Brendan Fraser has been gaining plenty of praise over the last few weeks for his performance in The Whale. Someone who has been a champion of Fraser’s is Dwayne Johnson, and Fraser says that The Rock’s support of him is “really nice” and at the same time recalled how he never met Johnson while filming The Mummy Returns.
While the careers of Fraser and Johnson have gone in very different directions since they “worked together” on The Mummy Returns, both actors are currently hot properties in Hollywood for very different movies. While Fraser is being tipped for a number of awards for his role in The Whale, Johnson is ripping up the DCEU with Black Adam, which may not be winning over the critics right now but is guaranteed to make a big impact on the box office. Due to Johnson being on his promotional trail for Black Adam, he was not personally in attendance at Variety’s New York Party Wednesday night, but when his name was brought up to Fraser, the actor explained how they first met. Fraser said:
“I thought that was really nice of him. The first time I met him was at the reception after The Mummy Returns, and we hadn’t met in person before that actually although we were fighting on screen. Every time I worked with him, he was just a piece of tape on a stick, so it was nice to go hey man how are you? We finally meet.”
How Did Batgirl’s Cancelation Impact Brendan Fraser’s Comeback?
While Brendan Fraser is gaining plenty of accolades for his dramatic role in The Whale, his fun villain role in the canceled DC movie Batgirl is one that his fans will never get to see. The actor, who was set to portray Firefly in the movie, recently called the decision to scrap Batgirl as “tragic.” Even though it is clear that he found the experience of filming the movie really enjoyable, part of that enjoyment seemed to be down to his co-star Leslie Grace, who he has heaped praise on. He said in a previous interview:
“It’s tragic. It doesn’t engender trust among filmmakers and the studio. Leslie Grace was fantastic. She’s a dynamo, just a spot-on performer. Everything that we shot was real and exciting and just the antithesis of doing a straightforward digital all green screen thing. They ran firetrucks around downtown Glasgow at 3 in the morning and they had flamethrowers. It was a big-budget movie, but one that was just stripped down to the essentials.”
Although losing Batgirl was a blow for Fraser, it certainly hasn’t caused him to lose his moment in Hollywood, which only seems to be set to continue on with an array of other movies already in the works, such as Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon. For now though, Fraser is certainly enjoying his newfound success, which has included numerous standing ovations for The Whale as it has played at many festivals ahead of its theatrical release in the U.S. on December 9.