Brendan Fraser dropped a bombshell on fans in a new interview last week. The actor’s last name has long been pronounced like the title of the TV series Frasier, but he now reveals that it is actually supposed to rhyme with the word “razor.” He was as surprised as anyone that this mispronunciation has become so widespread in his long career.
Fraser sat down with fellow actor Adam Sandler for Variety‘s “Actors on Actors” series, where performers “interview” each other in long-form conversations. In the video, Sandler seemed to prompt Fraser to reveal the real pronunciation of his name. He said: “When I first met Brendan Fraser… That’s your full name, right? Brendan Fraser?” Given this opening, Fraser corrected him, pronouncing his last name several times to demonstrate that it is actually more straightforward than fans believed.
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“It’s Fraser. You shave with a razor, you should try standing closer to it,” he joked. They changed topics for a while, but later in the interview, Sandler slipped up and mispronounced “Fraser” again. He caught himself and pantomimed shaving as if to drill the memory into his mind. At another point, Sandler impersonated the SNL narrator calling Fraser out on stage, but when he pronounced the name correctly he didn’t seem to care for it.
“I’m going to keep saying ‘Frasier.’ Brendan Fraser, it just doesn’t sound right,” Sandler said. Fraser sat with his hands over his eyes in exasperation. He said: “It felt good, though. I mean, as long as they’re saying it.” However, in the end, Fraser laughed it off, conceding: “Okay, f- it. No one’s ever gotten my name right.”
Fraser was one of the biggest action stars of the early 2000s, but his career took a backseat in his life for the last decade or so while he contended with some health issues and personal problems. Recently he has been back in the headlines a lot as his performance in the new movie The Whale is generating a lot of award buzz. At the same time, Fraser is being asked to rehash his sexual assault allegations against the former president of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, and his belief that that accusation hurt his career for years.
The Whale is playing now in theaters around the U.S. Fraser and Sandler’s full interview is available now on YouTube.
