Oscar season may have wrapped for the calendar year 2022, but Best Actor winner Brendan Fraser is still enjoying the fruits of his recent career labors. On Thursday evening, “The Whale” winner appeared at the Greenwich International Film Festival’s inaugural Inspiration Talk and award ceremony in Stamford, Connecticut where he was honored with the GIFF Inspiration Award “designed to honor artists who inspire others through their craft or philanthropic endeavors.”
As People reports, during a wide-ranging chat with broadcast journalist Hannah Storm, Fraser was characteristically open about what’s next. So, post-Oscars win, what does the Canadian actor have on the horizon? “At the moment, I don’t have anything — I’m really being picky right now,” Fraser said.
After a grueling (and often emotional) Oscar season spent stumping for Darren Aronofsky’s heart-wrenching drama and speaking candidly about his own personal connection to the material, Fraser has certainly earned a little respite.
But Fraser does have one film coming up soon, a little something called Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon,” which will premiere at the Cannes Film Festival later this month, before being released in select theaters on October 6 with a wide release on October 20. It will stream on Apple TV+ after that theatrical run.
“I will tell you that I’m excited to see it myself,” Fraser said of the new film. “We were working in really hot weather in Oklahoma, and I can’t oversell my participation in this film because it’s epic. There’s so many actors in this movie when you see it. I’ll arrive for a scene or two at the end.”
The film also stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro, Lily Gladstone, Jesse Plemons, Scott Shepherd, Pat Healy, Tantoo Cardinal, Cara Jade Myers, JaNae Collins, Jillian Dion, William Belleau, Louis Cancelmi, Tatanka Means, Michael Abbott Jr., Gary Basaraba, and Grammy Award-winning musicians Jason Isbell and Sturgill Simpson.
Of working with Scorsese, even in a small role, Fraser was effusive. “It’s like my fantasies fulfilled at what it’s like to be in a Renaissance master’s studio,” he said. “Think about that. Somebody who has all the knowledge, hands down and surrounded by people who are so talented and enthusiastic for his vision. … The work that we did was kind of being in an opera or a play because it was happening in real time.”
“Killers” is Scorsese’s follow-up to his 10-time Oscar nominee “The Irishman” and his first collaboration with Apple Films. The film brings the lauded director into the Western genre for the first time and reunites him with some of his most prolific actors and crafts collaborators (yes, of course, Thelma Schoonmaker is editing). Read more about the project right here.
