DiCaprio and De Niro, from friends to enemies: hatred broke out on the set of “Killers of the Flower Moon”

new York – Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro They have been working together on set for thirty years, but this time something went wrong. DiCaprio’s obsession with perfection eventually irritated De Niro, until director Martin Scorsese had to intervene. It was the director of the film himself who told it in an interview with the Wall Street Journal while introducing the film “Killers of the Flower Moon” that had just been released in theaters.

“It was a never-ending, never-ending, never-ending thing,” Scorsese admitted, referring to the conversations with DiCaprio. At some point De Niro didn’t want to talk anymore, Bob and I often looked at each other and rolled our eyes“.

The story takes place in 1920s Oklahoma: members of the Osage native community discover that oil is hidden beneath their land, making them the richest people in the world, but also bringing with it a trail of mysterious crimes.

DiCaprio was chosen to play Tom White, the good guy in the storythe investigator of the newly founded FBI, but the actor managed to convince the director to entrust him with the role of the “bad guy”. Ernest Burkharta World War I veteran, an unscrupulous guy who seduces Mollie, a young Osage native.

There are many different acting styles, but improvisation is considered the defining moment where great actors stand out from the rest. DiCaprio is considered a phenomenon, but he had another phenomenon in front of him, and this one didn’t make things easier, it made things more complicated. The two have known each other since 1993, when De Niro starred alongside the very young DiCaprio in All Over Again, directed by Michael Caton-Jones. And the latest film’s director, Scorsese, has worked with the actor on six other productions, from “Gangs of New York” to “The Wolf of Wall Street.”

Ironically, it was De Niro himself who convinced Scorsese to cast DiCaprio in Killers. But on set the relationship between the two stars would have boiled over: DiCaprio’s constant requests to readjust the scene, change the lines, and ask questions about the meaning of the scene infuriated De Niro. The first had already intervened to change the script. “After I had been working on the story for two years,” Scorsese told the Irish Times, “Leo came to me and asked me where the heart of the story was.” “I,” he continued, “had evenings with the Osage spent and thought, ‘Well, there’s history’.” Director and screenwriter Eric Roth had already extensively adapted David Grann’s book that inspired the film. Scorsese worked on “Killers” for six years.