He later recalled his thinking: no one was really thinking about Brendan Fraser at that moment, in terms of major dramatic film casting. The inattention of the industry, in Aronofsky’s framing, was part of what made Fraser’s particular kind of talent available for this particular project. The story of a director going looking and finding someone whom the mainstream industry had stopped looking at has its own resonance.
Aronofsky reached out. The offer was made and accepted. Fraser was cast in January 2021.
The preparation involved more than physical transformation. Fraser researched the role by speaking with members of the Obesity Action Coalition, listening to the experiences of people with severe obesity, trying to understand what the physical and emotional reality of living in a body of that size involved. The research was part of the production’s commitment to the film’s humanity — to the insistence that Charlie was not a condition but a person, that the camera’s attention to his body was not voyeurism but witness.
The prosthetics necessary to create Charlie’s physical appearance were, by any measure, extraordinary. The suit added up to 300 pounds to Fraser’s own frame, depending on the scene — Aronofsky said the range was 50 to 300 extra pounds across different sequences, as different aspects of Charlie’s physicality were emphasized. At the start of production, the makeup and prosthetics process required five to six hours each day. By the end of the shoot, the team had refined the process to two to three hours. Fraser wore the suit throughout filming. He described it as “cumbersome, not exactly comfortable.” His mobility was significantly restricted — several crew members were always available to help him stand, sit, and navigate the roughly seventy steps between the studio and the makeup room.