Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese have turned the black comedy The Wolf of Wall Street into a masterpiece and it is considered one of the greatest films ever made. Among many iconic scenes in the movie Matthew McConaughey’s cameo is extremely popular.
Interestingly, there’s a hidden story behind it. The scene was improvised and McConaughey stole it from DiCaprio, at least he came clean about it. Still, the scene was one of the most memorable scenes in the movie.
Matthew McConaughey Once Stole Material From Leonardo DiCaprio
If we recall the most splendid cameos of Matthew McConaughey, his The Wolf of Wall Street cameo certainly comes on top of the list as he left a lasting impression in the film. But the improvised scene was not McConaughey’s idea. He once said that he stole it from a conversation he had with Leonardo DiCaprio.
“I stole some things from Leo. He told me a joke when we first met and I stole it. That whole ‘fugazi’ bit. He told me about it, and I said, ‘I’m going to mispronounce that for the fun of it.’ Everybody is always talking about that scene, and I made that decision just seconds before we shot it,” Rolling Stone.
McConaughey had the perfect space for it. “In my mind, the perfect set is when everybody is free enough, creatively, to steal from one another,” he said of working with Martin Scorsese. Even better, “when you steal from someone and then you give it back to them in the scene,” he added. The scene turned out to be great, in fact, his cameo was widely celebrated and has been imprinted in the minds of the audience.
Matthew McConaughey Revealed Details of His Iconic Scene
Interestingly, the iconic humming scene in the movie was not scripted as it appeared on screen. The chest-thumping and humming during the lunch with DiCaprio’s character was indeed an intriguing scene and added fuel to the gravity of the entertainment. “It was a relaxation technique, a way to get out of my head,” McConaughey told Independent of the scene. “I was doing that before each take to relax and then we’d yell ‘action’ and I would start the scene and I’d stop doing it,” he added.
“I explained what I just explained to you and he [Scorsese] goes ‘Well you wanna try that in the scene?’ and I said ‘sure.’ So the next take I just did it at the beginning of the scene, but I remember thinking, ‘well, now do it at the end of the conversation to see if the young turk – who you just taught what Wall Street is all about – see if he’s on the same frequency, see if he gets it,’ and so we ended up bookending the scene with it and that was the take we used.”
The epic biographical black comedy crime has been riveting for many. The movie has certainly produced one of the greatest performances of DiCaprio and grossed over $406.9 million at the box office.
The Wolf of Wall Street is available to stream on Paramount Plus.
