Robert De Niro shut down Leonardo DiCaprio on Killers of the Flower Moon set | Films | Entertainment
Tomorrow Martin Scorsese’s latest historical epic Killers of the Flower Moon hits cinemas.
It’s the first time ever that the acclaimed director’s regular collaborators Robert De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio have starred opposite each other in one of his feature-length movies.
Based on the 2017 history book of the same name, the 3-and-a-half-hour blockbuster focuses on a set of Oklahoma murders in the Osage Nation during the 1920s, which were committed after oil was discovered on the tribal land.
De Niro stars as William King Hale, a real-life political boss of Osage County, who made a fortune through cattle ranching and unfair trade with Native Americans.
Meanwhile, Leo plays his nephew Ernest Burkhart, who is married to Lily Gladstone’s Mollie, a member of the Osage Nation.
Early reviews from Cannes and the London Film Festival praise Leo’s performance as a career-best.
However, aspects of his improvisations on the set of Killers of the Flower Moon ended up seriously irritating both De Niro and Scorsese.
The director shared in a new interview how he and the older actor would react to this non-stop method of Leo’s.
Speaking with The Wall Street Journal, Scorsese said how Leo’s set discussions and dialogue improvisations were “endless, endless, endless”.
The 80-year-old director elaborated: “Then Bob [De Niro] didn’t want to talk. Every now and then, Bob and I would look at each other and roll our eyes a little bit. And we’d tell [Leo], ‘You don’t need that dialogue.’”
Killers of the Flower Moon is out in cinemas on Friday.