As he reflects on his belly-heavy, oiled-up character George from the jungle – a striking contrast to his upcoming role as a morbidly obese English teacher in The whale – Brendan Fraser spoke about the physical toll the 1997 comedy was taking on his body.
Talking to his ex air heads co-star Adam Sandler for diversity “Actors over actors‘ series, Sandler pointed out that Fraser was ‘very jacked’ george of the jungle, this was a live-action parody Tarzan. He joked, “I was disappointed with how good you looked in it. You shouldn’t have done that to us.”
Fraser revealed to Sandler that “the wardrobe was there was no wardrobe,” adding that “George wears a loincloth.”
Sandler, who said Fraser “made us feel bad,” asked if the actor was “oiled” in the film. Fraser revealed that not only was he “waxed,” but he was also “carb-starved.”
“I was driving home after work and stopped to eat,” Fraser recalls. “One day I needed some cash and I went to the ATM and I couldn’t remember my pin number because my brain was freezing. Hit that thing. I didn’t eat anything that evening.”
What surprised Fraser early in the interview was when Sandler credited himself as the one who “discovered” him back when her 1994 musical comedy was still in the works. According to that hustlers star, he threatened to quit air heads when director Michael Lehmann was reluctant to hire Fraser for the role.
“I ended up going to his house at 4 a.m., waking him up and saying, ‘You have to know that Adam Sandler won’t be there air heads unless old Fraser’s with it,'” Sandler said. “So he changed his little tune.”
The actor later added, “You had a good life because of me.”