“I missed playing Rick and that last seven years I’ve been waiting for the call,” jokes Brendan Fraser of his return to the Mummy franchise. The new action flick, The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, finds Fraser’s Rick O’Connell living a quiet retired life with his wife Evelyn. Their son Alex has left the nest and is following in the footsteps of his famous parents. When the twenty-something gets in over his head, there’s only one thing to do … call mom and dad.
Hollywood.com met up with Fraser in L.A. to find out what it was like reprising the role of O’Connell, working with a new leading lady and more.
Hollywood.com: Why was it important to you to get back into these shoes and revisit this?
Brendan Fraser: Why was it important? Because I wanted to do this, honestly, it's true. It's just really great stuff, fun stuff. Making these movies, they call it an action pic but it's actually, I am enjoying myself out there. And I wanted to see where these characters would go, knowing that they would be set in another archaeologically rich nation, in China.
HW: Was it an adjustment working with Maria Bello after working with Rachel Weisz on the first two films?
BF: I saw the script, out of habit, I'd worked with my friend Rachel on two pictures, you know you read the dialogue, you can hear her voice – I had an idea of what her choices are going to be. When I heard that she decided to step aside, I would feel her absence no matter who stepped into the role. Screen testing, reading, meeting other actresses underlined in a way that a role is a role. You just step in and you do it, bring something new to it, and in this case what this picture has done is bring Maria Bello into that character [and] has allowed for a type of re-invention of the librarian cum expeditioner-ess to take – I think, to have a different run at what the dynamic of that couple is now.
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