In late June, Brendan Fraser walked the blue carpet at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York and clearly did not go unnoticed. The actor, who keeps a very low profile and does not use social networks, looked very different from how the public used to see him: he had gained noticeably in weight to personify a 600-pound man in Darren Aronofsky’s new film, The Whale ( The whale ). This Tuesday the first images of the film were released and caused a great commotion in social networks and also in the main American media.
“You are going to see something that you have never seen before,” the actor assured in an interview, in 2021. “That is really all I can tell you. The wardrobe and changing room were gigantic, seamless, cumbersome. This is certainly a far cry from anything I’ve ever done, but I don’t want to be shy… I know it’s going to make a lasting impression,” he anticipated, shortly after filming ended.
In the film, which will be presented in early August at the Venice Film Festival, Fraser plays Charlie, a lonely English teacher who suffers from morbid obesity and decides to fight to meet again his daughter Ellie, a 17-year-old teenager played by Stranger Things actress Sadie Sink.
The leading trio is completed by Samantha Morton, who make up the cast along with Hong Chau and Ty Simkins. The Whale marks the return of Aronofsky, whose last movie, Mother , wasn’t exactly a box-office success and critics were divided between those who considered it brilliant and those who directly advised against seeing it.
In a way, it also means the return of Fraser. Although the actor had a supporting role in Steven Soderbergh’s Not One False Step last year, this film returns him to the place of stardom that he knew how to achieve and maintain for decades. This year, in addition, other projects that include him as part of the cast will be released: Batgirl, the film about the heroine of Gotham City in which he shares the poster with Leslie Grace, Michael Keaton and JK Simmons; the horror film Behind the Curtain of Night , with Marcia Cross; and Martin Scorsese’s new bet, Killers of the Flower Moon, alongside Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro.
An unexpected complaint
This return to the big leagues is surely doubly celebrated by the actor, who at the time assured that he was part of a blacklist. In 2017, Fraser joined the wave of complaints thatshocked the American entertainment industryand assured that Philip Berk, former president of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) -the entity that awards the Golden Globe awards- sexually abused him and that having made the situation public at the time resulted in a clear lack of job offers.
As he told theGQ magazine, the event occurred in the summer of 2003, at a lunch organized by the HFPA in a hotel in Beverly Hills. In the middle of a room full of people, Berk walked up to him to greet him. “He reached out his left hand and grabbed one of my buttocks, while he put one of his fingers in and started moving it,” he recounted. Berk, for his part, had already mentioned the episode in his autobiographical book About Him With Signs and Wonder , in which he had recounted that he had pinched her butt as a joke. Fraser, however, assures that the event was not funny, and that at the time he was overcome with fear.
“I felt sick. I felt like a little child. I felt like I had a ball in my throat. I thought I was going to cry,” she recalled. After the episode, he went to his house and told his wife what had happened. However, he was afraid to speak publicly about the incident.
Through his representatives, the actor demanded an apology from the HFPA. Berk, meanwhile, acknowledged writing a letter to GQ, though he denied taking responsibility for the abuse. “It was something more of the type ‘if I did something that upset Mr. Fraser, it was not intentional and I apologize,'” said the journalist, who remains a member of the entity. “Mr. Fraser’s version is a total fabrication,” he said.
The Hollywood Foreign Press Association, meanwhile, was also consulted and responded with a statement. “The HFPA strongly opposes sexual harassment and the type of behavior described in this article. Over the years, we have had a positive working relationship with Brendan, including announcing the Golden Globe nominees, attending the ceremony and participating in press conferences. This report includes purported information that was previously unknown to the HFPA and we are currently investigating further details of the incident.”
The actor, for his part, assured that this incident made him more lonely and that after it happened, he decided to withdraw from public life. In addition, he claimed that the HFPA put him on a “blacklist” and that he was rarely invited back to the Golden Globes. “The phone stopped ringing and I started to wonder why. There are many reasons, but was this one of them? I think so,” he stated.
Fraser finally noted that he was encouraged to tell his story by the #MeToo and Time’s Up movements. “I know Rose McGowan,a Ashley Juddand Mira Sorvino. I worked with them. I feel my friends. I haven’t talked to them in years, but they are my friends. This movement is wonderful, as are these people with the courage to say what I did not have the courage to say,” she expressed.