But hed never gone to the degree he did onKillers of the Flower Moon.
Here, he explains why this epiphany that set back the project years was so worth it.
Youd normally rush into production such a cant miss vehicle.
Leonardo DiCaprio,Lily GladstoneMelinda Sue Gordon / © Apple TV+ / Courtesy Everett Collection
And you stop the bus and say, wheres the heart in this?
Apple replaced Paramount as financier, but we have all seen movies lose momentum and die.
LEONARDO DICAPRIO: It was hard.
In a lot of respects, the ship had already sailed, with the Tom White version.
We were gearing up to make that movie.
Marty uses the word complicity in talking about this film.
DEADLINE: That wasnt in the first version and nagged at you?
DICAPRIO: What was our complicity in all this?
What was our responsibility?
What role do we play?
And Im not going to say that that was the onus for the change.
We were ready to go beforeThe Irishman.
We had two major round table script meetings, when we were developing the book.
But the approach was so much from the idea of a forensic whodunit, with a twist.
I dont know what the mystery wouldve been, from the onset.
It got us to, wheres the actual drama?
Wheres the inter-relationship between the two characters?
It got to a point where, I, on a personal level, wasnt feeling much.
It was fantastic to see the new techniques, like watchingWhite Heatin a lot of ways.
All that was in the back of our minds.
And here he is, admitting this to her, getting a life sentence, flip-flopping back and forth.
And that was what gave us an emotional reaction, immediately afterwards.
It seemed like almost a preposterous idea.
We kept on coming to the idea that, I didnt feel anything, emotionally.
And Montgomery Clifts relationship with Elizabeth Taylor and his wife and what he does and what he sacrifices.
Oklahoma was this powder keg.
So Marty just said, Im going to go do this other movie.
We dont have a script.
And we pitched another version.
Ive done a couple movies before.
DEADLINE: Not many filmmakers could do that.
You knew going in who was terrorizing Chicago with a crime spree.
He was highly under the mental influence of his uncle.
And how he assimilates himself in the Osage community.
It was so beyond detestable, but Ernest did develop this relationship with Mollie.
That was a real one.
When we sawThe Heiress, it started to all click with Olivia de Havilland.
And then we met Lily, we saw her face.
Robbie Robertsons score really drives that home too.
When is she going to figure this out?
It gave me anxiety in reading the book, saying, what is going to happen here?
Because theres a symbiotic relationship between the two characters.
We can be Americans.
You are trusted one of us.
You are embraced like one of us.
Youll become a part of us.
And that was something that I think Hale and Earnest obviously preyed upon.
They knew that there was a trust factor there that they could take advantage of.
DEADLINE: And Ernest was too weak to resist his uncle.
Did you and Bob stay in touch?
How much of a mentor was he for you?
And for most of my friends who are actors, it is the high bar.
And then to come back 30 years later?
We were both inMarvins Room, but we didnt act together in that.
DEADLINE: How did it feel after all those years?
I cant really put into words what it meant to me.
Marty said it very well.
It just felt right, and it felt easy.
We still had issues with Covid, things like that, though wed just gotten the vaccine.
He really listened to their viewpoint on how all of this happened.
Not to go off on a tangent, but he didnt want to make the FBI hero story.
The FBI took years and years and years to finally come to Osage territory.
They basically had to get paid off.
But for all intents and purposes, the relationship between Hale and Ernest culminated in that jail sequence.
DEADLINE: How was it different?
Which is [Ernest] feeling afraid that Hale would be disappointed in him.
Afraid of his uncle realizing that hes not the man that he thought he was.
Its a much more quiet, very subtle thing.
This I have to do this, dad.
Well, God bless you, son.
Youre still making a mistake, but God bless you, I love you.
And that was one of the most surprising things, and it was watching both of their instincts.
When Marty was looking for Mollie, what made her right, and why was she right?
I had essentially gone and done another movie.
We quickly got on this hourlong Zoom.
She just embodied it immediately, in that Zoom.
And there was no reading.
And at the end of it, Marty just had this look at his eye.
He said, okay, Rick [Yorn], thats our manager hire her.
Im like, whoa, really?
Are you sure you dont want to read?
Hes like, no, no, no, no, no.
I dont want to mess around.
I said, okay, great.
And boy, was she ever.
DEADLINE: We read all the time about crimes of passion within families.
DICAPRIO: It was all shaped basically by the ability to speak with the Osage, the direct descendants.
A multitude of people came up to me and said, that was a real relationship.
There was real love there.
He really loved that woman.
Ive said, what is ones interpretation of love?
Because this doesnt seem like love to me.
This doesnt seem like it could even be possible.
He then flip flops.
He turned himself in.
Paranoid that people are going to take him out.
I got to speak to his niece who was there.
She told me she asked him and Byron his brother exactly what happened when they got drunk every Christmas.
And then Ernest was insistent that he loved [Mollie] and would get adamant about it.
Saying that [Mollie] was a good one.
What was in that poison that he was giving her?
And as soon as the FBI came, she got better.
We spoke to every doctor imaginable.
We talked about what could be done.
Is this some sort of life support that hes giving her?
That was the only thing that we had.
There was no historical record, no admission in court as to what he did.
And he never admitted to doing any of that.
DEADLINE: Lily grew up on the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana and calls herself just a res girl.
You could imagine her dreams of being in a big Hollywood movie.
There she is, playing Leonardo DiCaprios wife, acting scenes with you and De Niro for Marty Scorsese.
How do you help her feel comfortable and not like shes in some surreal and intimidating dream?
DICAPRIO: There was none of that.
To us, it was an immediate partnership.
Thats how she conducted herself from the initial Zoom call.
She owned it the moment she came on set.
I keep talking about the scenes.
Again, my character is a very unreliable protagonist, so you dont know.
Is this a slow burn?
Are we revealing everything from the beginning?
And thats a very complex thing to bring up for a relationship like this.
I see that you want to have a family.
Shes living in an environment where no one is to be really trusted.
There was something in him that she believed in.
Well, this ones a rabbit, this one.
Its a big budget Warner Bros film with higher commercial ambitions than PTA films usually have.
Theyre aware of the film because of the P&A spend an eager to watch at home.
I can only speak on the first personal level.
I have a mixed view on this.
They would be impossible to get financing.
Were seeing a lot more of that now.
So thats a positive.
Marty released that on Netflix, but I got to go to two different premiere screenings.
These were two completely different experiences.
Watching it in the theater was just incomparable.
I just felt a lot more, I dont know how else to describe it.
So what can I say other than hopefully more of those films have that?
That doesnt mean limit it to a handful of master filmmakers.
I hope they still gets those opportunities.
DEADLINE: Everyone thought youd play Dirk Diggler for PTA in Boogie Nights.
Instead you did Titanic, which worked out pretty well for you.
You were mentioning that for you and Marty and Bob, Killers closed the circle.
Is that also the case with you and PTA?
DICAPRIO: Im really excited.
It takes away half the guessing game.
And you could focus on the craft and what you have to do.
And isnt that a rarity?
DICAPRIO: I dont know about directing.
But as a younger actor, I dont think I wouldve done what we did on Killers.
Well, maybe thats not true.
I remember having discussions onGangs of New Yorkabout the screenplay.
But this was a culmination of many years of working with Marty, and trusting our instincts.
Theres no way to escape those things.
Some of these things come to me in weird dreams.
We did it and looking back, Im proud of that moment for the both of us.
