Brendan Fraser Reveals Why He Never Spoke With Dwayne Johnson During Making Of The Mummy Returns

Brendan Fraser has never met Dwayne Johnson despite sharing scenes with him in The Mummy Returns.

During his appearance on The Drew Barrymore Show, Fraser shared that he and The Rock never crossed paths on the set of the 2001 sequel to The Mummy: Johnson's character, The Scorpion King, a half-man, half-scorpion creature, was added in later via CGI. 

"I happen to be really good at it, you know why?" said Fraser, 54. 

"Because in The Mummy Returns, Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson was just a piece of tape on a stick."

(Fun fact: Johnson was also unavailable — due to his wrestling commitments — for the special effects team to have his face photographed in high detail, which probably the infamous Scorpion King sequence in the movie's final act.) 

It happened to Fraser again on the set of 2003's Looney Tunes: Back in Action, where he shared the screen with Daffy Duck. 

However, he explained: "When I did Looney Tunes: Back in Action, there was a Daffy Duck puppeted by Bruce Lanoil and it helped so much for your eyelines.

"You can interact with one another, which made perfect sense, and also I have bragging rights, to having worked with Daffy Duck properly in the flesh."

Fraser previously admitted that he has always made "diverse choices", from his breakthrough role in 1997's George of the Jungle to the current The Whale, which won him Best Actor at Sunday's (Jan 15) Critics' Choice Awards. 

"I'm always making diverse choices, and, hopefully, that keeps me and an audience interested," he told Entertainment Weekly last month. 

"With a bit of distance, I think they've all cumulatively led up to the place I'm in now."

In that interview, Fraser also explained he sat out on the direct-to-video follow-up George of the Jungle 2, with the main role recast with Christopher Showerman. 

He explained: "I think George got a remake, and they built a joke into it that the studio was too cheap to hire me, which wasn't inaccurate.

"I was approached. I can't remember what I was doing at the time, but I felt like I wanted to go do The Quiet American' instead with Michael Caine, and shoot the first Western film in Vietnam ever, directed by Phillip Noyce, to tell an infinitely American story."

Watch Fraser on The Drew Barrymore Show here: 

The Whale (M18 ) is now in cinemas. — BANG SHOWBIZ

Photos: TPG News/Click Photos

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