To pour Brendan Fraser in The whale was clearly the right choice for director Darren Aronofsky. The actor’s involvement has created major hype for the film ahead of its wide theatrical release, and with its early reviews, The whale has generated Oscar buzz for Fraser. He was recently nominated for a Golden Globe for his role in the movie, although we shouldn’t expect him to attend the ceremony.
But finding the perfect star to lead the film was no easy task for Aronofsky. In a new interview with deadlinethe filmmaker reflects on the lengthy process of getting The whale made, going back a decade. One of the film’s biggest challenges was finding an actor who could play Charlie, the 600-pound recluse at the center of the story, in the way Aronfosky envisioned. As the director explains, it took him a decade to consider pretty much every other actor in Hollywood until he happened to see the trailer of a foreign movie starring Fraser. At that moment everything clicked.
“In the ten years I’ve had it, there was never really an actor that got me excited to actually do this. I thought everyone thought about it in different ways. But none of it really clicked or made sense. And then I saw the trailer of some kind of low-budget Brazilian movie, and it had a supporting actor – Brendan – and a light bulb went on. I said, ‘What about that guy?’ To be really transparent, I wasn’t very familiar with his work, I had seen the mummies, but I hadn’t seen George of the Jungle or Encino Man, and I hadn’t seen any of the dramatic work…but it was a real gut feeling: ‘I like this guy.'”
Aronofsky also explained that something else that was appealing about Fraser is that as a dramatic actor he hadn’t yet shown everything in his toolbox, unlike some others in Hollywood from whom moviegoers might expect a certain kind of performance.
“Once a movie star, always a movie star, but the best part about it is that he’s a movie star who hasn’t shown his goods in a long time. Like many movie stars, you see so many ‘Okay, I see what they’re going to do.’ They are not all Meryl Streep, every performance is different. So I was excited about that. And then he came into my office in Chinatown, and besides being an utter gentleman, it was just obvious that he had a lot to give. and he hadn’t had a chance to show it, and he wanted to.”
The Whale could very well win Brendan Fraser’s Oscar
Samuel D. Hunter, who also created the show that The whale is based on, wrote the screenplay for the feature film adaptation. Jeremy Dawson and Ari Handel produced with Aronofsky. Sadie Sink, Hong Chau, Ty Simpkins and Samantha Morton star in the film alongside Fraser.
The whale plays in select theaters in Los Angeles and New York, and will be released nationwide on December 21, 2022. You can watch the official trailer below.