Leonardo DiCaprio says ‘Don’t Look Up’ speech came from a place of ‘realizing the world is falling apart’

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Leonardo DiCaprio is known for being an outspoken environmentalist and a passionate climate change crusader. But while he has appeared in documentaries, attended conferences and donated his time and money to a number of charitable causes, he hasn’t been able to find a film that would address planetary issues head on.

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Then along came writer-director Adam McKay ( The Big Short , Vice ) with Don’t Look Up , a dark comedy about a deadly comet headed towards Earth.

“Adam created this film, which was about the climate crisis, but he created a sense of urgency with it by making it about a comet that’s going to hit Earth in six months time and how science has become politicized,” DiCaprio, 47, mused during a virtual press conference earlier this month.

Playing in select movie theatres and available now on Netflix , Don’t Look Up takes a satirical swipe at how the media and politicians treat climate issues. Paired with Academy Award winner Jennifer Lawrence as grad student Kate Dibiasky, DiCaprio plays Dr. Randall Mindy, an astronomer who tries to warn the planet of the impending disaster only to find out no one cares.

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As humanity faces imminent doom, the pair deal with political opportunists (led by Meryl Streep’s Trump-inspired President Janie Orlean), a greedy tech mogul (Mark Rylance) and societal indifference epitomized by two daytime talking heads (Cate Blanchett and Tyler Perry).

DiCaprio, who admits he’s a bit of a “Debbie Downer because the clock is absolutely ticking,” said the film appealed to him because it shines a light on scientists.

“I was thankful to play a character who is based on so many people I’ve met in the scientific community, and in particular climate scientists who have been trying to communicate the urgency of this issue and feel like they’re subjected to the last page of the newspaper,” the Oscar winner said.

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The debates over COVID and vaccines led to a “whole new scientific argument going on,” he added making Don’t Look Up “such an important film to be a part of at this particular time.”

McKay — who began his career as a writer on Saturday Night Live before moving on to a long-running comedy partnership with Will Ferrell on films like Anchorman , Talladega Nights and Step Brothers — told the Sun that DiCaprio liked the idea of telling a story that addressed the climate crisis in a unique way.

“He saw what I saw, which was: you don’t tell the story of climate change, you tell something that’s a thinly disguised allegory for the climate crisis and you let the audience laugh,” he said.

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“I’ve been looking for a movie that was about this subject for decades now,” DiCaprio continued. “Adam really cracked the code with this narrative. It takes artists like this to change the narrative and create conversation.”

In one of the film’s climatic scenes, DiCaprio’s Mindy channels Peter Finch’s “I’m mad as hell” scene from 1976’s Network as he tries to sound the alarm of the extinction-level threat hurtling towards Earth. It’s a speech, McKay said, they rewrote over and over with input from Amy Mainzer, one of NASA’s lead asteroid hunters.

“We tried to make it simple and raw and get back to the idea of just people expressing themselves,” McKay said.

DiCaprio added: “We worked on that speech probably 50 times together. And what I really wanted to do was to try to articulate the frustration of the scientific community. How one is sitting there on a pulpit speaking the truth (while) all these other noises are sort of drowning out the main message.

“So we worked a lot together on trying to understand the frustration of the scientific community and how one would be in a situation of ultimate frustration realizing the world is falling apart,” the Once Upon a Time in Hollywood star continued. “And how do you take off this sort of professional jacket to cut straight to the chase about the truth of this issue.”

Don’t Look Up is available to stream on Netflix now.

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