Adam Sandler has claimed that Brendan Fraser’s award-nominated role in George of the Jungle made Sandler “feel bad about” himself.
Fraser, who appeared alongside Sandler and Steve Buscemi in the 1994 musical comedy Airheads, played the titular character of George in the 1997 family comedy.
Sitting down together in conversation for Variety Studio’s newest episode of Actors on Actors, Sandler recalled the American-Canadian star leaving Airheads and going on to get “very jacked for George of the Jungle”.
“I was disappointed how good you looked in that. You weren’t supposed to do that to us,” the Hustle actor joked. “You were supposed to remain like us.”
Responding to Sandler, Fraser said: “The wardrobe was... there was no wardrobe. George wears a loincloth.”
“You did right by the character. But you did wrong by us, man. You made us feel bad about ourselves,” Sandler further quipped, before questioning if Fraser had been “oiled up at all during George”.
“I was waxed,” the Mummy star answered.
The 54-year-old Fraser revealed that at the time, he had been “starved of carbohydrates”.
“I would drive home after work and stop to get something to eat. I needed some cash one day, and I went to the ATM, and I couldn’t remember my PIN number because my brain was misfiring. Banging on the thing. I didn’t eat that night,” he remembered.
Currently, Fraser is making his Hollywood comeback in a completely different role.
Fraser plays Charlie, an obese and reclusive English teacher who struggles with disordered eating, in The Whale. His performance in the film has already made an impressive splash among critics.
In his four-star review, The Independent’s Geoffrey Macnab lauded Fraser’s performance as “one of those sad-eyed performances” that “many audiences will find very hard to resist”.
