Fraser Dishes on Mummy Sequel

ByABC News
February 23, 2001, 7:39 PM

February 23 -- Brendan Fraser may be battling an animated primate in his newest film, Monkeybone, but his mind is already focused on the deathly creatures he'll fight in next summer's Mummy sequel. The versatile actor sat down with Mr. Showbiz to shine a torch on the tomb-raiding project's inner workings.

"Once again, Rick O'Connell is on the treasure trail one last time!" Fraser joked about his Mummy character, who's a real soldier of fortune. "The formula in Hollywood when you do a sequel is to remake the first one, and we're upping the ante."

The Mummy Returns picks up 10 years after time period covered in the 1999 hit. "At the top of the film, we're in 3,000 B.C. [in] Egypt," Fraser explains. "And we meet a warrior, played by Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson, who angers a great god, Nubis, the god of war. He's given the mummy treatment and sucked into the earth in a pyramid oasis.

"Anyone who comes there, their souls are captured. So it's this mystical place where no one has ever found or ever come out alive," the floppy-haired actor says, grinning. "At the end, Rock arrives as Scorpion Man."

As for his popular World Wrestling Federation co-star who didn't have to pin anyone down to get this movie Fraser confesses, "We've yet to meet him; he was cyber-scanned [for his appearance]. But he was in Morocco before I arrived, and everyone knew him: The Rock and the flock."

When The Mummy Returns arrives next summer, Fraser will be getting ready to walk the boards of London's West End in a revival of Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. He'll be playing tortured alcoholic Brick opposite his Bedazzled love interest, Frances O'Connor.

"When you get asked to play Brick," Fraser reckoned of the role made famous by Paul Newman in the '50s, "you don't want at 83 to say, 'I turned it down.' I happen to identify with many aspects of the play and find it very moving. It's a piece of theater audiences flock to attend."