Actor Brendan Fraser had never heard of a Japanese “rental family” service before working on the comedy-drama film “Rental Family.”
“I had no idea that such a place was existent. But as it goes, they’ve been around since the ’80s,” Fraser said, referring to the professional stand-in service that provides clients with actors who can portray family members or friends at weddings and other events and also offers platonic companionship.
“Mental health issues are stigmatized no matter where you go,” said Fraser, the American-Canadian who won the best actor Oscar for his role in the 2022 film “The Whale.”
However, he emphasized that mental health issues often go unaddressed in Japan, and so he thought that a rental family service serves a purpose there.
In the film, Fraser portrays an actor named Phillip Vandarploeug, the only non-Japanese person at his “rental family” workplace in Japan, who pretends to be a little girl’s real-life father to help her get into a prestigious school.
While Phillip is hired by the girl’s mother, the girl – played by Shannon Mahina Gorman – has no idea that an actor has been hired as her temporary father.
Phillip also takes on different roles playing husbands, fathers, best friends and even a journalist for a dried-up celebrity.
Fraser, who is also an executive producer of the film, speaks beginning-level Japanese in the movie. But in real life, his proficiency is not even at that level, he said. While in Japan, he said he used a translation machine and that he once told a waitress he was having his period, rather than that he wanted to order a coffee.
“I made the effort,” he said.
Actor Mari Yamamoto, who plays a fellow agency worker named Aiko, said that when her friends and family watched the movie at the Tokyo Film Festival, they could hear only sniffling and laughter in the theater – which she took as a good sign.
“Japanese people don’t scream at a Beyonce concert, so I just have to let you know it’s really hard to read, so I think a little sniffling meant it was incredible. That’s how I interpret it,” she added.
“Rental Family,” distributed by Searchlight Pictures, arrives in theaters on November 21.
