This year, The Whale by Darren Aronofsky generated a lot of hype for the correct reasons. As Charlie, a chubby and reclusive English professor seeking to patch fences with his estranged daughter Ellie, played by Sadie Sink, the film brought back Brenden Fraser to the big screen, where he offered a heartbreaking performance. The actors and director went into great detail about their roles in a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter.
The Whale follows Charlie who is ridden with guilt and is at severe risk of congestive heart failure. All he wants to do is to know he’s done at least one thing right in his life. This brings him to reconnect with his daughter, who agrees on the condition that Charlie helps her rewrite an essay for school. Fraser describes this as Charlie’s “redemption story.” When Sink was asked about whether her character is “good or evil” she said, “I don’t know, I think when I was filming I, definitely for the earlier scenes, I had moments like where I was, ‘Oh there’s some real, real darkness in her.’ You know there is, but I think it’s just developed over time coming from this great deal of pain that she’s in.”
She further explains, “And I think she has no idea who she is, she’s very insecure, I think.” She divulges about Ellie’s relationship with her estranged father saying, “…it’s this game that she’s become really good at playing that’s kind of a challenge for Charlie, but the thing about him is that he’s able to kind of see past all of it and I don’t want to ensure her that there’s a part of herself that he sees so clearly that I think is good, I think there’s good in her.”
