Cristin Milioti Slapped ‘The Hell’ Out Of Leonardo DiCaprio For 12 Hours
In a new interview with The Independent, How I Met Your Mother star Cristin Milioti reflects on what draws her to play “weird and spiky” characters.
“I like things that tread a very fine line,” the 36-year-old actor added, before speaking about her favorite directors. “The Coen Brothers’ whole catalogue was deeply seminal to me. Their movies are so twisted.”
Reflecting back to her role in 2013’s The Wolf of Wall Street where she played Teresa Petrillo, the first wife (and voice of reason) of Leonardo DiCaprio’s quaalude-popping stockbroker Jordan Belfort. “I spent so much of that experience being so terrified of messing it up,” Milioti recalled. “I’d never been on a movie set that big. It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. I wish I had taken it in more and let go more.”
For most of the film, Teresa is the supportive, patient wife who showed Jordan a newspaper ad looking for brokers and encouraged him to target rich investors rather than unsuspecting poor clients. However, after she discovers Jordan is cheating on her with Margot Robbie’s Naomi Lapaglia, she finally snapped and hit Jordan repeatedly asking if he is in love with her.
“That was a wild night. We shot from 8pm to 8am and we did that scene over and over and over,” Milioti said, adding that her slaps caught DiCaprio’s face “a bunch of times.”
“I just kind of slapped the hell out of him for 12 hours. I always had a real attachment to that scene, because you get to see this character, who has swallowed a lot of her feelings down, really get to let loose.”
Milioti will next be seen in Peacock’s upcoming series, The Resort, out today (July 28). The show is about a multi-generational, coming-of-age love story disguised as a fast-paced mystery about the disappointment of time. An anniversary trip puts a marriage to the test when the couple finds themselves embroiled in one of the Yucatan’s most bizarre unsolved mysteries that took place fifteen years prior.
Watch the trailer below:
