Leonardo DiCaprio once teamed up with acclaimed and veteran actor Joel Edgerton for a film adaptation of The Great Gatsby. But during a pivotal scene in the film, Edgerton felt things became a bit too intense between himself and his co-star.
Joel Edgerton and Leonardo DiCaprio starred in ‘The Great Gatsby’
The classic novel The Great Gatsby experienced a modern, contemporary film adaptation in 2013. This take on the novel featured an ensemble cast that included Tobey Maguire, Leonardi DiCaprio, Isla Fisher, and Joel Edgerton. Edgerton was particularly excited to work alongside DiCaprio, who he admired from a distance throughout his career. When Edgerton was a younger aspiring actor, he looked at DiCaprio’s own life as an actor as something he hoped to achieve.
“It actually felt a little bit of a full circle thing for me,” Edgerton once told PopSugar Entertainment about working with DiCaprio. “When I was at drama school, or just started drama school, I saw What’s Eating Gilbert Grape. And I remember, because Leo was the same age as me, that was an amazing performance. And that’s the kind of life I may be embarking on if I’m lucky enough.”
When Edgerton worked alongside DiCaprio in The Great Gatsby, DiCaprio was more than a pleasure to be around.
“His feet are very firmly on the ground. I think he’s a very smart and easygoing guy, and he could easily not be that. But he definitely is,” Edgerton said.
Joel Edgerton once felt an uneasy tension with Leonardo DiCaprio on the set of ‘The Great Gatsby’
Although Edgerton and DiCaprio got to know each other well enough while shooting Gatsby, Edgerton confided it once grew tense between them. In the movie, Edgerton plays the mentally stern Tom Buchanan alongside DiCaprio’s Jay Gatsby. Edgerton would often attempt to keep himself immersed in the nature of his character, which sometimes affected his work with DiCaprio. And not for the better.
“For me Tom is a beast that has to exist on set and it’s in me and it comes out of me and I enjoy it. There’s a kind of unhealthy friction that exists between Leo and I on set,” Edgerton once said according to Metro.
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It reminded Edgerton of a tense experience he had trying to keep up with the skill of another megastar.
“It’s like when I got to work on A Streetcar Named Desire with Cate Blanchett,” Edgerton recalled. “Rather than being fearful, I was like: ‘How am I going to step up?’”
However, after Edgerton’s comments, rumors began to blossom that there was a personal feud between himself and DiCaprio. But Edgerton was quick to dispel the rumors and clarify his remarks.
“I think that was taken a little bit out of context. We got along really well…the Plaze scene, we shot for a number of days and the tension was very high when we rolled but we had a good time off set,” Edgerton once explained to Good Morning America (via Contact Music).
Leonardo DiCaprio was reluctant to do ‘The Great Gatsby’
DiCaprio has often been praised for his ability to tackle a wide variety of characters and movies due to his acting range. But despite his abilities, even he had some reservations when he was tapped to star in The Great Gatsby. DiCaprio was aware that many fans of the original novel had their own expectations of Jay Gatsby. This led to The Oscar-winner having a momentary sense of doubt that his take on Jay Gatsby might clash with those expectations.
“I was reluctant because I think that what’s so powerful about this novel is that everyone has their own interpretation of these characters. It’s such a voyeuristic novel, the way Fitzgerald writes these scenes, you feel like you’re in the room with these people. So I feel like everyone has their own intimate understanding and relationship with these characters,” DiCaprio once said in an interview with ABC News.
