**Spoiler alerts for “Killers of the Flower Moon” below**
Anytime Leonardo DiCaprio or Robert De Niro grace the big screen, it’s safe to say you can expect to witness a realistic performance that’ll be something to write home about.
The two stars recently teamed up for Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon,” which includes a scene where De Niro brutally spanks DiCaprio with a huge paddle about halfway through the movie.
Though some moviegoers probably assumed the scene was filmed using a stunt double, cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto recently told Insider that the blows that DiCaprio took were real (albeit through a protective layer).
“There was some padding on his butt. But you could tell De Niro was really hitting him,” Prieto said in the interview published Saturday.
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He explained that the “shocking” and callous scene wasn’t included in the film’s first script.
The crime drama is based on David Grann’s bestselling book of the same name, which is notably sans spanking moments.
In “Flower Moon,” DiCaprio, 48, stars as Ernest Burkhart, the nephew of an influential local rancher (De Niro) who is the mastermind of grotesque, real-life Osage Nation murders in 1920s Oklahoma.
Prieto told Insider that he sympathized with DiCaprio while watching him get smacked during filming, which he says required multiple takes.
“I do remember doing them quite a few times and thinking, ‘Oh, that must hurt,’” he added.
He went on to praise the “Wolf of Wall Street” star for being such a good sport on set.
“Leo is game for so much. He’ll do anything,” Prieto gushed.
Though DiCaprio and De Niro showed off impressive on-screen chemistry, Scorsese admitted to The Wall Street Journal last week that the two actually bumped heads over their different acting methods while filming.
“Oh, endless, endless, endless!” the iconic filmmaker, 80, told the Journal about DiCaprio constantly analyzing and improvising his scenes with De Niro. “Then Bob didn’t want to talk. Every now and then, Bob and I would look at each other and roll our eyes a little bit.”
Scorsese added: “And we’d tell him, ‘You don’t need that dialogue.’”
“Killers of the Flower Moon,” also starring Lily Gladstone and Brendan Fraser, is now playing in theaters nationwide. The film will later move to Apple TV+, but the streamer has yet to announce a release date.
