Darren Aronofsky defends his decision to cast Brendan Fraser in ‘The Whale’ at the Toronto International Film Festival, saying the director was ‘in no way’ pressured by the studio to make the film the way he wanted.
Aronofsky was asked by Universal to make a fantasy set in a mythical island kingdom, and the ‘Noah’ director agreed to the offer ‘in the spirit of compromise.’
The film marks the first collaboration between the two, and is set for release on February 22, 2016. Aronofsky said while Fraser ‘had the right attitude’ to play the part, the decision to cast him was not ‘an easy one.’
‘It was a very tough decision because it was a character that I really wanted,’ he said on the red carpet at the Toronto International Film Festival on Friday (November 13).
Scroll down for video
Filmmaker Darren Aronofsky says he cast Academy Award winning actor Brendan Fraser to play the role of Noah in his upcoming fantasy film, The Whale
‘It was a very tough decision because it was a character that I really wanted. It was a character that I saw in Brendan. I saw in him the attitude and the sense of danger that you need for a protagonist that has no choice, no escape and a world that has to be conquered. We needed a very, very special kind of person to do that, and he was a perfect candidate for it.’
Aronofsky added that he didn’t have the opportunity to talk to Fraser about the role when he was working on the movie, but described the actor’s attitude as’very much in line’ with the character he was portraying.
‘So the first time we talked was actually kind of very, very early on, and then later on we did have a long discussion and I had a lot of questions to ask him, and then he had a lot of questions in response to the questions I had in response to him,’ he said.
It was then that Aronofsky decided he would accept the role. He said the cast for the film is ‘big, very big’ and will include many well-known actors, ‘but it won’t be one actor and his character that does it.’
On how he made the ‘perfect’ or ‘perfectly made up’ Noah, Aronofsky was