James Cameron has dropped mad tea about Leonardo DiCaprio and said he was such a Negative Nancy when auditioning for Titanic that he almost didn’t get the part of Jack Dawson. Can you imagine? The audacity!
The director spilled the beans in a recent interview with GQ, where he yapped about his most iconic flicks. You know the ones: Titanic (obvs), The Terminator, The Terminator 2: Judgment Day, The Abyss and the Avatar series. Because yes, for some reason there needs to be more than one Avatar film.
“I remember there was a meeting with Leo. And then there was a screen test with Leo,” Cameron said.
“So the meeting was funny because I’m sitting in my conference room waiting to meet an actor, right? And I look around and all the women in the entire office are in the meeting, for some reason.”
As they bloody should be, I say. Who wouldn’t want to cop a squiz at the Italian stallion in his prime?
“Like, there’s a female executive producer, OK, fine. But our accountant? Why was she in the meeting?” he continued.
“They all wanted to meet Leo. It was hysterical. I looked around, and I went, ‘I think I already know the answer to the question here’.”
Cameron said DiCaprio popped off in the meeting, but he still had to know for sure whether he’d have chemistry with Kate Winslet who, as we all know, played Rose DeWitt Bukater in Titanic. I actually did not realise that was her full name until now but, alas, we learn something new everyday!
So, the director thought he’d get DiCaprio to do a ‘lil script read with Winslet. The actor rocked up a few days later, but he didn’t know he’d be doing the test.
Cameron said DiCaprio told him, “Oh, I don’t read.”
The director then shook the bloke’s hand and thanked him for swinging by. Honestly, it sounds like the worst job interview ever. It’s like trying to become an accountant and telling your boss you don’t count. These people would be fighting for their life on Sesame Street.
Cameron said DiCaprio responded to this “thanks, see ya later!” situation by saying, “Wait, wait, wait. You mean, if I don’t read, I don’t get the part just like that?”
Look, I know jack shit about acting, but I feel like reading a script to be cast in a multi-million dollar movie is a fair exchange. It’s not the wackiest thing I’ve ever heard.
The director told him Titanic was “like a giant movie that is going to take two years of my life and you’ll be gone doing five other things, while I’m doing post-production and all the model work and everything”.
“So I’m not gonna fuck it up. I’m not making the wrong decision in casting, so you’re gonna read or you’re not gonna get the part,” he said.
You just know DiCaprio was screaming, crying and throwing up when he heard that. Absolutely shaking in his boots.
So, he obviously read the script because, like, what the fuck else would you do in that situation? But Cameron said “every ounce of [DiCaprio’s] entire being was so negative,” which is deeply funny. Someone charge his crystals and get some white sage in the building, STAT.
Everything ended up hunky dory in the end though. Cameron said when DiCaprio started reading the script he “turned into Jack and Kate just lit up and they went into this whole thing and he played the scene”.
“Dark clouds had opened up, a ray of sun came down and lit up Jack,” he said.
The director said it was in that moment he knew he’d found his guy. And look, it was all for the best because that deeply horny, fogged-up window scene still lives rent free in my mind.
This isn’t the only nugget of gossip that James Cameron has dropped lately. In a separate interview with GQ, the director revealed an executive at Fox Studios “begged” him to make Avatar shorter and Cameron told him to fuck off.
Just gonna say it: the Fox executive was right for that one.
