Leonardo DiCaprio came up with the poignant final line in 'Don't Look Up,' director says
- Warning: Spoilers below if you haven't seen "Don't Look Up."
- Director Adam McKay said DiCaprio came up with the "we really did have everything" line.
One of the most powerful moments in the Netflix movie "Don't Look Up" comes in the final scene when Leonardo DiCaprio's character, Randall, says to the table of his family and friends, "We really did have everything, didn't we?"
Moments later, the huge comet that he warned would destroy mankind does just that.
The line was not originally in the screenplay, "Don't Look Up" writer-director Adam McKay revealed in a recent interview with Variety. It was DiCaprio who came up with it while they were shooting the dinner scene.
McKay said it was in between takes when the star walked up to him and the movie's script supervisor, Cate Hardman, with the idea.
"He said the line — he didn't even read it in character," McKay recalled. "And immediately Cate, who's this tough Texan, and I both immediately teared up, and my voice cracked a little bit [and] I just went, 'Yup, I think you should try that!'"
However, the director admits that though he shot DiCaprio saying the line, he didn't put it in the movie until later in post-production.
"We were so afraid of it in the edit room, because it just whacked us so hard," McKay said. "We didn't even have it in the cut for a while. And then toward the end, we were like, 'You know what? We've gotta try that line.'"
"Don't Look Up" follows astronomers played by DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence who try to warn the world that a giant comet is going to destroy Earth in a matter of months. The dark comedy then shows how politics, media, and greed twists the truth of the impending apocalypse into a cloud of misinformation.
So McKay is happy he decided to keep DiCaprio's line in the movie.
"It was just the gut-punch of all gut punches," he said.
"Don't Look Up" is currently available on Netflix.