Brendan Fraser is expected to finally land his first Oscar nomination for Darren Aronofsky’s The Whale, but it almost never happened. The Late Late Show host James Corden claims he almost starred in the movie, which centers on Charlie, a 600-pound English professor trying to reconnect with his estranged daughter before he dies. The film is an adaptation of Samuel D. Hunter’s 2012 play, with a screenplay by Hunter.
Ahead of a Q&A event about Corden’s Amazon Prime Video series Mammals, Corden mentioned to Deadline that he was going to play Charlie in an earlier iteration of The Whale. “I was going to play that part, and Tom Ford was going to direct,” Corden said. This version of the project fell apart because Ford wanted more creative control of the project. Coren also suggested he may have been too young at the time.
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Corden later added that George Clooney was also interested in directing, but producers balked at Clooney’s ideas. He wanted to cast an unknown, 600-pound actor as Charlie. Clooney was never involved beyond a “brief flirtation” with The Whale, Deadline reports. The outlet spoke with Aronofsky, who confirmed what Corden said.
Aronofsky spent a decade trying to make The Whale before Fraser was cast. Although his performance has earned widespread acclaim, there has been criticism of Aronofsky’s decision to cast an actor who would need to wear a fatsuit and its portrayal of obesity.
The Black Swan filmmaker told Yahoo! Entertainment he initially didn’t see the debate coming when he cast Fraser. “Actors have been using makeup since the beginning of acting – that’s one of their tools,” Aronofsky said. “And the lengths we went to portray the realism of the make-up has never been done before. One of my first calls after casting Brendan was to my makeup artist, Adrien Morot. I asked him, ‘Can we do something that’s realistic?’ Because if it’s going to look like a joke, then we shouldn’t do it.”
Aronofsky pointed out that charlie was a well-rounded character compared to other characters with obesity who are used for punchlines or as villains. “We wanted to create a fully worked-out character who has bad parts about him and good parts about him; Charlie is very selfish, but he’s also full of love and is seeking forgiveness,” Aronofsky said. “So [the controversy] makes no sense to me. Brendan Fraser is the right actor to play this role, and the film is an exercise in empathy.”
The Whale is now in theaters. The movie also stars Stranger Things‘ Sadie Sink as Charlie‘s daughter, Hong Chau as his nurse, and Ty Simpkins as a Christian missionary who visits him. The title is a reference to Moby-Dick, which plays an important role in the film.
