Fatsuit
A fatsuit, also known as a fat suit or a fat-suit, is a bodysuit-like undergarment used to thicken the appearance of an actress or actor of light to medium build into an overweight or obese character, in conjunction with prosthetic makeup. Fatsuits worn by characters are either deliberately visible or mainly concealed. Most are intended as unseen body padding beneath a costume (e.g., Rosemary Shanahan in Shallow Hal, and Sherman Klump in The Nutty Professor), others appear as realistic flesh and are viewed directly (e.g., Fat Bastard in Austin Powers, and Les Grossman's hands in Tropic Thunder). A fatsuit is often used to provide comedic effect, as in music videos for "Fat" by "Weird Al" Yankovic, "Marblehead Johnson" by The Bluetones, "Keine Lust" by Rammstein and "Way 2 Sexy" by Drake, and the episode "The Cooper Extraction" of The Big Bang Theory.
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Experience of obesity
Fatsuits may also be used to impart the experience of being obese to the wearer, not just the appearance of obesity to their audience. The suit in this case is weighted, as well as padded. Where the intention is to impart the experience of being seen as overweight in a community, its appearance must also be realistic and so a fatsuit rather than just a weight belt is needed. Several celebrities noted for their slimness have worn such garments and recorded their, and others', reactions as documentary of social attitudes to weight.[1]
In media
| Year | Program | Episode | Fat Suit Performer(s) | Synopsis |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1994–2004 | Friends | Numerous episodes | Courteney Cox as Monica Geller | Monica reminisces about the time when she was a 255lb teenager. Chandler calling her "fat" eventually encouraged her to lose weight. |
| 1994 | The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air | Season 5, Episode 11 | Will Smith as William "Will" Smith | Uncle Phil's personal trainer Susan Powter forces Will to wear a fat suit so he can experience what it is like to be obese. |
| 1996 | Marblehead Johnson | Music Video | The Bluetones, Mark Morriss | British band The Bluetones spend the day wearing rubber fat suits to rock out in the English countryside. |
| 1998 | Goosebumps | Season 3, Episode 18 | Patrick Thomas as Greg Banks | Greg finds the supernatural camera from Say Cheese and Die! and plans to use it for his failing English project. After a fight with his friend Shari, with them snapping a picture of each other, Greg wakes up the next morning to find that he has become fat. Shari, however, loses weight constantly. Greg gains more weight throughout the episode, growing fatter until his belly is exposed. Greg learns that he will explode and Shari will vanish if this is not set right. Shari and Greg go to his brother Terry to reverse the photos. Greg grows fatter still and nearly explodes when he and Shari are returned to normal.
During the episode, the skinny young 13-year-old actor is fitted with a full fat face prosthetic plus a padded fat suit when the boy becomes the fattest. |
| 1999 | Learn to Fly | Music Video | Dave Grohl, Taylor Hawkins | Dave and Taylor of the Foo Fighters dress up as a fat couple during the music video. |
| 2000 | Big Wolf on Campus | Season 2, Episode 12 | Danny Smith | Merton is fattened up by evil spider people who plan to eat him. Danny sports a 400-pound latex fat suit with huge rubber arms for the episode. |
| 2000 | Big Momma's House | Movie | Martin Lawrence as Malcolm Turner disguised as Hattie Mae Pierce (Big Momma) | |
| 2000–2001 | The Sopranos | Numerous episodes | Steve Schirripa as Bobby Baccalieri | For his first two seasons on the show, Schirripa wears a fat suit to better fit the role.[2] |
| 2001 | America's Sweethearts | Movie | Julia Roberts as Kathleen "Kiki" Harrison | Only in the flashbacks does she wear the fatsuit. She has "lost 60 pounds" in the present day scenes. |
| 2001 | Friends | Season 7, Episode 16 | Matt LeBlanc as Joey Tribbiani | Chandler learns that Monica was actually planning on sleeping with Joey the night they first got together. This leads to Monica wondering what would her life have been like if she was with Joey. In the next scene Monica is cooking much food and calls Joey. Joey comes out of the bedroom to the table now being morbidly obese. Monica has to help him reach the table where he states his favorite food is "fried stuff with cheese". |
| 2001 | Shallow Hal | Movie | Gwyneth Paltrow as Rosemary Shanahan | Hal Larson Jack Black has a history of dating only women who are physically attractive. Tony Robbins (playing himself) convinces Hal to see the inner beauty in women, which convinces him obese Rosemary has the same physical attractiveness Hal is really looking for. |
| 2001 | Love on a Diet | Movie | Andy Lau as Fatso, Sammi Cheng as Mini Mo | Andy Lau and Sammi Cheng both play obese characters. |
| 2002–2003 | Mi Gorda Bella | telenovela and numerous episodes | Natalia Streignard as Valentina Villanueva Lanz / Bella de la Rosa | |
| 2002–2008 | Monk | Numerous episodes | Adam Arkin, Tim Curry and Ray Porter as Dale The Wale | Dale Biederbeck is a client and antagonist of Mr. Monk. He used to weigh over 900lbs but slimmed down to 800lbs in the first episode. |
| 2004 | Fat Albert | Movie | Kenan Thompson as Fat Albert | |
| 2004 | Little Britain | Numerous episodes | Matt Lucas as Bubbles DeVere and David Walliams as Desiree DeVere | |
| 2004 | That '70s Show | Season 6, Episode 8, "I'm a Boy" | Topher Grace as Eric Forman | Eric imagines his life as a super obese guy. |
| 2005 | Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps | Series 5, Episode 8 | Will Mellor as Gaz Wilkinson | Six months after splitting up with Donna, Gaz now weighs more than 18 stone (the maximum weight on his scales). He started to eat junk-food to fill the hole in his life and claims the lack of sex cause his weight to balloon. He eventually loses all the excess fat by three months of excessive masturbation. |
| 2005 | Rammstein's Keine Lust | Music Video | Rammstein | Members of Rammstein headbang in full body fat suits in an abandoned warehouse in the music video. Each member wore prosthetics and a fat suit, except for Flake who opted to stay skinny. Till had the added bonus of also donning rubber fat arms. |
| 2006 | Click | Movie | Adam Sandler as Michael Newman | Michael Newman is fast-forwarded to 2017 where he is finally CEO, but now a 400lb junk-food addict who cannot stop eating Twinkies. He eventually has numerous liposuctions and tummy tucks after hitting his head and have a heart attack during chemotherapy. |
| 2006 | Jamie's Return to School Dinners | TV ad | Jamie Oliver | Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver dons a full prosthetic fat suit and slip on fat hands in a series of ads to promote his TV special Jamie's Return to School Dinners. During the ads, Jamie chows down on junk food, breaks a moped, and misses the bus while in the suit. The extras in the commercials are also overweight, and many of them, including several school children, also wear latex fat suits. |
| 2006 | 200 Pounds Beauty | Movie | Kim Ah-joong as Hanna Kang | Hanna Kang is a kind-hearted young woman with a beautiful voice but is hindered by a less than beautiful outer appearance, which includes being severely overweight. Not being able to profit from her voice in the forefront, Hanna settles for working as a ghost singer and phone sex worker until getting heart broken. She goes into hiding where she endures extensive plastic surgery and exercise. Hanna later returns as her new identity “Jenny”; a beautiful, slender, Korean-American woman. |
| 2007 | Hairspray | Movie | John Travolta as Edna Turnblad | |
| 2007 | Norbit | Movie | Eddie Murphy as Rasputia Latimore | Rasputia Latimore is the morbidly obese wife of Norbit who will do anything to stop him from leaving her. |
| 2007 | To Be Fat like Me | TV film | Kaley Cuoco as Alyson | Aly, a thin young woman convinced that her overweight brother and mother use their weight as an excuse for their problems in life, attends a summer course wearing a fatsuit in order to film a documentary. |
| 2008 | Tropic Thunder | Movie | Tom Cruise as the middle-aged hot-headed studio executive Les Grossman | |
| 2008 | My Big Love | Movie | Sam Milby as Macky Cordova | |
| 2009 | How I Met Your Mother | Season 5, Episode 7 | Neil Patrick Harris as Barney Stinson | After finally getting into a relationship, Barney stops caring about how he looks and eventually gains a lot of weight. He then would rather eat than make-out with his girlfriend. He loses the weight after eventually breaking up with her. |
| 2009 | M.I. High | S03E06 "Fit to Wurst" | Jonny Freeman as Frank | A mystery meat transforms Frank into an obese man. Jonny Freeman dons a fat suit and prosthetic mask during the episode. |
| 2010 | Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1 | Movie | Harry Melling as Dudley Dursley | Harry Melling who had lost so much weight needed to wear a fatsuit in order to portray the role of Dudley Dursley in the movie since his last appearance in the role. |
| 2010–2011 | Llena de amor | telenovela | Ariadne Díaz as Marianela Ruiz y de Teresa Pavón de Sevilla / Victoria de la Garza Montiel (numerous episodes) Valentino Lanús as Emanuel Sevilla Pérez (episode 202) Azela Robinson as Fedra Curiel / Juana Felipa Pérez Fernández "La Reina" (episode 202) | |
| 2010 | Private Practice | Season 4, Episode 10 "Just Lose It" | Brett Delbuono as Justin Tanner | Young teen actor Delbuono wears a huge latex fat suit (face, neck, arms, exposed legs) to play a 500lbs+ boy with health problems. |
| 2011 | Thor | Movie | Ray Stevenson as Volstagg | Stevenson wore a fat suit for the role. |
| 2012 | Hot in Cleveland | Season 3, Episode 14 "Hot and Heavy" | James Patrick Stuart Wendie Malick as Colin and Victoria | Victoria and Colin don latex fat suits for a TV news expose. |
| 2017 | American Horror Story: Cult | Movie | Evan Peters as Jim Jones | Evan Peters wears a fatsuit and prosthetics to portray cult leader Jim Jones, although the real Jones was noticeably fatter than the actor portrayed him as. |
| 2014 | The Gifted | Movie | Anne Curtis as Zoe Tuazon/ Joey | |
| 2019 | Gotham | Season 5 | Robin Lord Taylor as Oswald Cobblepot/Penguin | In the series finale, Lord Taylor wears a fatsuit to reflect Cobblepot's slight weight gain as part of the character's new appearance, which more closely mimics that of his comic book counterpart. |
| 2019 | American Gods | Cut Scene | Bruce Langley as Technical Boy | Langley wore a prosthetic fat suit for an unaired/cut scene showing Technical Boy the way author Neil Gaiman wrote him in the novel. The scene was dropped though pictures of him made up as a fat guy showed up online. |
| 2019 | Avengers: Endgame | Movie | Chris Hemsworth as Thor | Hemsworth wore a 60-70 lb. fat suit to portray an overweight Thor. |
| 2021 | The Thing About Pam | Television series | Renée Zellweger as Pam Hupp | Zellweger wore a fat suit and facial prosthetics to portray Hupp.[3][4] |
| 2022 | The Whale | Movie | Brendan Fraser as Charlie | [5] |
| 2023 | John Wick: Chapter 4 | Movie | Scott Adkins as Killa Harkan | [6] |
See also
References
- "Tyra Banks Ex". November 4, 2005.
- "Schirripa wore fat suit for The Sopranos". uk.news.yahoo.com. March 30, 2012.
- Griffin, Louise (October 7, 2021). "Renee Zellweger criticised for wearing fat suit in new role: 'It's damaging, fatphobic and potentially triggering'". Metro. Retrieved October 10, 2021.
- Young, Julius (October 7, 2021). "Renée Zellweger dons controversial fat suit in portrayal of real-life killer Pam Hupp". Fox News. Retrieved October 10, 2021.
- Schulman, Michael (2022-12-07). "About Brendan Fraser's Fat Suit in "The Whale"". The New Yorker. ISSN 0028-792X. Retrieved 2023-05-29.
- Thorp, Charles (2023-04-17). "Scott Adkins on Kicking Ass in a 100-pound Fat Suit for 'John Wick: Chapter 4'". Men's Journal.
External links
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