Brendan Fraser has addressed his part in creating a traffic jam while filming George of the Jungle, 25 years ago.
The actor stars in the new Darren Aronofsky film The Whale, which marks his triumphant return to Hollywood after a long battle with depression. Prior to this, he also played the lead in the children’s comedy film George of the Jungle in 1997.
He starred as George who’d been abandoned in the jungle as a child and had been raised on the ways of the animals. Eventually, his burgeoning romance with a nature-exploring heiress led to him attempting a new life in San Francisco.
In a recent interview, Fraser looked back at his time making the Disney movie, and how the filming of a scene involving an accident on the city’s Bay Bridge resulted in undue media and authority attention.
“When we were doing George of the Jungle, George goes to rescue a parachutist tangled in the [Bay] Bridge,” Fraser told San Francisco publication, SFGATE.
“That means Disney put a mannequin hanging by a parachute from the uprights.”
With a presumed human in trouble, traffic then came to a standstill as authorities investigating the shocking scene tried to figure out what to do.
“My trailer was on the other side in a parking lot,” Fraser continued. “I just remember watching the [Bay] Bridge. There's this dummy parachutist hanging from it. I had the TV on, and Oprah got interrupted because there was a special news report with helicopters saying a parachute is dangling on the bridge.
He added: “And I'm going – wait a minute, I'm looking at the helicopters and TV – somebody didn't pull a permit, somebody's going to get in trouble with the mayor's office. So I can only apologise for that.”
Last week, Fraser became emotional when The Whale received a five-minute standing ovation at London Film Festival, after a similarly rapturous reception at the Venice Film Festival in September.
