Leonardo DiCaprio on Django Unchained’s painful ‘right n***er’ scene where he cut himself: ‘Did it bloodied…’

DiCaprio had actually hurt himself while doing the act, and if you have seen the film, you will have an idea about the amount of blood he lost as he continued with his take. Later, during an interview, Leonardo said that the whole noise had made even Tarantino look up from camera to shoot a quizzical look at his star: “My hand started really pouring blood all over the table. Maybe they thought it was done with special effects. I wanted to keep going. It was more interesting to watch Quentin’s (Tarantino) and Jamie’s (Foxx) reaction off-camera than to look at my hand. We did it bloodied and bandaged for the rest of the movie. I’m glad Quentin kept it in,” the actor told The Hollywood Reporter. As soon as Leonardo was done, the crew erupted in applause.

The scene in question was, all the real bloodshed notwithstanding, quite painful for everyone involved. Kerry Washington, who played the slave Broomhilda, had told THR she was in a constant state of panic, adding, “It was the film that never ended. I had nightmares about it: I was feeling trapped. I had no ability to make decisions about where I’m going and what I’m doing. I was concerned for my sanity.” For her scenes, Kerry was placed in a coffin-shaped metal box called a ‘hot box.’ In the Leonardo scene, the actor was dragged by the hair and verbally abused by his racist character Calvin.

Casting veteran artiste Samuel L Jackson, known to most Gen-Z and Marvel-loving youth as Nick Cage, in Django Unchained was another story. Jackson had his own apprehensions about being in the film, despite having worked with Tarantino before — “I told him, ‘I can’t be the hero, and now you want me to be the most hated N***o in cinematic history?’” The director of course laughed it off, saying Jackson had just stepped off the Broadway playing Martin Luther King before that.

Django Unchained, despite the polarising views, went on to become a box office hit, minting over 420 million dollars of its reported 100 million dollar budget.

Django Unchained is available to stream on Netflix, YouTube and Amazon Prime Video.