Call it a Brenaissance.
When director Darren Aronofsky was looking for an actor to play the lead role in The whale – a film about a 600-pound recluse desperately trying to reconnect with an estranged daughter and heal from her traumatic history – he wasn’t exactly familiar with the work of Brendan Fraser.
Of course, the actor was one of the most recognizable men of the 90s – think Encino Man, School ties and George of the Jungle — “but that was the generation after me, those movies,” Aronofsky told CBC’s Eli Glasner. “So I didn’t even know what his acting talent was.
“And then randomly… I caught the trailer for a low-budget Brazilian movie in Portuguese, and Brendan had a supporting role, and it was one of those light bulb moments. I I just felt.”
Fraser, a 53-year-old American-Canadian actor who lived in Ottawa and Toronto (among other places) with his family during a nomadic adolescence, finds in The whale a potentially career-defining role after more than a decade of low-key performances and a string of injuries, including multiple surgeries on his back, knees and vocal cords.
He stars alongside Sadie Sink, known for her role as Max in Netflix stranger things. Aronofsky called the 20-year-old actress a “firecracker.”
On the TIFF red carpet on Sunday ahead of the film’s North American premiere, Fraser said he was blown away by the prosthetics made by Montreal costume designer Adrien Morot.
“The first time I saw his creation on a mannequin, I thought it had been loaned to, say, the Tate Modern,” he told CBC’s Lisa Xing. “It was so striking, so gripping. It’s almost like it did my job for me in so many ways because I just had to wear it to play a man so burdened with trauma that he feels.”
The actor worked with the Obesity Action Coalition to ensure the topic was handled sensitively, he said. Although not directly autobiographical, the story is partly based on the experiences of playwright Samuel D. Hunter.
Brendan Fraser and screenwriter Samuel D. Hunter discuss their film, The Whale, on the TIFF red carpet ahead of its North American premiere.
“It’s set in my hometown of Idaho, where I was a gay teenager who attended a religious school that taught that homosexuality was a mortal sin,” said Hunter, who adapted his 2012 play for the movie theater.
“At first I started self-medicating with food. I got really fat,” the writer added. “I mean, of course, a lot of people are tall and happy and healthy, it’s just my story – nobody else’s… I was afraid to write it.
“I’m glad I didn’t know this would happen,” he added of the film’s high-profile reception, “because I would have been too scared to write it, but I’m glad I did. And I’m glad I got to give it to Brendan.”
Actor has ‘Canadian goodness’, says director
The actor was greeted with an outpouring of support online and in real life, as seen in a recent viral video from the Venice International Film Festival, where he received a six-minute standing ovation after The whaleis the world premiere.
“There is a fundamental element – should we call it a Canadian goodness – about Brendan that resonates and charms people,” Aronofsky said.
“Look, I haven’t really talked about it. But I had no idea the amount of love and goodwill for Brendan when I started this process. It wasn’t part of my calculations.”
But make no mistake: Fraser would rather talk about the character than himself.
“Charlie is a man who lives with a lot of regrets. He has been alone in his two-bedroom apartment, he has a lot of trauma in his life. And that manifests in his need to eat to console himself from such a situation. insofar as he carries that over to his bodily being,” the actor told Glasner in an interview ahead of the film’s screening at the Toronto International Film Festival.
Fraser went on to say that he did not identify with the character’s issues.
“I felt when shooting this movie that given how long it was shot during lockdown – I think we all felt like maybe that was the very last time we had the privilege of doing this kind of work,” he said.
“So there was a degree of courage and surrender that we brought to it every day. And we ended up caring for each other a lot more. And I think that really shows in the quality of the film.”
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