Actor Brendan Fraser has revealed what it’s like to reunite with Oscar winner Leonardo DiCaprio on director Martin Scorsese’s upcoming Western crime drama, Killers of the Flower Moon. Speaking with GQ, Fraser revealed what DiCaprio said to him when the pair came face-to-face once again after all these years, with Killers of the Flower Moon marking the first time that they had seen each other since DiCaprio was "17, 16 maybe" and starring in the powerful 1993 drama What's Eating Gilbert Grape.
"I think I had just been in School Ties or something then, and I was, like, flummoxed but I just wanted to tell him, Hear, hear. That was incredible. And he repeated that to me. He remembered me. He said: 'You were the only guy who didn’t treat me like a little kid. He volunteered that to me. That was meaningful."
After suffering in his personal life and being away from screens for years, Fraser is enjoying his much-celebrated comeback and explained what it was like to be on a set with both Leonardo DiCaprio and seminal director Martin Scorsese.
“I was fantasizing that I felt like one of the apprentices in Michelangelo’s workshop.”
Directed by Martin Scorsese from a screenplay by Scorsese and Eric Roth, and based on the non-fiction book Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann, Killers of the Flower Moon will explore the real-life murders which took place in the Osage Nation in the 1920s after oil was discovered on tribal land. The incident sparked a major FBI investigation directed by a 29-year-old J. Edgar Hoover and former Texas Ranger Tom White, who will be played by Breaking Bad and The Irishman star Jesse Plemons.
The project finds DiCaprio starring as Ernest Burkhart, with Robert De Niro set to portray his uncle, William Hale. Brendan Fraser meanwhile stars as W.S. Hamilton, with the rest of the cast featuring Lily Gladstone, Tantoo Cardinal, and John Lithgow. Killers of the Flower Moon will be distributed by Paramount Pictures and Apple TV+ and is expected to premiere at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival in May 2023.
Brendan Fraser is the Academy Award Favorite for His Performance in The Whale
Brendan Fraser, who has seen his career reignited over the last few years, is now an Oscar favorite for his central performance in director Darren Aronofsky’s The Whale. Based on the 2012 play by Samuel D. Hunter, The Whale will find Brendan Fraser leading the latest outing from Darren Aronofsky as Charlie, a 600-pound middle-aged man who tries to reconnect with his 17-year-old daughter. The two have grown apart after Charlie abandoned his family for his gay lover, who later died, which leads to Charlie binge-eating out of pain and guilt.
Fraser recently declared that he will campaign for an Oscar, saying that he owes it to himself, his family, and the makers behind the movie to take his shot. “I owe it to myself. I owe it to the filmmakers. I know I owe it to those fans who paid to come and see me and stand in line in the sun and, you know, all of that. I owe it to my kids. This is my shot,” Fraser said.
Directed by Darren Aronofsky and written by Samuel D. Hunter, The Whale stars Sadie Sink, Hong Chau, Samantha Morton, and Ty Simpkins alongside Brendan Fraser, and is scheduled to be theatrically released in the United States on December 9, 2022, by A24.