Why Leonardo DiCaprio ‘didn’t land’ his stunts in ‘One Battle After Another’

Turns out, playing a stoned, washed-up revolutionary is not as chill as it looks.

Just ask Leonardo DiCaprio, who plays exactly that in writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson’s new action thriller One Battle After Another. “I guess it was exhausting,” DiCaprio admits to Entertainment Weekly, when asked what it was like to inhabit his off-the-grid, perpetually paranoid character, Bob.

“But Paul set up this scenario, this revolutionary that’s ill-equipped to deal with these impending forces from his past that have come back to haunt him and take his daughter. And I just love how he created a protagonist that doesn’t have all the right answers, that doesn’t do the right thing. That’s his superpower, if anything, is constant moving forward. And the fact that he doesn’t give up,” he adds.

One thing is for sure: Being an action hero is not Bob’s superpower. “For that reason, I didn’t land a lot of my stunts. My character often fell,” DiCaprio says.

Exhausting or not, working with Anderson was a thrilling experience for the Oscar-winner. “When you have the setup of a guy that receives a phone call and can’t remember the password to save his own daughter, that fancies himself as this great revolutionary, and he’s stoned on top of it, you have a great setup for a movie,” he gushes. “And that was those building blocks — you get that information, you get that history, you believe that these people could exist or this world could exist. The characters kind of just come natural… It’s this anti-hero that [Anderson] created that was so unique and unexpected.”

Loosely based on Thomas Pynchon’s novel Vineland, the film follows a group of ex-revolutionaries who reunite to rescue Bob’s daughter, Willa (newcomer Chase Infiniti), when their evil enemy (Sean Penn) resurfaces after 16 years. Teyana Taylor, Regina Hall, and Benicio del Toro also star. Del Toro plays Sensei Sergio St. Carlos, who, in addition to serving as Willa’s longtime karate instructor, also secretly runs an underground railroad for immigrants.

“Bob’s relationship with Sensei Carlos — that’s who he’s going to turn to [for help],” DiCaprio says. “There are helicopters flying above his Northern California town, they’re up against military forces, and he’s got his homie who has some nunchucks.”

Many of the film’s biggest laughs — and its big heart — run through the interactions between Bob and the Sensei. The love fest is apparent off-screen, too, even though the actors had never worked together before. For his part, DiCaprio says “it was astounding” to watch del Toro bring his “talent and his specificity to the character work” he does. “I wouldn’t say it surprised me because you could see it in his work, but Benicio just comes fully formed,” DiCaprio says. “He’s got his attention to detail and the specificity of what his character would and wouldn’t do. And in a great way, it really shaped the entire narrative structure of the movie.”

“Well, right back at him,” says del Toro, seated beside his costar. “I mean, thank you. But the fact is that I’ve been a fan of his work. I’ve looked up to many of his films and his work. But I think what impressed me the most about Leo was, which I think you see in this film maybe more than most other films of his, is his sense of humor, because it helped that chemistry that you’re talking about.”

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In fact, early reviews have consistently brought up the film’s humor and wit, and that feedback has also made its way to the cast. “I think that one thing that has been coming back is how funny it is, which is, for a movie like this with action and suspense and moments that are really hardcore, it’s kind of great to get that feedback,” del Toro says.

When EW points out that the film’s particular brand of humor is often the kind that makes you squirm, DiCaprio gives an impish grin. “That’s my favorite kind of comedy: uncomfortable,” he says.

“And,” del Toro concludes, “that’s why you have to see this movie on the big screen, because when you hear someone else laughing, then you go, ‘Okay, I can laugh. It’s okay to laugh. I am okay to laugh. I’m not crazy if I laugh at this.'”

Experience the uncomfortable humor yourself with One Battle After Another now in theaters.