A meeting at a read-through changed DiCaprio’s mind about casting Mark Wahlberg in “The Basketball Diaries.”
Mark Wahlberg knows firsthand that his attitude can get him into trouble, as he learned almost 20 years ago when auditioning for a role alongside an “openly hostile” Leonardo DiCaprio in 1995’s “The Basketball Diaries,” according to the Hollywood Reporter.
“Leonardo was like, ‘Over my dead f-king body. Mark Mark’s not going to be in this f-king movie,'” Wahlberg remembers. “We’d had a thing — I didn’t even realize it, [but] I was a bit of a d–k to him at a charity basketball game. So he was like, ‘This f–king a–hole is not going to be in this movie.'”
But a meeting at a read-through together changed DiCaprio’s mind.”So I come in and I do the audition and I kind of look at him and he kind of looks at me, and then we do a scene, and they’re like, ‘Hmm, this f–king dude’s pretty good, right?’ ” Wahlberg remembers. “The next thing you know, boom, we’re hanging out.”
