{"id":220182,"date":"2025-10-17T16:32:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-17T16:32:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/220182\/"},"modified":"2025-10-17T16:32:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-17T16:32:08","slug":"rental-family-helped-him-overcome-insecurity-struggle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/220182\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Rental Family’ Helped Him Overcome Insecurity Struggle"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tBrendan Fraser<\/a> got vulnerable at a Q&A following a London screening of his new film \u201cRental Family<\/a>,\u201d telling the audience that making the project helped him overcome persistent self-doubt.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI struggle with insecurity, and to make this film, it reminded me that I\u2019m good enough, and I always was all along,\u201d Fraser said. \u201cWhy am I giving myself such a hard time? It\u2019s there.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFraser won the best actor Oscar in 2023 for \u201cThe Whale.\u201d His comment came at the end of an emotional panel discussion about \u201cRental Family,\u201d which has been selected for the Toronto, London and Tokyo Film Festivals. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cRental Family\u201d follows Fraser\u2019s character Philip Vanderplug, an outsider adrift in Tokyo who becomes entwined in Japan\u2019s \u201crental family\u201d industry, where people hire stand-ins to play relatives or companions.<\/p>\n

\n\tDirector and co-writer Hikari explained that the project emerged from a job listing discovery during the pandemic. \u201cMy co-writer Stephen Blahut was randomly looking for a job in Tokyo, and he found a job such as rental family,\u201d Hikari said. \u201cI\u2019m Japanese. I know nothing about the rental family business.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe concept resonated as a way to explore modern isolation. \u201cPandemic really gave us distance,\u201d Hikari noted. \u201cThere\u2019s not really much of a connection in between.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe cast brought deeply personal perspectives to the film\u2019s themes of loneliness and displacement. Takehiro Hira<\/a>, who plays a workaholic with a void in his life, drew on his own experience as a student abroad. \u201cI went to the States when I was 15, and I spent many days, and Christmas nights, sitting all by myself in the room, like Philip was sitting on the bed,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen I saw the film for the first time, that was a scene that made me cry.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tMari Yamamoto connected her character\u2019s journey to her own childhood displacement. \u201cI moved to the U.K. from Japan when I was 5 and spent three years there, and then became completely bilingual. Thought I was British, and then went back to Japan again, and I found myself still apologetic,\u201d she said. The experience of feeling like an outsider informed her portrayal of a former actor who finds purpose in the rental family business. \u201cPeople want connection, but they feel meaning in being useful to somebody. And I think that\u2019s what really drives her.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFraser praised his young co-star Shannon Gorman, calling her \u201ca genuine article\u201d despite this being her first film. \u201cShe has an ability to express herself with an emotional bandwidth that is astonishing,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\n\tLegendary actor Akira Emoto\u2019s character explores mortality and memory loss. Through a translator, he described the role as finding \u201crichness in life\u201d even within loneliness, noting that \u201cloneliness, is it something bad? I believe it\u2019s not necessarily a bad thing, it\u2019s not necessarily a negative thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe production took five years to complete, weathering the pandemic and industry strikes before filming could begin in Tokyo.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Brendan Fraser got vulnerable at a Q&A following a London screening of his new film \u201cRental Family,\u201d telling…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":220183,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[42413,49,48,361,75,69239,69257,70597],"class_list":["post-220182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-brendan-fraser","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-rental-family","tag-takehiro-hira","tag-tokyo-international-film-festival"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=220182"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220182\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/220183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=220182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=220182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=220182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}