Not a ton of people have seen The Whale; its box office after 11 weeks is a tiny fraction of Avatar: The Way of Water’s haul. But that hasn’t stopped the Brendan Fraserssance from rolling right along. The actor is in a tight race with Austin Butler and Colin Farrell for the Best Actor Oscar. He’s already won trophies and delivered moving speeches. And it’s got people, Fraser included, looking back at his past work. For instance, The Mummy? It’s come up a lot recently. To some it’s a fun movie that made his star ascend even higher than it had. For him, it’s a film on whose set he almost died.
Fraser recently swung by The Kelly Clarkson Show, where she brought up a scene in which his daring hero, Rick O’Connell, is nearly executed by hanging. For the scene he had a real rope tied around his real neck. After a take in which director Stephen Sommers felt Fraser’s reaction was insufficiently realistic, they tried again, this time with the crew member controlling the rope pulled it higher than he had before, leaving Fraser with “nowhere to go but down.”
And so the erstwhile George of the Jungle was nearly choked to death for real. “The next thing I knew, my elbow was in my ear, the world was sideways, and there was gravel in my teeth, and everyone was really quiet,” Fraser recalled to a gasping Clarkson.
After recovering — and not dying — Fraser received some news from a crew member. “Congratulations, you’re in the club!” they told him. “The same thing happened to Mel Gibson on Braveheart.”
Fraser has told the story before, including in 2019. But Clarkson’s reaction made it seem new all over again. You can watch the clip in the video above. The Whale is now in theaters while the 1999 The Mummy currently streams on Hulu.
(Via Page Six)
