Darren Aronofsky On ‘The Whale’ And Brendan Fraser’s Hollywood Second Coming

The Whale came out of this year’s festival as a clear awards season favorite with critics and cinephiles. At the heart of that was Brendan Fraser’s performance, which has both kickstarted a career revival and caused some controversy regarding his physicality and portrayal of obesity in the film.

The other thing that has garnered praise is Darren Aronofsky’s direction of this former stage play about a reclusive English teacher trying to reconnect with his estranged teenage daughter.

I caught up with Aronofsky to discuss the film, the language around obesity, its portrayal in the movie, and the powerful scene that even blew the filmmaker away.

Simon Thompson: There was a note sent to journalists about the correct language to use around obesity and the physicality of Brendan’s character. Was that something you wanted to do right out of the gate with this?

Darren Aronofsky: I don’t know about the note you’re referring to, so I’m wondering how to respond to that, but at the very beginning, when Brendan got involved, we wanted to do as much research as we could. We met a group called the Obesity Action Coalition, an advocacy group for people living with obesity and their family members. They were amazing. We had them look at the script, we got their feedback, and then they opened up their doors and introduced us to many people who had experience, and they shared their lives with myself and Brendan. We then invited them to see the film when it was finished, and that’s been an incredibly rewarding experience because of the feedback we’ve gotten from them.

Thompson: How did it feel getting that feedback?

Aronofsky: I’ve got to be clear that it wasn’t always perfectly right. What I admire about the piece is that it was complicated and that there is a lot that is real. What was so interesting about Sam’s play when I first saw it, and the reason I wanted to make it, is that these characters were so rich. Rarely do you get that where the characters have so many contradictions in them. It was deeply exciting to work with words and writing that portrayed such well-thought-out characters. There’s so much love, so much anger, so much shame, and there’s so much hope. There is also fear, joy, disgust, and beauty. As a director, giving those opportunities for actors to find their way through it was just a lot of fun.

Thompson: You talk about the shame and disgust, and there is one particular moment in the movie where those emotions are right there. I’m talking about when the pizza delivery guy has a glimpse of Brendan’s character. I could feel the air being sucked out of the room.

Aronofsky: It’s one of the great things about the movie. First of all, that was one of the first things that Sam added to the film. What happened was that right before we shot the movie, I decided to go to the Lincoln Center library, where they have recordings of every play that’s done in New York City, to watch the play I had seen a decade earlier to see if there was anything to learn from that. There was no pizza guy. I came out and said, ‘Sam, where’s the pizza guy?’ And he was like, ‘Oh, I added that.’ It was weird because it was such an emotional moment for me in the script; I was so excited to create that moment that I had visualized it, and I had convinced myself I had seen it on stage 10 years earlier. Of course, I hadn’t. I think the pizza guy is precisely how we, the audience, are in the film’s opening shot when we first see Brendan’s character, Charlie. We’re all like that guy, and yet we spend the next hour and twenty minutes falling in love with and understanding Charlie, so bringing our old selves back and confronting ourselves with how we were looking at him at the beginning was just a brilliant script moment.

Thompson: Throughout your career, you’ve scaled up to movies like Noah, perhaps the biggest budget film you’ve done, and then you’ve scaled right down to this intricate and intimate film. Was that the biggest challenge for you with this?

Aronofsky: Oh, no. All movies of all scales have all different types of challenges that are all actually very related. The size doesn’t matter, you still have the same triangular struggle between time, money, and creativity, and it’s always pulling in its own way. I’ve always gone back and forth with different budgets. Pi was nothing, then Requiem for a Dream was big for me at the time, and then The Fountain at $30 million was huge, but then we went back to The Wrestler, which was small, and we slowly built up, and then we went back with Mother! It’s been all over the place. I think it’s whatever it takes to tell the movie and the story. I wish they all had low budgets because it’s easier to get that amount of money, but sometimes you’re not lucky in that way. You have to find a way of telling the story with what you can do.

Thompson: You took ten years to find your Charlie in Brendan. Did he take much convincing? Did you have to do much convincing of others that he was the guy for the job?

Aronofsky: Brendan didn’t need any convincing. He hadn’t been given an opportunity in 20 years and it was clear to me that he wanted to do it and was excited and had something to show everyone. That, as a director, is the most exciting thing. When you have an actor that wants to work and recognizes all of the technical and emotional challenges ahead of them, and they want to do it, that’s the dream. That was the easy part. On my end, it was a gut feeling. I didn’t know that much of his work, but from the start, he would say something, and I’d be like, ‘That’s a really interesting idea.’ I had no idea about the fan following he had. I’m not really that generation. I’m Gen X and I think it’s more of the millennial generation that’s crazy about George of the Jungle, The Mummy, and Encino Man. It’s been delightful but I didn’t get it at all. It wasn’t like a calculation like, ‘Oh, I’m going to bring this guy back, and there’s going to be this incredible, heartfelt feeling for him.’ I didn’t have a clue about that. I remember going to A24, kind of sheepishly, with my choice and being like, ‘I want to do this with Brendan Fraser.’ They were very even about it. They didn’t judge it one way or the other. They were just excited for the movie and I don’t know if they got the whole popularity thing but they didn’t need any convincing either. It was a very neutrally buoyant decision. Look, I’m sure there would have been names that would have scared them, and there would have been names that had them jumping for joy, but I think they were very even about it and let it happen.

Thompson: When I first heard the movie, I was surprised and a little unsure. He’s the biggest surprise for audiences because we haven’t seen him like this.

Aronofsky: Yeah, and I was very much like you in the sense that I knew he was the right actor for the role but I didn’t understand the fanfare that his return would unleash. I think that’s because he’s really great and it couldn’t happen to a nicer guy. As a director, it’s great when there’s a new color in the palette to use for your painting because we haven’t had that voice out there for a while. That’s what he represents for directors everywhere because he’s definitely going to be working for the rest of his life if he wants to, and that’s exciting. He’s going to do some great work. It’s really interesting.

Thompson: There is a lot of awards buzz around Brendan and The Whale. What are the conversations that you guys are having around that?

Aronofsky: The types of films he did were these big, kind of silly movies that never hit the awards circuit. I remember when we got into the Venice Film Festival, he had no idea what that meant. I had to break it down for him, like, ‘Oh, this is what’s going to happen. We’re going to stay at a hotel, and then the boat will come, and then they’ll photograph us, and so on.’ I had to go through inch by inch with him. He had no idea of the whole circuit we’re on. It’s all new for him and that’s exciting.

Thompson: I was at a Q&A for this recently and Hong Chau was saying she’d never seen a Brendan Fraser movie.

Aronofsky: I think Sadie Sink was probably in a very similar situation. I don’t think any of them really knew what Brendan would bring or why I was giving this to him. They just showed up, but then they got very serious when they saw what he was doing and how hard he was working with the impediment of all the prosthetics. Not that they wouldn’t be professional, but it brought the big game out.

Thompson: You saw the play on a whim a decade ago. Had you not done that, would you have found this project anyway?

Aronofsky: I read the review in the New York TimesNYT
, which was mixed, but it sounded incredibly interesting to me, and I just followed that instinct. I remember the experience very, very clearly afterward for what it was. Definitely, I could have missed it and been out of town or decided not to go to the theater that night, and I wonder if it would have ever resurfaced in my conscious. Over the ten years, as it sat out there, many directors were interested in it. Tom Ford, George Clooney, and Janicza Bravo were all interested in this project at different times. The material probably would have been found by one of them or some other director and have come to the screen in a different way.

The Whale lands in theaters on Friday, December 9, 2022.