The Whale's Brendan Fraser, our latest Oscars predictions, and more in EW's The Awardist

Brendan Fraser reveals how The Whale pushed his body and mind 'toward the danger' for his art

Interview by Joey Nolfi

For as much attention — and criticism — he's received for his physical metamorphosis into a 600-pound gay professor, Brendan Fraser doesn't want anyone to forget that his Oscar-nominated turn in The Whale also marks one of the most emotionally transformative parts of his three-decade career.

"It's important to remember that he's a human being, a person who deserves dignity and respect," Fraser tells EW of the role of Charlie, a recluse in the final stages of a case of life-threatening obesity as he grapples with deep-seated regret over abandoning his daughter, Ellie (Sadie Sink), years prior. "While his body type differentiates from my own at present, I've had my own fluctuations in body weight, but it was helpful to put the two together to create Charlie from an authentic standpoint and get it as near to him as it was safe for me to do."

EW spoke with Fraser late last year about forging a relationship with Charlie alongside director Darren Aronofsky and writer Samuel D. Hunter, reconnecting with his Encino Man costar (and current Best Supporting Actor frontrunner) Ke Huy Quan on the current awards trail, whether he'd ever rejoin the blockbuster Mummy franchise he first fronted in 1999, and why he feels his Whale performance shouldn't be dismissed as a surface-level presentation of the character's body.

Cover illustration by Ryan Melgar

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Many are calling this your "comeback," but you were on The Affair, you were in No Sudden Move last year, and you continue to star in Doom Patrol. Do you consider this a comeback?

BRENDAN FRASER: I had a brief stint working with Danny Boyle on an FX piece called Trust in the interim. I've kept myself busy. Careers go up and down on a valley-and-peak trajectory, but I believe that it's always in the ascendancy. I've never been that far away, is the short answer. Was I away, or was everyone away from me? I'll give you the answer: It doesn't matter. What's important is that, either by design or accident, the amount of time it took for me to arrive at the place where I could faithfully play Charlie with the dignity, authenticity, and honesty that it demands, may not have been at my disposal had I not gone on that journey.

You seem to be selective of the characters you play at this stage, and Charlie obviously spoke to you. Did you consider this character a potential risk when you first took the part, or did seeing the polarized reaction to your physical transformation make you realize it was risky?

You're allowed to take risks in art. You should go toward the danger, where the most growth will come, and often where the most interesting choices are made. I know that to be true, given that this film was directed by Darren Aronofsky, a world-class filmmaker who constantly challenges the human condition and never leaves easy answers for us to ponder. A challenge is good. I didn't know if I'd be invited to play this role, because Darren didn't know if he was going to be able to make this movie. It was dependent on him finding an actor.

There was no small measure of creative intimidation I felt when I sat down with him, and he was a gentleman and plainspoken about whoever he hired would be required to wear transformational makeup, apparatus, and costuming. For that, he'd rely on a longtime collaborator, Adrien Morot, who approached creating the body of Charlie using technology we have now that we didn't have, gosh, has it been 20 years since I did Bedazzled with Harold Ramis? That was several different characters who went through prosthetic makeup. There was no need to lay underneath goop poured on your face this time — we could cyberscan. That model was taken into a computer, Charlie's body could be created with absolute control [down to] the placement of pores and moles.

I love the care and consideration in your portrayal of this character as a human. It's no secret that the film has drawn criticism for that portrayal, too, for people who are maybe focusing on the superficial elements of it. You, Darren, and [writer Samual D. Hunter] have said that the film was made with research and love for the subject, and is an exercise in empathy. Do you think intent of the artist still matters in Hollywood, and does that impact the way you do work, knowing it might not matter to certain viewers?

This is one man's story. It's not representative of everyone who lives with a body such as Charlie's. It's not autobiographical, but it is based on what the writer intimately knows well, having grown up in Idaho himself, a gay kid who went to a religious school who I believe unfairly treated him with disdain. They outed him, he had a certain degree of sadness, and also a pedigree that he took that sadness and turned it into his art. So yes, I think it matters just as much now as it did formerly.

What we've seen with body types in films prior to this one — I looked at a lot of them. I think that those costumes, whether they were ill-intentioned or otherwise, they put quotation marks around a person who lives with obesity. And it might just be because it [was] an athletic actor inside a silhouette of a costume that was filled with cotton padding, and there's a disconnect. That didn't exist in the design of Charlie. He does have mobility issues, he does perspire profusely, he doesn't look well, he doesn't eat for pleasure, he has flaws, he's someone who's still — despite all of these things — somehow, eternally optimistic. He needed to make a decision about whether to just not exist or to lean into what he knew he cared about: books, literature, teaching, and being an educator and drawing out truth and honesty from people as a way to their redemption.

And at the same time, Sam gave him a secret superpower, and that's the ability to see the good in others, even when they can't see that in themselves. That's what made him infinitely humanizing to me. That's what made Charlie make me feel empathy and affinity for… I have three kids of my own, I have as much love as I'll ever need for the rest of my life. The thought that they might someday be overlooked or forgotten is something that I can't imagine, if that was really a circumstance in my life that's similar to the one that Charlie lives, the pain that the man goes through.

We've seen so much of you on the awards trail alongside Ke Huy Quan, who's also received buzz. You previously starred together in Encino Man, his last American movie before a 36-year break from acting. Have you run into him at all, and how do you feel about the recognition he's received?

Yes! I saw Everything Everywhere All at Once, and I was like, "This is the most awesome movie that's ever been made." I love this picture, I love Michelle [Yeoh] in this, she's an old friend, and [when I saw it] I went, hang on, I know him. His name wasn't Ke in the days that I knew him, for reasons we just don't abide by any longer. Some agent told him that no one would understand [the name] or whatever. We don't get to do that anymore. He is who he is. The journey that he's taken to come to this place has given him, I think, the role of his lifetime, and he's given the performance of his lifetime, and in many ways, I, like him, feel the same way. We gave it everything we had. We're both like, "We're still here, man! We're still here."

So many people from your past collaborations have publicly supported you this season: Adam Sandler, Elizabeth Hurley, the Rock. Have you heard from anyone else wishing you well?

I've heard from people I've gone to college with, who you wouldn't know. It's nice to hear from Matthew Mungle, who put me in transformation makeup first for the film Bedazzled. We've come a long way from when that was created to the way this was created.

We're obsessed with The Mummy franchise, Bedazzled, George of the Jungle, so many of your blockbuster movies. Were there ever any serious talks for sequels to any of those projects that never happened?

I think George got a remake, and they built a joke into it that the studio was too cheap to hire me, which wasn't inaccurate.

There were discussions to do another one?

I was approached. I can't remember what I was doing at the time, but I felt like I wanted to go do The Quiet American instead with Michael Caine, and shoot the first Western film in Vietnam ever, directed by Philip Noyce, to tell an infinitely American story. I'm always making diverse choices, and, hopefully, that keeps me and an audience interested. With a bit of distance, I think they've all cumulatively led up to the place I'm in now.

Now that The Whale is a success, has anybody reached out to restart The Mummy?

Not, like, officially, no, but I know the fans have. I've been having a great time in recent years, in my so-called hiatus, going to fan conventions, keeping it real, meeting everybody and thanking them personally for putting me where I am. I think I got over myself, insofar as "I'm too busy" or "that's not for me," I don't know what I was thinking. I needed to have some gratitude.

We have to get you and Michelle Yeoh together again for another Mummy.

That sounds like fun. I'm always looking for a job, if anyone's got the right conceit. I've never been as famous and as unsalaried than I am at the moment, so, spread the word!

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

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Oscars Flashback

Watch an exclusive clip from the Oscar-nominated Close, the Belgian boyhood drama unlike anything else

By Joshua Rothkopf

Lukas Dhont's Close, now in theaters, opens on a note of pure, euphoric bliss. It requires no words and barely has any; watching it, you immediately understand what is meant when people describe the movies as a universal language. (Not for nothing, Close has been nominated for the Best International Feature Oscar, in a competitive year.)

Two young boys — teens but only barely — race through a field of flowers, untrammeled. They smile in exhilaration, the pink and yellow blossoms suffusing the frame.

"I grew up on the Flemish countryside very close to a flower farm," Dhont, 31, tells EW. "And so I have these sensations, these memories that I have kept with me, of being young and running through these fields with my friends at the time."

But the filmmaker is quick to dig into the subtext. (Watch the scene in our exclusive clip below.)

"I thought of it as a beautiful opening that is also about the passage from childhood to puberty," offers Dhont. "It's an ideal representation of a Garden of Eden, a sort of innocent state that the film starts in. Among many things, I wanted Close to be about masculinity. And so, these flowers in many ways represent this sort of tenderness, this fragility. I knew that I wanted to contrast them with a vocabulary of imagery that we have seen more in the world of young men: men growing up, soldiers, warriors."

Close becomes a story of these two runners, besties Léo and Rémi (brought to life by a pair of unusually intuitive 13-year-old actors, Eden Dambrine and Gustav De Waele). Their attachment, unexamined yet deeply felt, runs into trouble when the new school year begins, bringing with it bullies, peer pressure, and an instinct to conform. Dhont's film is radical for addressing a subject rarely approached by American screenwriters: the pre-sexual love between boys that hasn't been articulated — or put in a box.

"I wanted this to be about that moment in our lives where love doesn't have to have a name," Dhont says, "where it can exist so freely and so boundless and pure. When we listen to 13-year-old boys and how they speak about each other, how they look at each other and how they cling to one another, they all seem to resemble Léo and Rémi. So why do we not represent that reality?"

Dhont's Close, a prizewinner at Cannes and a quiet stunner at private screenings during the run-up to Oscar nominations, will make some viewers uncomfortable — a reaction the director expects. He calls it conditioning. Still, he welcomes the kind of self-examination his movie is bound to trigger.

"I'm also conditioned to look in that way," he admits. "We immediately wonder about their sexualities. It's something I've confronted in myself."

Apart from running in fields of flowers, Dhont remembers being a kid who fantasized about making films and going to the Oscars. His first feature will enjoy the kind of exposure that few debuting voices can claim. "There's nothing as powerful as chasing your childhood dreams," he says, "even if, as you become an adult, they transform into other things."

There is that dividing line. Close, to its great credit, sits right on it.

Dave Karger's updated Oscar predictions for 3 major categories

Now that the Oscar nominations are finally out, it's time to take a stab at who might actually win on March 12. Here's where I feel like things stand at this point.

Best Picture: Everything Everywhere All at Once

Throughout the season I've been looking at this race as a competition between The Fabelmans and Top Gun: Maverick with Everything Everywhere All at Once in a close third place. But EEAAO's surprising over-performance (song! score! costumes!) indicates broad support across the Academy's branches. So now to me, it looks like the presumptive winner.

Best Director: Steven Spielberg, The Fabelmans

Everything's Daniels feels like an exciting, 21st-century choice that reflects the changing demographics of the Academy. But we've seen so many Best Picture/Best Director splits in the last few years (including last year with CODA and The Power of the Dog's Jane Campion emerging victorious) that I'm inclined to say that Steven Spielberg will win his third trophy in this category for his ultra-personal The Fabelmans.

Best Actress: Cate Blanchett, TÁR

God bless Andrea Riseborough for adding some genuine excitement to this category. I'm so glad she's in here, but I don't think she can win. All the love for EEAAO could sweep the fabulous Michelle Yeoh to a surprise win, but I defy anyone to experience Cate Blanchett's spectacular work in TÁR and not check off her name.

Check out Joey Nolfi's predictions here.

Banshees of Inisherin's Kerry Condon on the movie's timeliness: 'Nowadays people are ghosting each other left, right, and center'

By Christian Holub

Billed as an epic reunion of In Bruges' Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson, The Banshees of Inisherin is loaded with rich dialogue and verbal sparring. But its most compelling performance may belong to 40-year-old Irish actress Kerry Condon. As Siobhán, the long-suffering sister of Pádraic (Farrell), Condon is a disruptive presence to the masculine power dynamics that dominate the social life of her small island (where the gunshots of the Irish Civil War are always ringing in the background). Reached by EW over the phone, Condon, now an Oscar nominee for Best Supporting Actress, reflected on her years-long working relationship with writer-director Martin McDonagh and why a movie about loneliness and spite has resonated so much in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: You've worked with McDonagh before on several of his plays. What are the differences between acting in his plays versus acting in his films?

KERRY CONDON: Strangely enough, there wasn't that much of a difference in terms of his direction and stuff. There was never "look left into the camera." I never was aware of the camera. All of the notes that I was given on my performance were completely acting-based, like I was doing a play. I know that he had done his storyboards and planned all those shots and everything, but I was never aware of those conversations.

In plays, you do have to think about the timing of the lines. When you know something's going to get a laugh, there's a timing aspect to it — you can't come in too quick with your next line. So on this, I remember thinking, "I know this is a stupid question, but we're not supposed to pause right?" In a play, you know to tell yourself, "Wait…" and then three-quarters of the way through the laugh, then you can come in with your next line so the audience doesn't miss it. So in this, it was so weird for me. So I said, "Well then, what happens if they miss the line?" And he was like, "Then they're just gonna have to watch the movie twice!"

Many of your scenes are with Colin Farrell. You two have worked together before — did that help build this sibling relationship?

I've known Colin since I was very young, since I was a teenager, really, so I could approach him. There was a history there, and an ease that might have taken longer to get if I hadn't met him before. But also, I'm very close to my own brother, and Colin has a sister he's very close to, so there were many similarities. We talked about why we're so close to them and what it is about our siblings that connects us to them.

And then we got a lot of rehearsal time too. We went to the house a little bit earlier than everybody else to just be in the space and rehearse scenes together. I remember there was one rehearsal where, even though I was so focused on my own stuff, I broke character and I laughed at something Colin had said in character. It was just so funny. And I remember him going, "Oh, thank God, I made her laugh! I feel like I'm doing it right. That's the first time you've laughed at something I've done!" So yeah, it was just a fun dynamic.

You, Colin, Brendan Gleeson, and Barry Keoghan have all been Oscar-nominated for your performances — and it's the first nomination for each of you. How has it felt to all be on that journey together?

It's so amazing, especially that it was their first nominations too. In the lead-up, I couldn't even say "Oscar." I was just like, "Don't jinx it! Don't even talk about it!" So I never thought about it, good, bad, or indifferent, because I was so afraid to talk about it.

It's such a big deal for everyone in Ireland. Everyone's so proud of the movie. And then there are other Irish nominations too: The Quiet Girl, [Aftersun's] Paul [Mescal], and then Jessie [Buckley] is in Women Talking [nominated for its adapted screenplay and in Best Picture]. So it's just a really positive time for everybody in Ireland, especially after COVID. To be nominated is something I have wanted my whole life, but to be nominated for an Irish film and an Irish role just feels really special.

Speaking of Ireland, what was it like filming on location? Those islands look so beautiful, but one can also understand how Siobhán might become sick of the terrain after a certain point.

Interestingly enough, there were two islands we shot on. The first island was Inishmore, and that was where we shot all the stuff in the house. It was also where we shot a lot of the outdoor stuff, like Colin walking the cows along the road. That was the very beginning of the shoot. So that also helped with the brother-sister dynamic: Because of the schedule, me and Colin did all our scenes together in the first three weeks. That created this foundation of, like, "This is their family life," and we got into a great routine. We had our changing rooms in the morning, and we're in the middle of nowhere, so obviously we're getting changed in a tent. We'd run our lines through the wall of the tent, and we had a routine going that was really helpful. So that island to me really represented all the stuff in the script that's innocent and sweet, because it was a beautiful island. It felt so spiritual, and I lived in this cute little house with these cats — outdoor cats, but they were indoor cats by the time I left the house. There was a gorgeous beach. The nature was just so healing and beautiful.

Then we went to the second island. There was a sadness leaving that house, like "Oh, I'm never going to be in this house again." It was all the pub scenes on the second island, which is basically the breakup, and then I was dealing with the stuff in the town: "No wonder no one likes you" and all those sad parts. The second island was a little bigger, and also the weather started to change a little bit. The waves were really angry, it was like a dial turned, and you started to think, "Oh, I can see why it might be a little hard to be isolated on an island." It starts to close in on you a little bit. So the two islands played out exactly the way the script does, funnily enough.

Siobhán does get away from the island, and makes it to the Irish mainland. It seems like she has maybe the happiest ending, while Colin, Brendan, and Barry's characters all end up trapped in their lives and their feuds to various degrees. How do you feel about where her story ends?

I like to think that she has a romance at some point in her life. I mean, I hope so. Maybe it doesn't even last forever, but I like to think she has a little moment of something like that. But I don't think she returns to the island, and I really hate to admit it, but I don't think she ever sees Pádraic again.

I think she probably writes him, but I don't think they probably ever see each other again. I imagine that he just becomes this lonely, weird person who is in his house with his animals and doesn't really go to the pub anymore. Maybe other people ask, "Who's that weird fella?" And they're like, "Oh, he used to have friends, but they had this weird falling out, and nobody really talks to him." And that's the way his life goes, stuck in his stubbornness and hurt.

It's heartbreaking how Colm splits with Pádraic because he's sick of his attitude — but he was really a sweet guy, even if he was annoying or talked about nothing sometimes. And then by the end he's become this darker, violent person.

Listen, this is what people need to be thinking about, that you can f--- somebody up with the way you treat them. You can really alter somebody's character with your bollocks. We need to be aware of the fact that when you're breaking up with somebody or you're moving on, that you just need to be f---ing kind about it, because you can hurt people. Pádraic was a really sweet, innocent person and look at the way he ended up just because of the way Colm spoke to him. Nowadays people are ghosting each other left, right, and center. No one gives two f---s about how they're treating people anymore.

As soon as The Banshees of Inisherin hit HBO Max, the number of people I knew who were watching it increased exponentially. Now it's getting a further boost with all the award nominations. Why do you think the movie is resonating with people?

I feel like it's dealing with a universal topic. People in China can understand the feeling of breaking up with somebody the same as people in Ireland can. It's a universal feeling to be dumped or to need to dump somebody, be it a friendship or a relationship. It's the kind of thing that we all deal with.

But I also think it deals with other issues that people might've felt during COVID — questions like, What am I doing with my life? Am I just going to go along like this, paying bills and going to jobs and then I'm just going to die? I think there's a bit of that, but if it had been done without humor, I don't think it would've resonated so much. You would be like, "Oh, Jesus, a heavy movie to add to this heavy life!" But the fact that it's hilarious, you can digest those themes and those questions a little easier. This is why Martin's so brilliant: You're laughing and then you leave and you start to go, "Oh, my God, that was so moving."

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Related content:

• Adam Sandler recalls threatening to quit Airheads if Brendan Fraser wasn't cast
• Banshees of Inisherin cinematographer: 'Let's make it a John Ford Western'
• Close review: When boys grow apart