Brendan Fraser is the talk of Hollywood right now. His role in Darren Aronofsky’s The Whale has already earned him a Golden Globe nomination and he’s expected to be in the Oscar hunt as well. But the role almost belonged to a very different actor as it seems that James Cordon was set to play the lead in a different version of the movie.
It’s far from uncommon for film scripts to go through many different hands on their way to the screen. Before Darren Aronofsky was set to direct The Whale, the project was in the hands of A Single Man and Nocturnal Animals director Tom Ford. According to Deadline, Ford didn’t have the level of control over the film that he wanted, and so he left, but if Ford had remained, The Whale would have starred the host of The Late, Late Show. The host and actor revealed…
I was going to play that part, and Tom Ford was going to direct.
Needless to say, The Whale would have been a very different sort of role for James Corden. Corden is almost exclusively a comedian and his film roles have fallen in line with that persona. He plays lighthearted and humorous characters, even in films that are not straight comedies.
Of course, Corden would be far from the first comedian to pick up a serious dramatic role that could have potentially changed the way audiences viewed him. We’ve seen actors known for comedy pick up Oscars when they shifted into serious drama and really impressed people with their ability to pull it off. Perhaps Corden was looking at The Whale as his way to do that. If so, we may see Corden in a serious dramatic role at some point in the future when the right part comes along for him.
There was also another notable director in between Ford and Aronofsky. Apparently George Clooney had expressed some interest in directing The Whale. The most interesting thing about that is that one of Clooney’s apparent requirements was that he wanted to cast an actual 600-lb unknown actor in the lead role. This reportedly was too difficult to accomplish, but it’s remarkable because the fact that this version of The Whale did not do that has been one of the major criticisms laid against it.
Maybe James Corden’s version of The Whale would have been great, perhaps it would have been better than the version we got. It’s one of those questions that we’ll never really have an answer for. However, Brendan Fraser is being praised for the performance he gave nearly universally, and he is almost certainly one person who is happy the role ultimately came his way.
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