Leonardo DiCaprio Argued Against Meryl Streep’s ‘Don’t Look Up’ N-de Scene, but ‘She Didn’t Even Blink’
According to director Adam McKay, DiCaprio "didn’t like seeing her with the lower back tattoo, walking for a second n-ked" in a pivotal scene.
The wild stories emerging from the set of Adam McKay’s cosmic Netflix comedy “Don’t Look Up” continue to bear some tangy delights. Case in point: The film’s star Leonardo DiCaprio, who plays one half of a scientist team opposite Jennifer Lawrence trying to warn society of an impending meteoric apocalypse, took issue with a scene where Meryl Streep’s character is shown n-de. While Streep ended up using a body double, according to the director, DiCaprio bristled at the idea of “film royalty” baring it all like that — and with a lower-back tattoo to boot.
According to writer-director McKay in a new interview with The Guardian, the scene in question involves Streep, who plays the unorthodox (and highly skeptical) President Orlean, in a comic moment of undress.
“She is fearless. And yes, that is a body double. But you know who had a problem with it? Leo [DiCaprio],” McKay said. “Leo just views Meryl as film royalty … although maybe royalty is not a compliment … but as such a special figure in the history of film. He didn’t like seeing her with the lower back tattoo, walking for a second n-ked. He said something to me like: ‘Do you really need to show that?’ And I was like: ‘It’s President Orlean; it’s not Meryl Streep.’ But she didn’t even blink. She didn’t even bring it up.”
Leonardo DiCaprio’s reaction to the n-de scene might have something to do with the fact that he played Meryl Streep’s son in one of his breakout films, 1996’s “Marvin’s Room.”
Plenty of other stories from the “Don’t Look Up” paint a crazy picture of some of the behind-the-scenes goings-on, from Lawrence actually getting high to play a scene where she’s, well, high, to DiCaprio rewriting one scene 15 times. In one of the biggest laughs of the movie, DiCaprio goes into a kind of “Network”-esque meltdown about the state of the world.
“Don’t Look Up” is now playing in select theaters before Netflix drops the star-studded comedy on its streaming platform on December 24. The film also stars Jonah Hill, Ariana Grande, Timothée Chalamet, and Cate Blanchett.
