After months of waiting, the first trailer for “The Whale” is finally out, the Darren Aronofsky drama starring an unfamiliar Brendan Fraser and Sadie Sink, an actress best known for playing Max in Stranger Things.
In the film produced by A24, Fraser plays Charlie, an English teacher who becomes depressed after the death of her boyfriend and starts eating junk food non-stop. He weighs 266 kg and only teaches online, while he dies. But his ultimate dream is to rekindle the relationship with his daughter, Allie (Sink).
“I had to learn to move in a new way, I developed muscles I didn’t know I had, I felt dizzy at the end of the day when they removed my prosthesis, like when you get off a gondola In Venice”, he recalled about the challenge that implies to the role that placed him among Oscar favorites.
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For the film, which hit theaters in the United States on December 9, the actor had to wear a special suit, with which he simulated almost 100 kilos more, along with prosthetics. The preparation took six hours a day. “The torso piece was almost like a straitjacket with sleeves that, again touched by the hand, looked very similar to human skin, right under the hand-cut hair,” he described.
The film was very well received through film festivals. In Venice, Fraser was completely impressed with a six-minute standing ovation. It is based on the play by Samuel D. Hunter, who adapted the script with Aronofsky. Also starring Hong Chau, Samantha Morton and Ty Simpkins.
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“I was so excited because it was a recognition of all the work we have done here and how it is making a huge impact. This kind of feedback is completely new in my professional life”, lauded the actor, who turned 90. He shone in the decade of films like The Mummy and Jorge de la Selva.
The artist is experiencing a resurgence in his career after stepping away from major projects following a series of health problems that caused demands and action sequences to subject his body.
In addition, he went through a traumatic experience in which he reported sexual harassment to a significant Hollywood representative.
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Fraser assured in 2018 that one of the issues that closed doors for him in the industry was what he experienced in 2003 with Philip Burke, president of the Association of Foreign Journalists in Hollywood. As he told GQ, in the middle of an incident, the man passed his hand down his back, touched one of her buttocks and repeatedly touched his perineum area.
Burke denied the allegations, saying they had only made a joke, but that what Fraser claimed did not happen.
Talking about the traumatic experience, the actor said, “It made me go back, it made me isolate myself.”
