Paramount Pictures
WARNING: This article will contain mild spoilers for Killers of the Flower Moon
For a scene in Martin Scorsese’s recently released and widely acclaimed Western drama epic Killers of the Flower Moon, Leonardo DiCaprio had to wear a butt pad in order to receive a literal spanking from the legendary Robert De Niro.
While it’s not quite animal carcass, eating raw bison, and swimming in frozen rivers as he did in 2015’s The Revenant, DiCaprio did take such a beating from his fellow Academy Award-winning actor that not only forced him to wear padding but also left an impression on cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto.
In a scene in which De Niro’s William Hale punishes DiCaprio’s Ernest Burkhart, the former pulls out a paddle (the kind that’s largely seen at fraternity houses these days) to spank the latter.
“I don’t think that was in the first script,” Prieto told Insider. “That was something that was added, and it’s shocking in the film.”
“I do remember doing them quite a few times and thinking, ‘Oh, that must hurt,'” Prieto said of the number of takes it took to complete the spanking scene. “There was some padding on his butt. But you could tell De Niro was really hitting him… Leo is game for so much. He’ll do anything.”
Both De Niro and DiCaprio, of course, are the two defining muses of Scorsese’s career, as De Niro has now starred in ten of the legendary filmmaker’s movies, while DiCaprio has featured in six of them since 2002.
Killers of the Flower Moon, which made $44 million at the global box office during its opening weekend, is now playing in theaters.
In addition to DiCaprio and De Niro, Lily Gladstone, Jesse Plemons, Brendan Fraser, and John Lithgow also star in the film, which is expected to be a major contender at next year’s Academy Awards in categories such as Best Picture, Best Director, Best Editing, Best Score, Best Cinematography, Best Actor for DiCaprio, Best Actress for Gladstone, and Best Supporting Actor for De Niro.