Posted in: Exclusive, Interview, Movies, Searchlight | Tagged: Rental Family

Rental Family: Brendan Fraser & Takehiro Hira on Building Connections

Rental Family stars Brendan Fraser (The Mummy) and Takehira Hira (Tokyo Vice) spoke to us about the film, Hikari, co-stars & more.

The premise of Rental Family might seem absurd on the surface since it involves an actor blurring the lines of reality, getting hired by clients to play a role in a loved one's life under false pretences, but this Hollywood-type of idea is a reality in Japan, with several hundred rental family agencies in service, creating plausible fantasies and enhancing lives in the process. Directed by Hikari and co-written by Stephen Blahut, the film follows Phillip Vandarplloeug (Brendan Fraser), an American actor living in Japan, who is struggling to make ends meet by taking on menial on-screen gigs. When Shinji (Takehiro Hira) presents him with a major opportunity at his rental family company, he accepts the job in hopes of breaking out of his complacency. One client is a single mother (Shino Shinozaki) who needs Phillip to pose as her child, Mia's (Shannon Gorman) biological father, to gain admission to a school. Another client hires him to be a companion for her elderly father and retired actor, Kikou (Akira Emoto), but tasks Phillip with keeping him sheltered. The Mummy franchise star and Tokyo Vice star spoke to Bleeding Cool about how familiar they were with the concept of rental family agencies, working with Hiraki, if they had trouble detaching from their roles as some rental family employees do during the film, their most memorable scenes, and working with Emoto and Gorman. The following contains minor spoilers.

Rental Family Stars Brendan Fraser and Takehiro Hira on Hikari's Empathy and Energy, How Production Problems Were Hidden Blessings

BC: Before taking on Rental Family, how familiar were you with the idea of the rental family, and what went through your mind when you were processing its concept?

Fraser: Zero. We didn't know what a rental family was until we read the script. Of course, we searched it a little bit further, and found out that they really exist…rental family agencies, and have been around since the 1980s.

Hira: They now have like 300 agencies.

Fraser: Probably more after this film comes out, right? It's good business.

What's it like working with Hikari as a creative?

Fraser: Ooh, you want to go first?

Hira: Yeah, she wants to try lots of different versions (of takes), and in lots of rehearsals, but she's a ball of fire in energy [laughs].

Fraser: Yeah, that's her namesake, right?

Hira: Yeah, light.

Fraser: Hikari means "light?"

Hira: Yeah.

Fraser: I found that to be true also. She has boundless positive energy, and she has…well, it's a gift, a talent for bringing out the best in other people and bringing them together to show their creative side in a very meaningful and touching way. At the same time, capture it with a camera so we can all enjoy a movie she's made.

Hira: Yeah. She's funny.

Fraser: Very funny.

As actors, did you have any roles that you had problems detaching from, like what Brendan's Phillip did with his clients, after production wrapped?

Fraser: Oh, detaching from? No.

Hira: Not really.

Fraser: Actors are pretty much the same around the world. "We're done? Okay. What's our next job?"

Hira: Don't look back.

Fraser: Yeah, keep going. Did we get it right?

Was there a scene that stood out to you most during production?

Fraser: I have one. I love the cherry blossom scene with Phillip and Mia on the bridge at the end. It's so visually splendid. You can see us surrounded by sakura right now, and it symbolises renewal and rebirth. I know what it took to get that shot, because they were delayed that year in filming, and that reshuffled our schedule. We had to move things around, but something good came out of that, which was that we had less time to think about what the scene was about, and just do it. When we found the bridge and the right amount of foliage, that's not a CGI moment, by the way. That's a favourite of mine. What's yours?

Hira: It was the funeral scene for me.

Fraser: Oh, which one?

Hira: The very last one, the second one [both laugh]. The real funeral. It was one of the first days, right? Wasn't it?

Fraser: It was early, yeah.

Hira: Yeah, it was really early, and then I guess we were shooting the wedding scene before something like that. It rained, and the next day, we were sure shooting the funeral scene, and it rained again. So, it's like, "Oh my god! But actually it was perfect."

Fraser: It was! We had to make a decision about whether to open the umbrellas with 50,000 extras, because once you open them…

Hira: It blocks out everything.

Fraser: On top of that, there's no going back. You have to match, but the film gods and weather smiled on us. I love that scene. It's really poignant.

Hira: Yeah.

Final question. Brendan, what was it like sharing scenes with a Japanese acting legend like Akira Emoto, and then someone who is an up-and-coming talent like Shannon Gorman?

Fraser: Privileged. Akira is a living treasure in Japan as an actor, a lovely guy, and he's in his 70s now. He has his own theatre in Tokyo, and he does something every day, every morning, whether it's reading from a manuscript written by a 15th-century Shogun who's actually just basically like a laundry list, a shopping list, or something. He'll do that every morning. That's how devoted he is to the craft. Years ago, I worked with Ian McKellen, whom I treasure and adore, and it was easy for me to make the connection between that relationship of being a devotee, a disciple of one, to the esteemed older, experienced actor.

Certainly, working with Shannon Gorman is terrific. She was a nine-year-old kid when we shot this, had not acted before, which is perfect. She was so good that we had to stop rehearsing with her, because we didn't want her to play her game in the locker room, if you know what I mean. Like, "Save it for the take"…we didn't tell her that, but she was just terrific. I mean, come on, perfect for the film too, because how can you not fall for this kid? She's looking for a father already, and then Phillip steps in as this surrogate dad, but then, of course, when the fantasy and the make-believe abut reality, that's where the movie really comes alive. I'm pretty sure that Akira Emoto's character, Kikuo, was onto Phillip the whole time.

Searchlight Pictures' Rental Family, which also stars Mari Yamamoto, is in theatres.

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