The day Stephen Graham terrified Al Pacino with a bowl of ice cream: “The kid frightened me”
Throughout his career, Al Pacino has been involved in plenty of violent, scary scenes that would have been extremely intense to shoot. After all, this is the man who has played Tony Montana, Michael Corleone, Vincent Hanna, and the Devil himself—he’s no stranger to things getting hairy.
However, Pacino has only shot one scene in which he was unexpectedly terrified by a co-star doing something unplanned with a bowl of ice cream – and even though it sounds absurd, he even told the director that the younger actor had frightened him.
In 2019, Martin Scorsese’s lyrical, elegiac gangster masterpiece The Irishman was released to rapturous write-ups from critics. It eventually went on to be nominated for ten Academy Awards, including a ‘Best Supporting Actor’ nod for Pacino. However, much of the film’s discourse was focused on its lengthy three-and-a-half-hour runtime and the controversial CGI de-aging techniques used on Pacino, Robert De Niro, and Joe Pesci.
In the film, Pacino played Jimmy Hoffa, the legendary Teamsters labour union leader who mysteriously disappeared in 1975 amid ties to organised crime. Throughout the movie, Hoffa is shown on several occasions indulging in his only vice: ice cream sundaes. You see, Scorsese’s film was based on a book named I Heard You Paint Houses by Charles Brandt, which claimed that Hoffa didn’t drink or smoke but allowed himself to indulge in ice cream.
Amusingly, Pacino was only too happy to find out his character would be munching on delicious sundaes in multiple scenes. “When I took the role, I was like, ‘You mean I get to eat ice cream in this part? I’m in,'” joked the legendary Godfather star. He also told Entertainment Weekly that he personally loves ice cream so much that he could never get sick of it. However, he noticed that the production occasionally swapped it out for frozen yoghurt. “I preferred the ice cream,” he grinned.
During one scene, though, Pacino’s beloved frozen treat betrayed him when it was co-opted by a co-star with a plan up his sleeve. Stephen Graham, who played the vicious Genovese family capo Tony ’Pro’ Provenzano, shared a scene with Pacino in prison. At this point, Provenzano is convinced that Hoffa owes him millions, but the union man simply keeps eating his sundae instead of agreeing to pay up.
“I had a little idea to do something,” Graham told Still Watching Netflix. “I didn’t tell Marty, and I didn’t tell Al.” For this scene, Scorsese mustn’t have intended Hoffa to be eating ice cream for once, so Graham took it upon himself to get the props department to supply him with a sundae. He then told the cameraman his plan and started shooting the scene with Pacino and Scorsese, none-the-wiser.
As Pacino slowly spooned ice cream into his mouth and played out the scene, Graham waited for his moment to strike. “At the last little mouthful,” Graham revealed with a grin, “He puts his spoon down in the bowl, and he just kind of leans back. As he did that, I just leaned across and I lashed his ice cream bowl right across the room.” Graham immediately leapt across the table to tackle Pacino, who could only let out a shock, “Whoah!”
After an equally surprised Scorsese yelled, “Cut,” Pacino exclaimed, “Did you see that, Marty? The kid frightened me! He frightened me!”
Ultimately, Graham’s ice cream gamble paid off, and it made for an explosive end to the scene. Pacino also didn’t bear any ill will – in fact, Graham claimed he and the iconic star “got on like a house on fire.” The memorable moment also saw Graham bestowed with a nickname the actor in his late 40s could never have anticipated. With a satisfied smile, he told Jonathan Ross, “From then on, he called me ‘The Kid.'”
