The Oscar campaign for The Whale brought Fraser through the full circuit of screenings, Q&As, and press engagements that distinguish the modern awards season. He was consistently gracious and open in his public appearances, willing to discuss the years away without dramatizing them, willing to talk about what The Whale had meant without reducing it to a simple redemption arc. He said, in various contexts, that the film had found him rather than the other way around — that Aronofsky’s call had come at a moment when he needed it, without knowing he needed it.
## March 12, 2023: The Dolby Theatre
The 95th Academy Awards ceremony was hosted by Jimmy Kimmel at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood. The evening’s nominees in the Best Actor category reflected the breadth of strong male performances in the 2022 film year: Austin Butler for Elvis, Colin Farrell for The Banshees of Inisherin, Paul Mescal for Aftersun, Bill Nighy for Living, and Brendan Fraser for The Whale.
The presenter for the award was, in a circumstance that felt right in its own way, former Best Actress winners Jessica Chastain and Halle Berry — two women who had navigated their own complex relationships with Hollywood’s recognition machinery and had arrived, eventually, at the podium themselves.
When Fraser’s name was called, he crossed the stage and embraced his girlfriend and manager Jeanne Moore and his sons, who were present, before making his way to the podium. He was visibly emotional before he had said a word.
He opened with the multiverse line — “So this is what the multiverse looks like!” — which landed as both a joke and something more, an acknowledgment that the specific configuration of the evening was, in fact, a reality he could not have predicted and that felt, in whatever sense, improbable.