In a memorable episode of the sitcom Friends, Matt LeBlanc's Joey Tribbiani lands a significant role acting in a movie, and what makes the part particularly special is that he gets to work with a legendary co-star (played by Gary Oldman). The problem? Said legendary co-star has a habit of spitting when he delivers his lines. The performance is played for laughs... but humorous is not how I would describe a saliva-soaked story that Michael Shannon recently shared about his first time working with Leonardo DiCaprio. Instead, the word that comes to mind is "mortifying."
Shannon was recently a guest on The Julia Cunningham Show, and it was during a discussion of the actor's past opportunities to work with some of the film industry's A-listers that the subject turned to the movie Revolutionary Road. The Take Shelter star doesn't have a massive role in the Sam Mendes-directed feature, but he does have a standout scene with DiCaprio, Kate Winslet and Kathy Bates, and it while shooting it that he experienced a heavy dose of embarrassment. He set the stage first, saying,
I remember all of it pretty well. I mean, I wasn't there too long. You know, I just had the one little scene in the woods, and then I had the scene in the dining room and Leo's closeup was kind of the last thing we did, which was pretty gracious of him. You know, usually whoever's the top dog or whatnot, they get shot out first, you know, but he waited till the end and very patient and by that point, we had done the scene so many times and he's still finding a way to make it seem like the first time every time, which is the trick.
In said dining room scene, suburbanites Frank (Leonardo DiCaprio) and April (Kate Winslet) announce that they are pregnant, and while this news is met with some celebration, Michael Shannon's character is rendered furious, as it means that the couple is going to cancel their plans to move to Paris. He particularly lays blame on Frank for the decision, and he taunts him while really getting up in his face – and it was apparently during the filming of that moment that the actor accidentally drooled on his co-star.
Recounting the memory in excruciating detail, Shannon continued,
I lean over him at one point, and I say something kind of snarky to him that he doesn't like. When I leaned over, this big thing of drool came out of my mouth and it just landed right on his pants and I was like, ‘Oh my god. I just drooled on Leonardo DiCaprio,’ and I felt really embarrassed and it was hard actually to keep giving him a hard time in the scene because I felt so guilty about drooling on him, but he didn't even notice. He just kept going, and then I came over afterwards. I said, ‘I'm really sorry. I just, I want to let you know this happened,’ and he's like, ‘Oh yeah, don't worry about it,’ and he wiped it off. He's like, ‘It's no big deal.’
In case you were wondering and/or don't remember: no, the drool take didn't end up in the final cut of the film, as you can see by watching the Revolutionary Road clip below.
To be fair, Leonardo DiCaprio has his own story about the accidental expulsion of bodily fluids: in the filming of Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained, the Oscar-winning actor crushed a real glass under his hand while slamming it on a table during an intense scene, and it ended up seeing him pour some real blood on the set. Is that really comparable to Michael Shannon drooling on the star of Titanic in front of two other stars of Titanic? Not really, but it does show that movie sets can be messy places sometimes.
Should you be interested in revisiting the full movie, Revolutionary Road isn't currently available to stream on any subscription services, but it is widely available for digital purchase and rental, and physical media collectors can pick up a copy of it on Blu-ray.
