Actor Brendan Fraser has been the talk of Tinsel Town since the release of his latest film “The Whale” — and according to his “Airheads” co-star and friend Adam Sandler, it couldn’t be happening to a nicer guy.
Sandler, who recently took home a Performer Tribute Award at the Gotham Awards, is also generating Oscar buzz around his latest Netflix offering, “Hustle.” But when asked about Fraser at a press event for the basketball dramedy, the comedian had nothing but the highest praise for his former co-star.
“He’s just so smart, such a deep guy, and he’s such a loving sweetheart. We’ve been talking a lot lately and I couldn’t be happier for him,” Sandler said of his friend. “His performance, I saw [‘The Whale’], is ridiculous. He’s always been great, he’s always been as deep as it gets. When we were doing ‘Airheads,’ he was on a different trip than all of us.”
“Airheads,” released in 1994, featured Fraser and Sandler — along with actor Steve Buscemi — as bandmates who inadvertently create a hostage situation at a radio station. Armed with water pistols full of hot sauce, they interrupt a broadcast and demand that an insolent deejay (Joe Mantegna) play their demo tape on the air.
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The movie bombed — raking in negative reviews and less than $6 million at the box office — but Sandler said that Fraser had been so fully committed to the role that he wasn’t the least bit surprised to see the arc his career followed afterward.
“He really took [‘Airheads’] serious, he took everything about the full growth of his character and his look and what each line meant. He was never messing around. The fact that he got to make ‘The Whale,’ and a bunch of great movies over the years, but the fact that it’s at such a great crescendo for him right now is not a shock.”
“The Whale” marks a comeback of sorts for Fraser, who spent some time away from the spotlight after years of doing his own stunt work took a toll on him physically. Fraser also made headlines in 2018 when he accused former Hollywood Foreign Press Association President Philip Berk of touching him inappropriately years earlier.
“I felt ill. I felt like a little kid. I felt like there was a ball in my throat. I thought I was going to cry,” Fraser said, recounting the incident and noting that he had essentially disappeared from Hollywood life in that aftermath.