As it turns out, neither the spank was real nor the butt; Leonardo DiCaprio ‘protected’ himself by wearing butt padding in the criminal drama film Killers of the Flower Moon . The Oscar-winner is renowned for breathing life into his characters. However, when it came to being ‘spanked’ by Robert De Niro, DiCaprio came prepared.
DiCaprio plays Ernest Burkhart in Martin Scorsese’s new epic crime film, inspired by the real-life murders covered in David Grann’s 2017 nonfiction book Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI . De Niro, who plays the role of a ruthless businessman, William Hale (Bukhart’s uncle), spanks him with a wooden paddle. However, one of the most chilling scenes was not in the script. Cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto revealed in an interview, “I don’t think that was in the first script. That was something that was added, and it’s shocking in the film,” reported Insider. The scene comes halfway through the three-and-a-half-hour flick.
robert de niro spanking leo di caprio wasn’t in my 2023 bingo card
— 👁🗨 (@_iphis) October 21, 2023
The spanking is part of the scene that unfolds in the plot when Burkhart (DiCaprio) marries Mollie Kyle (Lily Gladstone), a wealthy Native American with an ulterior motive of killing dozens of members of the Osage family to occupy their Oklahoma lands, which are rich in oil reserves underneath the land.
Hale (De Niro) plans to plunder the oil from their lands. But Burkhart destroys his plans and ultimately earns the wrath of his cruel uncle, who marches him to a back room, bends him over, and spanks him mercilessly. But, the frightening scene hit Prieto hard in his memory.
The 57-year-old cinematographer recalled, “I do remember doing them quite a few times and thinking, ‘Oh, that must hurt.'” He continued, “There was some padding on [DiCaprio’s] butt. But you could tell De Niro was really hitting him.” Praising the Titanic actor, Prieto added, “Leo is game for so much. He’ll do anything.”
As per Variety , Prieto also recalled another memorable scene from the film, where the oil bursts out of the Osage lands and showers the native people in dark, black petroleum. He said, “Scorsese kept talking about oil gushing up in the air. When you find oil, it bubbles under the surface, but he wanted to do something surreal and joyful, which contrasts with what that black gold brought them,”
DiCaprio is renowned for going out of his way for his roles. Previously, he received a long-overdue Oscar award for his outstanding performance in The Revenant. DiCaprio plays the role of frontiersman, and the movie is his tale of survival. His character, Hugh Glass, has to eat a raw bison in one scene. Although DiCaprio was initially meant to hog on an artificial liver made of protein bars, things changed at the last minute. The historical and wilderness technical adviser on the film, Clay Landry, revealed, “Leo had talked it over, and they were going to use a real liver,” per Daily Mail.