Leonardo DiCaprio refused to look at a nude Meryl Streep: “Do you really need to show that?”
Meryl Streep has been Hollywood royalty for most of her career, but in the last several decades, she seems to have ascended to a higher plane than almost anyone else in the business. No other star can come close to her 21 Academy Award nominations, and few other luminaries lend the kind of prestige to a project that she does. Perhaps it’s not surprising, then, that one of Streep’s co-stars in a recent film was horrified at the idea of a woman of her exalted status appearing nude in a scene – so much so, in fact, that he questioned the director on whether the scene truly needed to be in the movie.
In 2010, Leonardo DiCaprio was interviewed by Esquire magazine about his incredible career and his personal Hollywood heroes. For the Titanic star, two names towered over everyone else. One was Jack Nicholson, whom he worked with on The Departed and believes has given the world the most memorable cinematic moments of any actor. However, the actor who he thought “may be the greatest actor in the world” was Streep.
DiCaprio had the good fortune to work with Streep for the first time in the little-seen drama Marvin’s Room when he was only 18 years old. He reminisced about “going over my lines with her off camera, looking at her and thinking to myself, ‘What is going on here? How is this going to look good?’ Then, when I sat in the theatre, it was, ‘Oh, my God, she’s the only person who looks completely natural.'”
Fast-forward to 2021, and DiCaprio reunited with Streep on the set of Adam McKay’s satirical Netflix movie Don’t Look Up. The sharp political comedy tells the story of two astronomers resolutely ignored by the government, celebrities, and the citizenry when they warn everyone that a comet is about to hit the Earth and destroy civilisation. DiCaprio plays one of the frustrated scientists, while Streep plays the amusingly clueless President of the United States, Janie Orlean.
At the end of the film, Orlean and other survivors exit a spacecraft on a supposedly habitable planet after escaping the destruction of the earth. They are all naked as they explore this new world, and Orlean is shown from behind to have a stereotypical “tramp stamp” tattoo, the kind which became a running joke in the 2000s. It’s a fairly juvenile gag that would be unlikely to raise more than a slight chuckle – but DiCaprio was genuinely offended at the idea of forcing it upon Streep.
When McKay spoke to The Guardian, he revealed, “You know who had a problem with it? Leo. Leo just views Meryl as film royalty – although maybe royalty is not a compliment – but as such a special figure in the history of film. He didn’t like seeing her with the lower back tattoo, walking for a second naked.”
Even though Streep used a body double for the scene, DiCaprio was still unhappy at the idea of such a lowest common denominator joke being attached to her character. McKay revealed, “He said something to me like, ‘Do you really need to show that?’ And I was like, ‘It’s President Orlean; it’s not Meryl Streep.'”
As for Streep herself, she didn’t share DiCaprio’s qualms about the gag and probably didn’t need him to make himself her White Knight, either. McKay chuckled, “She didn’t even blink. She didn’t even bring it up.”
