversy” there were people who genuinely seemed to be saying they should’ve found a 600lb actor. I was dumbfounded. I did an image search to try and give people a concept of what 600lbs looks like. That lead me to that exploitive show My 600lb Life. That did allow me to show people how debilitating being 600lb+ is though. 13 people who were featured in the series have since died. Two of them while filming their seasons and all of them 50 years old or younger. It’s ludicrous to think they could’ve found a 600lb actor.
Yeah as a former fatass, never got close to 600 lbs, but I was over 400, and now half that, there is a REASON there aren’t any, or if there are very FEW, actors of that size. Being that heavy takes a temendous toll on your body, and expecting someone that size to act on a set, regardless of how active the role may be, for any decent amount of time is wholly unrealistic.
I appreciate your, and the other commenters, reassuring me that there are sane perspectives left. The controversy the author alludes to is the identity-based criticism the author wants to personally advance.
It’s not like they took a svelte or chiseled actor and stuck him in a fat suit. They took a fat actor and made him look fatter. I’m sure Fraser has dealt with his share of emotional issues with his weight and while, yes, a 600 lb man would have significantly deeper issues we really need to dial back the More-Representational-Than-Thou bullshit. It’s a movie. It’s make believe with actors ACTING.
I think the first “controversy” of this type I can remember was the flap about Billy Joel writing Downeaster Alexa. Bunch of fisherbros got mad that a city boy would dare write a song about their life, and he should only write about things he’s good at. Joel summed it up pretty well. He said if songwriters were only allowed to write songs about what they were good at, all songs would be about writing songs. I didn’t realize that it was a harbinger of the outrage cycles to come.I’m pretty sure Brendan Frasier can portray a 600 pound man on screen better than any 600 pound man can. That’s what actors do.