“The Revenant” is full of blood and gore, and it turns out, so was Leonardo DiCaprio‘s mouth on set.
The actor told NBC’s “Today” in an interview broadcast Thursday morning that the raw bison liver audiences watch his character eat in one scene isn’t a prop.
“The native American actor I was working with, his name is Arthur, he was eating raw bison flesh the entire day during rehearsal, and [then] they gave me this red gelatinous sort of pancake to eat, and it just didn’t look real,” DiCaprio said. “I wanted to get the real thing, and it was this giant liver that was incredibly disgusting. My reaction is very much on screen, which is a nauseating one.”
But viewers disturbed by the gruesome sight of DiCaprio climbing into a horse’s dead body for warmth can at least rest assured the animal “was a set piece.”
The actor, who is up for a Golden Globe this weekend for Best Performance in a Motion Picture Drama, recalls that he asked himself several times a week why he was doing the film.
“I’m not going to lie, it was probably one of the hardest film, professional things that I’ve ever done, for sure,” he said.
With the beard that took four months to grow finally shaved, DiCaprio is going into awards season with a casual attitude.
“As far as awards are concerned, there’s a lot of piece of mind because you realize you ultimately have no control over these things. I do these movies because I really love movies,” he said. “I’m very proud that a movie like this was made. It’s really really really rare to see a film that is this ambitious coming out of the Hollywood studio system.”