Mark Wahlberg teamed up with Oscar-winning director Martin Scorsese for Scorsese’s critically acclaimed The Departed. But filming wasn’t exactly smooth sailing for the two, and they couldn’t help butt heads in the feature.
Mark Wahlberg initially turned down Martin Scorsese’s ‘The Departed’
The Departed ended up being one of the most lauded roles of Wahlberg’s career. But when the project was first pitched to him, he didn’t feel that it was a good fit. Wahlberg’s agent at the time automatically assumed that the actor would be willing to work with Scorsese on the feature. This meant that Wahlberg had to turn Scorsese down personally.
“The Departed was interesting because I wasn’t committed to making the movie and my agent told Marty that I was,” Wahlberg said in a GQ interview. “Marty called me up and he was so excited about making this movie together. I said, ‘I’m not doing the movie.’”
There were certain conditions he needed met to do The Departed that Scorsese and the studio weren’t quite agreeing to. After being yelled at by his agent, the Boogie Nights star was sent on a plane to meet with Scorsese personally about the project.
“I read the script again, and I was pretty angry and I said again I wasn’t going to do it. Marty told me, ‘Look at this part, look at what you get to do with all these people.’ He knows I’m from that [Boston] world and I talked to him about improvising and doing my own thing and he said, ‘Dude, you’re free to do what you want to do,’” Wahlberg remembered.
Mark Wahlberg and Martin Scorsese cursed each out because of major problems on ‘The Departed’
Wahlberg found himself working with a very accomplished cast and crew on the project. In addition to Scorsese himself, the Oscar-nominee would co-star alongside Matt Damon, Leonardo DiCaprio and Jack Nicholson.
Filming the movie wasn’t always an enjoyable time for Wahlberg, however. The actor would find himself at odds with the film’s director often.
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“Marty and I were constantly in this struggle,” he told The Telegraph in a 2007 interview. “I had problems with Marty.”
One of the fights revolved around Scorsese getting upset about Wahlberg for refusing to cut his hair.
“I was only supposed to do a couple of weeks on The Departed so I was able to grow my hair for Invincible. But then the schedule changed and four months later I’m still working on The Departed so I wouldn’t cut my hair and Marty was pissed off,” Wahlberg said. “He was like, ‘You’ve got to cut your f***ing hair,’ and I was, ‘I don’t give a f***.’”
Scorsese wasn’t the only focus of Wahlberg’s frustrations. Wahlberg became a little upset with his fellow castmates, too, but that was mostly due to the influence of his character.
“The whole time I was in the character so I was mad at everybody. It was Leo, Matt, and Jack. F*** Jack, too,” Wahlberg said.
Mark Wahlberg pitched a sequel to ‘The Departed’ that didn’t go well
Wahlberg was very keen about visiting The Departed world again. He went as far as talking to the film’s screenwriter Bill Monahan, and bringing him to the studio to pitch a second film.
“Let’s just say the pitch didn’t go very well,” Wahlberg told KFC Radio. “He didn’t really have anything fleshed out, but he’s the kind of guy who you just trust to go and write something. And so when we were working on the script for Cocaine Cowboys and American Desperado, I said, ‘Bill, just go write.’”
Monahan and Wahlberg believed that Monahan’s film work might sway the studio to let them make a sequel. But without any concrete plans, the studio decided not to move forward at the time.
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