Austin Abrams spent 5 weeks filming inside a 9-foot whale stomach he couldn’t stand up in. After Whalefall and a Resident Evil shoot that followed it straight away, his next-role wish is “a sitting part. Something in a chair.”
In Brian Duffield’s Whalefall, which opened Oct. 16, Abrams plays Jay, a diver who goes looking for his father’s remains and ends up inside a sperm whale. Josh Brolin plays his father.
“There were a lot of sphincters. It was sticky, squishy,” Abrams said of the shoot. On days when Jay was supposed to look especially distressed, the effect carried beyond the set: “I remember walking around the lot during that time and having security called on me just because I looked so fucked up.”
Abrams went from that production to Prague to play Bryan, a courier, in Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil. He gained weight for the role without being asked. He’d also played James in Cregger’s Weapons.
Duffield ranked the whale shoot as the tougher job, pointing out that Resident Evil at least allowed Abrams to move his arms and legs. Abrams’s response: “You said it, not me.”
Abrams says the filmmakers draw him to these roles. “It’s who’s making it,” he said of what he seeks out, adding, “but I do love the intensity.” His family would prefer that his characters “died less.”
