Austin Abrams on surviving a whale's stomach and what comes next for the blockbuster star

It’s not an uncommon affliction, but it can be a little tricky when you’ve just starred in two back-to-back blockbusters and half of the internet is touting you as the next Timothée Chalamet.

The 30-year-old actor, who hails from Sarasota in Florida and has been acting since he was five, would really rather talk about anything else. Swimming, the geography of England, London traffic. But don’t worry — if he won’t tell you, I will.

Austin Abrams attends the world premiere of 20th Century Studios' film Whalefall

AFP/Getty

Abrams has been steadily stealing scenes for more than 10 years, having made a name for himself as troubled teen Ron Anderson in The Walking Dead (2014), then rambunctious teen Ben in Paper Towns (2015), then oddly astute teen son of Ben Stiller in Brad’s Status (2017), and finally the gentle teen love interest of Barbie Ferreira in Euphoria (2019).

Nearly a decade later, he’s finally graduating high school. Unfortunately, Adult Abrams is fighting for his life.

Earlier this summer, he played the central character in Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil reboot — Bryan, a medical courier who would really rather be chilling with his girlfriend than practising Self Defence for Dummies in a zombie apocalypse.

Austin Abrams recently starred in Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil reboot

Getty

And now he’s back on the survival thriller train with Whalefall, which sees him as reluctant scuba diver Jay, who would really rather not be inside the belly of the 80-foot sperm whale.

The role required weeks of filming inside a to-scale whale stomach, which was being pushed from the outside by the crew to mimic gestation. “I’d get back in my bed after shooting and close my eyes, and I would see the walls [of the stomach],” he says.

He is put through an almost laughable amount of pain in the film — including being bitten by a squid’s beak (who knew!), burned by stomach acid, and having his eardrums perforated by pressure.

But in the words of Cregger, Austin Abrams never complains. Instead, he revelled in the discomfort. “It ends up kind of having a toll on you, wearing on you, but you welcome that,” he says, “because it’s all just helpful.”

Abrams is looking for something a little more “seated” for his next role. He’s had any number of talented co-stars in his time — Ryan Gosling, Josh Brolin, George Clooney — but when choosing roles, it’s the words of Brad Pitt, with whom he worked on 2024’s Wolfs, that ring truest.

Austin Abrams and Josh Brolin star in Whalefall

PA

“He said: ‘You have to do the things that affect you and that you’re drawn to because that’s the best chance that you have that it’s gonna affect other people,’” he recalls.

It’s a good north star to follow, and with the way Abrams is going, Pitt or Chalamet-sized stardom could certainly be on the way. If only he didn’t have to talk about himself in the process.

Whalefall is in cinemas now

Whalefall

Imagine being swallowed alive by a sperm whale, with just an hour of oxygen left. That’s the nightmare facing Jay Gardiner, played by Austin Abrams, in Whalefall, a survival thriller directed by Brian Duffield and adapted from Daniel Kraus’s novel. Jay is diving off the California coast in search of his late father’s body (Josh Brolin — he appears in flashbacks) when a whale swallows him whole. Sounds completely mad.