Looking back at the experience she had shooting her upcoming film Batgirl for HBO Max, in which she plays the title DC Comics superhero character, there were plenty of moments that actress Leslie Grace could point to that she will remember fondly.
One of them was getting the opportunity to share the set with an actor like Brendan Fraser (No Sudden Move), who plays Firefly, the film’s main villain. “It was an incredible learning experience to be on set with…action veterans like Brendan Fraser and soak it all up,” Grace told Variety. “It was so hard because he’s our villain, and I’m not supposed to like him, but he’s such a huge teddy bear. He is one of the nicest people that I’ve ever met.”
Grace said she and Fraser got a chance to mix it up a lot during their more physically demanding scenes. “I had to summon up some things in me that I didn’t even know were there,” she said. “In our fight sequences the way [Fraser] would just hit marks, it came from all of his experience. You can’t improvise that kind of experience. There’s some crazy stuff that happens. There’s lots of fire because as everyone knows by now, he plays Firefly. There’s crazy fire.”
Batgirl will be only the fourth live-action film Fraser has starred in over the last nine years. During a 2018 interview with GQ magazine, he talked about how physical injuries from stunt work through the years, the death of his mother, and being a victim of sexual assault led to him disappearing from the public eye. Now, however, Fraser is working towards a real comeback.
Along with Batgirl, Fraser is starring in the lead role of The Whale from Academy Award-nominated director Darren Aronofsky (Black Swan) and Killers of the Flower Moon from Academy Award-winning director Martin Scorsese (The Departed), among other projects.
Then, of course, there is the endless support Fraser has been receiving online from fans who love the fact that he has returned to acting and are rooting for him with every new role he lands.
Based on Leslie Grace’s experience on the set of Batgirl, it sounds like she’s ready for a “Brenaissance,” too.
