‘It was incredible to work alongside such amazing talent,’ said Leo
Leonardo DiCaprio and the cast of Don’t Look Up spent two days – yes 48 hours – rehearsing a 16-minute improvisation scene.
Director Adam McKay’s latest has arguably one of the most star-studded casts ever, including the likes of Ariana Grande, Jennifer Lawrence and Meryl Streep, it comes as no surprise that Don’t Look Up is highly anticipated with movie buffs.
With an asteroid hurtling towards Earth, two astronomers played by DiCaprio and Lawrence head to the Oval Office to share the news with the President (Streep), and her chief of staff (Jonah Hill). The scene features heavily in the trailer which was released earlier this week – and apparently took two days to film with a rough-cut lasting 16 minutes.
“That group of people could not have been happier to be in that fake Oval Office, doing that scene,” McKay told Deadline.
“Laughing, improvising. They almost were a little intimidated by Meryl Streep because she’s arguably the greatest film actor ever, and we discover she’s just a delight with this big generous laugh, who can improvise all day long.
“Jonah Hill is one of the great film improvisers, and that was inspiring to Jen and Leo to throw stuff in, and Rob Morgan too.”
He continued: “We shot that scene for two days and the first cut was 16 minutes long and I never got tired of watching it. The problem was, you can’t have a scene start off a movie that’s 16 minutes long, where basically nothing happens.
“Hank Corwin is one of the great film editors, and he turned it into a Fred Astaire dance piece. I showed the first cut to people, that 16 minutes of the greatest actors, edited by one of the great editors and everyone felt you could have watched it for another five minutes, but we had to whittle it down for the final cut.”
DiCaprio told Netflix that McKay gave them the brilliant opportunity to experiment on set.
He said: “Right off the bat, Jen [Lawrence] and I really developed our characters on camera. It was done through a lot of different improv. There were so many different actors who came in and were given free rein to really delve into their characters. It was incredible to work alongside such amazing talent.”
Don’t Look Up will stream on Netflix from Christmas Eve.
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