Is Brendan Fraser’s ‘The Whale’ Based on a True Story? How Playwright Sam Hunter Processed His Own Trauma

The Whale, which is now available to purchase on digital platforms like Amazon Prime Video, is a movie that feels like it comes from a deeply personal and honest place. It’s understandable, then, to wonder if The Whale is based on a true story.

Starring Brendan Fraser as a 600-pound man who attempts to reconnect with his estranged daughter (Sadie Sink) as he faces life-threatening health issues, The Whale is based on a 2012 play of the same name by Samuel D. Hunter. Director Darren Aronofsky—who is known for his divisive films like mother!, Black Swan, and Requiem for a Dream—bought tickets to the play on a whim, and immediately connected to the heartbreaking story. He approached Hunter, who was encouraged by Aronofsky’s response to his play to adapt it for the screen. Now, over a decade later, the film has three Oscar nominations, including Best Actor for Fraser.

Though The Whale is not based on a true story, the inspiration for the play did come from Hunter’s own experience struggling with his weight. Read on to learn more about The Whale true story.

Is The Whale based on a true story?

No. The Whale is not based on a true story. It is a work of fiction, even if the play was inspired by Hunter’s life. Brendan Fraser’s character, Charlie, is not a real person, nor are any of the characters in the film based on real people.

That said, playwright Samuel D. Hunter, who also adapted the screenplay for film, based the oringal play on his own experience with his obesity, religion, and sexuality in college. “I know many people who are big, happy, and healthy, but I wasn’t,” Hunter said in an interview for the films’ press notes. “I had a lot of unprocessed emotions from attending a fundamentalist Christian school where my sexuality came to bear in an ugly way, and that emerged in an unhealthy relationship with food. When I started writing The Whale, I think it all just came pouring out of me.”

Like Charlie in The Whale, Hunter is also originally from Idaho. Hunter also had experience doing Charlie’s job as an English teacher—in fact, that was the job Hunter had when he first sat down to write the play. In an interview with MetroWeekly, Hunter recalled his job as a professor at Rutgers University, saying, “Like the character, I was teaching expository writing to a bunch of disaffected freshmen. […] When I first had the idea for the play, and then finally, after some false starts, had the notion that if I really was going to write this play from an honest, emotional place, I would have to put some more personal stuff on the line — stuff from my past about being a gay kid in Idaho and attending a fundamentalist religious school and having to leave eventually after I was outed and then falling into depression and self-medicating with food for many years.”

That said, many of the major plot points in The Whale are fictional. Hunter is the father of a five-year-old daughter, but he was never estranged from his child, as Charlie is in The Whale. And though Hunter’s relationship with food may have been fraught in college, he never reached the point of health crisis we see Charlie endure in The Whale.

There is one moment from Hunter’s real life that made it into the film. In the interview for the film’s press notes, Hunter recalls how something one of his former students said struck him. “Nobody likes expository writing, but I remember I got to a point where I was begging my students, please just write something truthful. Write anything you actually believe,” Hunter said. “That’s when one of my students wrote what is now a line in both the play and movie: ‘I think I need to accept that my life isn’t going to be very exciting.’ I will never forget reading that because it was like a sliver of light suddenly opened up on the page, and I could see this person and their humanity illuminated. Charlie is looking for that, from himself and from others.”