Darren Aronofsky on The Whale: “No one’s seen this side of Brendan”

Darren Aronofsky’s eighth film, The Whale is about a morbidly obese English professor who lectures students remotely from his apartment. Charlie (Brendan Fraser) is a sad soul, evidently eating himself to death because of the trauma brought on by the loss of his partner Alan, who apparently committed suicide due to feelings of guilt over his homosexuality.

There are few visitors to Charlie’s home, which he never leaves, except his nurse and only friend Liz (Hong Chau), a young missionary named Thomas (Ty Simpkins) and his estranged daughter Ellie (Sadie Sink), who he has to bribe with thousands of dollars to stay in contact.

A faithful adaptation of Samuel D. Hunter’s 2012 play, Aronofsky’s film is a chamber piece that forsakes the wild energy of his earlier works, such as Black Swan (2010) or mother! (2017). Fraser, performing in a fat suit to appear as the 600-pound Charlie, has received acclaim for his performance, winning several awards, including best actor at the Critics’ Choice Movie Awards. At the time of writing, he’s the bookie’s favourite to win best actor at the Oscars. 

There are many within the film industry who would love to see Fraser win, given his long journey back to film prominence. A series of setbacks from the early 2000s, including a divorce and several surgeries owing to injuries sustained while making action films, meant his career tailed off. Between 2014 and 2019 he made no films at all. His mother died of cancer in 2016 and, in 2018, he told GQ magazine he’d been sexually assaulted at a lunch in 2003 by Philip Berk, the then-president of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA), the nonprofit organisation that votes for the Golden Globe Awards. Berk has suggested Fraser’s account was a fabrication though mentioned in a 2014 memoir he grabbed Fraser “in jest”. It’s been claimed that Fraser’s accusations led to him being blacklisted in Hollywood.

On a freezing January morning in London, Aronofsky sat down to explain how Fraser came to be cast, why he thinks people go to the cinema, and the challenges of making a film about a character with limited mobility.

I had the experience that most audience members will have. When the movie begins, or in my case, the play, I was surrounded by all these characters that seemed so foreign me. I had no connection to any of them. But within 10, 15 minutes, I started to feel deeply for them, and by the end they broke my heart. To me, that’s one of the more exciting things about what cinema can do – it can take you into the shoes of an unexpected person and take you on a journey that you’ve never been on before.

I don’t know if it was that connected, because this comes from the mind of Sam Hunter, and I might have changed a half-dozen words. It really was his creation. He’s such a humanistic writer: there’s themes in this that carry through in all dramas around the world. There’s sadness and happiness, inspiration and darkness. 

It’s true. I saw him in this low-budget Brazilian film. I had been thinking about so many different actors for it, but none of them really got me excited to wake up in the morning. Then when I saw Brendan in it, I thought it was a really fascinating idea. We met, and when he came over it was clear he was a gentleman and was also really interested in working hard, which is something I look for in actors. Then we did a read through of the script, and from line two or three it was clear that he was Charlie.

What’s exciting about Brendan is no one’s seen this side of him. Definitely, no one’s seen this side of him for a very long time. Once a movie star, always a movie star. And it’s just exciting to see that artist come back to life and be given such a complicated character.

I think it’s a lot about what you bring to the table when you enter to see a film. I can guarantee that if you come in with an open heart, you will connect to these characters. And Sam has painted such beautiful, complicated characters, who are fascinating to watch and to get to know. If you want to come in and you want to connect and you want to feel, which is something I think so many of us have not had an opportunity to do for many years, then it’s the right film for you.

I don’t really think of it as a larger body of work, I just think about it on a film by film basis of what I’m interested in exploring right in the moment. It’s usually that I feel [something] move somewhere deep inside me and that I keep coming back to. The Whale did take a long time to make, but it wasn’t that I was working on it at all times. I kept coming back to it, thinking, “Oh, what about The Whale as the next thing?” 

A big challenge was how to make a film that’s about a character who doesn’t have much mobility, something that’s very cinematic and exciting and keeps you interested. And for me, those have been the best compliments, where people were like, “Oh, I was a little scared to come see the movie because I heard it’s all in one room.” But then they say, “I never thought about that once the film started because I was so caught up in the performances.” That’s what the film shows, that if you have great characters with great story, it doesn’t matter where you are.

It’s part of the human spirit. I think what was so great about Requiem for a Dream, the book, is that it showed how people can be addicted to so many different things, that they don’t have to actually be chemicals. That was a great idea that I thought was worth making a film about. This I didn’t see as an addiction movie. For me, it was really getting into the psychology and the drama of this character that most people on first impressions would dismiss and judge. The film really confronts people to really think about that.

We did look at some films like Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), but not many others because it was really clear that I could get enough clues from the written word of where to put the camera and how to tell a story. The actors would have enough ideas of how to block the film based on just how truthful and realistic their characters were painted.

Normally, we watch a lot of movies beforehand to get ideas. There weren’t many comps for us on this one. It really came out of what Sam had written.

It’s hard for me to know, because I had very loving parents that were incredibly supportive. I could only imagine what the abandonment of a parent would do to someone. Luckily, I had the work of Sam Hunter to imagine that for me, the words were right there, and then I had Sadie there to interpret it and bring it to life. I can’t imagine anything more painful than being abandoned by a parent. I think that’s why people go to the movies, to experience that type of heartbreak.

Yeah. Well, sad, but how they come back together again at the end of the film is also inspirational, because I think the film does believe that people can save each other.

The Whale is in cinemas from 3 February. 

It had its UK premiere at the 66th BFI London Film Festival.