Brendan Fraser has spoken about the validation he felt when he received a six-minute standing ovation at the London screening of The Whale in October.
The actor, 54, discussed the moment in which he broke down in tears with Seth Meyers, 49, during an interview on his Late Night show on Wednesday, saying: ‘I broke out crying, it solved all the problems.’
He has said this was sparked after he was ‘sexually assaulted’ by the former president of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, Philip Berk, in 2003.
‘I broke out crying – it solved all the problems’: Brendan Fraser said on Late Night With Seth Meyer on Wednesday that the six-minute standing ovation for The Whale gave him validation
Brendan plays a 600-lb man called Charlie in the Darren Aronofsky movie, The Whale.
The movie’s synopsis reads: ‘A reclusive English teacher suffering from severe obesity attempts to reconnect with his estranged teenage daughter for one last chance at redemption.’
The film is based on the off-Broadway play of the same name, written by Samuel D. Hunter, who came on board as the screenwriter for the film.
Brendan was pictured breaking down in tears in October when he received the standing ovation at the London screening of The Whale – the movie that marks his Hollywood comeback after a lengthy battle with depression
And despite his epic comeback success that he still feels like an ‘imposter’ in Hollywood.
Seth asked Brendan if he’s had a moment in his career where he thought he made it.
He replied: ‘Nope. I don’t. I feel like I’m still waiting for someone to walk in and tell me that the jig is up.
‘They haven’t found me out yet but I know that I’m doing what I love and it’s a privilege. I’m really happy to be able to do that.’
Seth asked Brendan why he was drawn to his latest role.
He said: ‘When I read it I was like I could be friends with this guy. I identified in many ways about him as a father and had him wanting to reach out to young people to get them to be honest about who they are and I also felt that there was a real story to be told about someone who is locked behind closed doors.’
Top director: Brendan talked about playing the role of a 600-lb man called Charlie in the Darren Aronofsky movie who is housebound and trying to reconnect with his daughter
Emotional: Brendan previously welled up while receiving a lengthy standing ovation at the Venice Film Festival for his latest film, which is already garnering him Oscars buzz
Brendan said there was also a careful use of prosthetic make up which he was a big fan of.
He added: ‘I love the craft of filmmaking and all the elements that go into it.’
Brendan said he also appreciated that his character’s outfit was realistic.
‘Very often weight gain suits and obesity portrayed in films has been unfair,’ Brendan said.
‘It’s been a silhouette of a costume inside an actor who is quite fit. Just seems to reorient the way that we believe that someone can actually move and exist.’
He said his character has significant health challenges and very little time to reconnect with his daughter.
He said: ‘Very often weight gain suits and obesity portrayed in films has been unfair,’ Brendan said. ‘It’s been a silhouette of a costume inside an actor who is quite fit. Just seems to reorient the way that we believe that someone can actually move and exist’
‘It was a piece that was shot during COVID and because of that we clearly had to be very careful with one another with our well-being,’ Brendan said.
‘Somehow that translates to the screen. We seem to be given everything that we have because of the very real existential threat that we might not be able to come back and do this later.’
He said there was no real CGI in the movie.
‘What you see is what you get,’ Brendan said.
‘What you see is what you get,’ Brendan said the film did not use CGI and that he gave each scene his all because they were tight for time during the Covid pandemic
Seth asked Brendan when he decided as a young person that he wanted to be an actor.
‘Pretty early on,’ Brendan said. ‘My family traveled a great deal. My father was with tourism Canada so every three or four years we were somewhere new. My family lived in Europe in the 70’s and so that was Holland and from there we would take holidays to the UK London.’
Brendan said when he was in London he would get tickets to any show he could get his hands on from Jesus Christ Superstar to the Mousetrap.
‘I thought I wanted to do that,’ Brendan said. ‘I want to be a part of the stories that I read.’
Brendan said that was around the time when first started to feel for acting and his parents were very supportive. He said his mother even wrote the check for him to go to college to pursue his craft.
Wow! Brendan first shot to fame as a Hollywood heartthrob while starring in a series of big-hit movies like George of the Jungle (seen) and The Mummy
Brendan shot to stardom when he was cast in children’s favourite film franchises George of the Jungle and The Mummy.
His chiselled physique earnt him a position as a Hollywood heartthrob as he thrashed around the sets performing stunts in high-action roles. But Fraser revealed in a later interview the toll the stunts had taken on his body.
He told GQ in 2018 that when he filmed the third installment in The Mummy franchise, he was being taped up and was icing injuries in between takes.
‘By the time I did the third Mummy picture in China [in 2008], I was put together with tape and ice… because they’re small and light and they can fit under your clothes. I was building an exoskeleton for myself daily,’ he recalled.
Eventually the injuries he received while performing his stunts required multiple surgeries. He needed a lumbar laminectomy, a surgery that removes the back portion of a vertebra in the lower back, to create more room within the spinal canal.
However, it didn’t take and it had to be done again a year later. He had a partial knee replacement, more back surgery involving bolting various compressed spinal pads together and even surgery to repair his vocal cords.
Fraser said he was in and out of hospitals for almost seven years.
Passion: Brendan said his parents were very supportive about him wanting to act – he said his mother even wrote the check for him to go to college to pursue his craft.
Alongside his physical injuries, Brendan also revealed in a 2018 GQ interview that he believed he had been blacklisted from Hollywood after he claimed he had been sexually assaulted by the former president of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, Philip Berk, in 2003.
Fraser claimed he was leaving a luncheon hosted by the HFPA at the Beverly Hills Hotel in Hollywood when Berk shook his hand.
He said: ‘His left hand reaches around, grabs my a** cheek, and one of his fingers touches me in the taint. And he starts moving it around.’
Picture perfect: Brendan was proudly supported by his glamorous partner Jeanne Moore at the UK premiere of The Whale at the BFI London Film Festival in October
The actor added: ‘I felt ill. I felt like a little kid. I felt like there was a ball in my throat. I thought I was going to cry.’
Fraser claimed he was able to remove Berk’s hand before running out of the hotel and going straight home. He told his then wife, actress Afton Smith, about the incident but never made it public.
Instead, his reps asked Berk for a written apology, which he provided, but did not admit any wrongdoing.
Speaking to GQ about the claims, Berk acknowledged he had written a letter of apology to Fraser but insisted he had not done anything wrong and dismissed Fraser’s account as ‘a total fabrication’.
After Fraser reported the claim to the HFPA he said he believed he may have been ‘blacklisted’ and was rarely invited back to the Golden Globe awards.
The Whale: Reviews
THE INDEPENDENT
Rating: 
Geoffrey Macnab writes: ‘Fraser retains the genial qualities which made him so popular with audiences in mainstream 1990s movies. He demands honesty from his students but there’s nothing cynical about him.
‘The pathos is laid on very thick. At times, you wonder why a filmmaker as sophisticated as Aronofsky is resorting to such manipulative tactics. Beneath all its blubber, though, this turns out to be a film with a very big heart.’
NEW YORK POST
Rating:
Johnny Oleksinski writes: ‘Fraser, so good, takes what could be a joke, a flat tragedy, or even a lecture about weight and imbues it with gorgeous humanity… It’s a testament to the storytelling that a character so different from so many moviegoers can make us so powerfully contemplate our own lives.’
BBC
Rating:
Nicholas Barber writes: ‘Fraser richly deserves to be nominated for a best actor Oscar, and if that doesn’t happen, I won’t just eat my hat, I’ll eat as many pizzas and cheese-and-meatball sandwiches as Charlie gets through in the film. The Brenaissance is here.’
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY
Leah Greenblatt writes: ‘Brendan Fraser’s astonishing turn in The Whale is a tender, modest, and momentously human piece of work plonked in the midst of a drama so masochistically stilted and stagey it often feels less like a movie than an endurance test, or even worse, a parody.’
VARIETY
Owen Gleiberman writes: ‘The Whale, while it has a captivating character at its center, turns out to be equal parts sincerity and hokum. The movie carries us along, tethering the audience to Fraser’s intensely lived-in and touching performance, yet the more it goes on the more its drama is interlaced with nagging contrivances’
Fraser said the incident had caused him to ‘retreat’ as he spiraled into depression. He described feeling ‘not worthy’ as the decade wore on, leading him to take roles he was less proud of.
Meanwhile, his marriage was also falling apart. He divorced Afton in 2007 after nine years of marriage and three sons together, Griffin, Leland and Holden. As part of the settlement, he was ordered to pay $50,000 a month in spousal support.
However in 2013 he sought an amendment to the agreement asking to pay less, claiming he wasn’t earning the same enormous cheques he had received in the 1990s during his heyday and couldn’t afford the payments.
The Whale marks Brendan’s first Hollywood project in almost ten years and Brendan’s first lead role in a movie since straight-to-DVD thriller Breakout in 2013, leading many fans to believe this is his comeback.
Brendan’s comeback: How George of the Jungle star who fell out of the spotlight is tipped for Oscars glory
Brendan rose to fame in the 1990s after starring in George of the Jungle as a hunky Tarzan-like figure with a chiseled physique
After making his film debut as a sailor in 1991 film Dogfight alongside River Phoenix, Fraser’s big break came the following year in Encino Man.
He played the character of Link, a caveman who had been frozen for centuries and is thawed by two high school students who teach him about modern life.
Following the success of the film, he was cast in children’s favourite film franchises George of the Jungle and The Mummy.
His unbelievably chiseled physique earnt him a position as a Hollywood heartthrob as he thrashed around the sets performing stunts in high-action roles. But Fraser revealed in a later interview the toll the stunts had taken on his body.
He told GQ in 2018 that when he filmed the third installment in The Mummy franchise, he was being taped up and was icing injuries in between takes.
He said the physical toll of his roles made him feel like a workhorse from the Orwell novel Animal Farm.
After rising to fame through the action-packed films, Fraser described his buff physique as resembling ‘a walking steak’.
However, in the same interview the actor revealed he believed he had been blacklisted from Hollywood after he claimed he had been sexually assaulted by the former president of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, Philip Berk, in 2003.
He told his then wife, Afton Smith, about the incident but never made it public. Instead, his reps asked Berk for a written apology, which he provided, but did not admit any wrongdoing.
Speaking to GQ about the claims, Berk acknowledged he had written a letter of apology to Fraser but insisted he had not done anything wrong and dismissed Fraser’s account as ‘a total fabrication’.
In 1999 Fraser starred alongside Rachel Weisz in blockbuster The Mummy, which became a trilogy spanning almost a decade
After Fraser reported the claim to the HFPA he said he believed he may have been ‘blacklisted’ and was rarely invited back to the Golden Globe awards. Fraser said the incident had caused him to ‘retreat’ as he spiraled into depression.
He described feeling ‘not worthy’ as the decade wore on, leading him to take roles he was less proud of. Meanwhile, his marriage was also falling apart.
In 2016, his career picked up when he was cast in Showtime drama The Affair, starring Dominic West and Ruth Wilson.
While promoting the role in 2016, Fraser sat down for an interview with AOL – but his demeanour during the chat raised alarm with his fans.
As he stumbled over his words and appeared somewhat spaced out, people began to worry he was ‘depressed’. However Fraser later revealed his mother had passed away from cancer just four days before he filmed the interview.
He said he hadn’t done any press for a role in a long time and added he was ‘in mourning’ when the interview took place.
By 2018 Fraser’s career appeared to be back on track as he starred in FX series Trust alongside Hollywood heavyweights Donald Sutherland and Hilary Swank.
He plays James Fletcher Chase, a former CIA agent who was hired by billionaire J. Paul Getty in 1973 to find Getty’s kidnapped grandson.
After the series debuted, Vox reported it could be the beginning of the ‘Brendan Fraser renaissance’ – and as rumours swirl Fraser may be in line for several awards following his performance in The Whale, that prophecy may have come true.
