Brendan Fraseris laying bare the real story behind the shower fight scene he had withMatt Damonin their 1992 movieSchool Ties.
“It was scary. It’s scary to do that,” Fraser toldHoward Stern. “And when you’re an actor and you’re starting off, you’re ambitious and game for pretty much anything. They say, ‘Jump,’ and you say, ‘How high?’ "
He continued, “I appreciated that this isn’t really for wow or a scintillating factor of going, ‘Hey, look at that. Naked people.’ The point of it was is that when Damon’s character says what he says about David, he just reveals who he is.”
“His anti-Semitism and his prejudice is stripped down naked, and it’sugly,” Fraser added. “And the door is locked and they fight over it like shaved apes that need to be pulled apart because they’ve run out of things to say to one another, and it just turns into an ugly knuckle-dusting fit.”
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Matt Damon and Brendan Fraser inSchool Ties(1992).John Seakwood/Paramount/Kobal/Shutterstock
Fraser was new to Hollywood when he landed the role in his early 20s, and said he was still getting used to its nuances — so much so that when he was asked to “test” for then-Paramount Pictures CEOSherry Lansingbefore he was offered the job, he told Stern, 69, he had no idea what that meant.
“In my naivete I thought it was, like, an exam or something like that,” he said.
But similar to breaking through in Hollywood, Fraser saidhis character in the movie justwanted to fit in.
“In this case, David wanted to be a part of this school,” he said. “He wanted the camaraderie, he wanted the glory that sport brought him. But it came at a cost, and the barrier was that he was Jewish, and their anti-Semitism kept him out.”
He added, “So for all that need of wanting to belong, I identified with that because I felt like I want to be a part of this Hollywood also.”
Brendan Fraser.The Howard Stern Show/Youtube
But since the world premiere of his latest movieThe Whaleat theVenice Film Festivalin September 2022, theOscar-nominated star has been treated tominutes-long standing ovationsand an outpouring of love for his performance, including asimilar response at the London Film Festivalin October 2022.
“Ijust broke out crying. That solved all the problems,” Fraser said onLate Night with Seth Meyerslast month about the reception, going on to joke about the varying reports of how long the applause has lasted, “I think it depends on who’s holding the stopwatch, to tell you the truth.”
He added, “I feel like I’m still waiting for someone to walk in andtell me that the jig is up, you know.”
source: people.com
