ROMEO + JULIET
Delving into the archive to find out what DiCaprio, Danes and Lurhmann were saying in 1996.
Back in October 1996, Baz Luhrmann presented his latest film to journalists – an audacious, modern take on Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet. Filmed in Mexico during extreme weather (and with crew kidnappings!), it starred 22-year-old Leonardo DiCaprio and a teenage Claire Danes as the titular star-crossed lovers, and had yet to be seen, let alone embraced, by audiences. As it celebrates its 25th anniversary this year, Total Film looks back to the eve of its premiere (just as DiCaprio began work on Titanic) when the trio discussed language, love and lots of water...
ON THE GENESIS OF THE FILM
Baz Lurhmann: The idea was to play the play in contemporary images. My thing about Shakespeare is this incredible pretense and this mentality about the rule book, about the way in which it is correct to do Shakespeare. Most of those ideas are 19th-century interpretations – very little to do with the Elizabethan stage. So I went to the studio and I told them the idea. [They said] “It’s really great, but just one thing; can you take the language out?”
ON CASTING ROMEO AND JULIET
BL: Leonardo DiCaprio was always going to be Romeo. I just thought, ‘He’s Romeo,’ and I rang up his agent. We met and I said, ‘Look, don’t say yes or no, but come down to Sydney, go diving on the Barrier Reef and we’ll work for a week. If you like it, we’ll talk more…’ So he came down for a week. He worked. I asked Don McAlpine, who I didn’t know and who was one of the highest paid DPs in the world, to get a video camera, and we shot three large sections of the film with actors and my little team, with everything we could get, and we made this little video. Once [the studio] saw just how clear a lot of the telling of the story could be, then there was a sense of ‘it might work’.
Leonardo DiCaprio: We interviewed a lot of girls for Juliet, because we wanted to get a powerful Juliet instead of one that’s sort of really dreamy. We wanted someone that could be intense with the emotion, and once I met Claire, I said, “Wow, this girl’s powerful. She knows what she’s doing!” and Baz agreed with me, and then we hired her.
BL: Leo’s in this fortunate/unfortunate position of being a young movie
star in Hollywood, but actually he’s a remarkable young man. He’s an enormously funny guy and I have to say that he has been kind of a partner in this project. If he hadn’t done it, it possibly wouldn’t have gone ahead. He’s now doing Titanic, his first big picture. My hope for him is that when you are talented like that and when you are in that position, that it doesn’t swamp you – that he continues to grow because he isn’t just another personality actor. He’s an actor.
LD: I’m not that famous. I’m not, like, huge to the point where I can’t walk the streets. We’ll see how it goes, but right now I’ve been completely comfortable with it.
ON FILMING IN MEXICO
BL: We looked at doing the film in Canada and in Miami and in Sydney. One day I was in Mexico and I instantly said, “This is the place,” because apart from the fact it was economically very good for the film, the spirit of the Verona Beach we created was alive in Mexico. Yes, we had a hurricane that wiped out our sets and we all got very sick and it’s true that [hair stylist] Aldo [Signoretti] did get kidnapped and his leg was broken… But what an experience. It wasn’t dull, you know?
LD: We all got sick. Every one of the actors got sick at one point or another and Baz got to the point where he had to have an IV of Gatorade in his arm. It was like weeks of time when we had to recuperate, but you know, with all this violence going on around us in Mexico City, I think if we would have it shot out in LA in a sort of relaxed atmosphere or somewhere else, it wouldn’t have been the same movie. All the stuff that we were hearing every day about the violence around us and chaos, people getting killed from our hotel in Mexico City, really fuelled all the actors.
Claire Danes: It was an amazing place to live in for four months. It was kind of like the Wild West. There were no rules and it was very scary to see these men just standing outside of grocery markets with huge guns in military uniforms, you know. There was a real possibility of being in serious danger but I would have done anything to make this movie.
BL: We built all of that beach stuff in Veracruz and the one thing we neglected to get clear on is that during the period we were there, Veracruz is nothing but wind. When I was first going to shoot the death scene of Mercutio, he gets killed down at the beach, and the next thing a hurricane hits and wipes everything out. So I go on the beach with Don McAlpine, the DP, and all the actors, and we’ve all got plastic helmets on and goggles because it’s like being in Lawrence Of Arabia with the storm, and I think, ‘Well, what if he dies in the wind, you know?’ All the actors went, “Yes, yes, I’ll do that.” We do two wide shots and they’re our only wide shots. Everyone thinks it’s trillion-dollar wind machines and CGI, but it’s actually just these two wides that we shot. That would not have happened had I shot it elsewhere.
LD: That was really hard, especially the rain. I had to sit there all night while they did this giant crane shot. The rain was coming down and I was sitting there with hardly anything on screaming “Juliet!” 300 times, and
I had to do 20 different shots from different levels.
ON PLAYING LOVERS
CD: It was such an intense experience and we were playing, you know, two of the most famous lovers in history – there was a lot of pressure and we couldn’t really face it so we went the opposite way and just hung out in our different trailers and we were friends. It wasn’t a mushy relationship in any way, although we really respect and admire each other,
we didn’t act on any sort of attraction, which I think was the best way to go because it only served the work. I adored working with Leo. It was such a treat to create moments on screen with him. I really believe he’s a genius and I learned a lot from working with him.
ON SHOOTING THAT SWIMMING-POOL SCENE
CD: It was so intimidating to tackle that scene because it has been played for so many centuries and it’s ridiculously famous and I was really concerned that I wouldn’t be able to say it in a fresh way that hadn’t been done before. Ultimately I realised I couldn’t obsess about it and I just had to do it however it came naturally.
LD: It took about two weeks to get right, because we were in and out of the pool. Baz experimented so many different ways, just to get it right because he didn’t want to take away from the beauty of the scene, but he also wanted to give it a sort of new twist and not make it the same old.
BL: When they’re underwater and they kiss it’s like, there’s a place where we can be free. I use water as a place that they disappear into and, when [Romeo] kills Tybalt, it rains and they’re covered in water. It’s if you’ve got your head underwater you’re not going to hear mum yelling, basically.
ON SHOOTING THAT DEATH SCENE
CD: It was extremely surreal, and in between takes Leonardo was checking his messages, lying on the deathbed on his cellular phone. I was extremely frightened of that death scene and
I was finding all sorts of different excuses to avoid reaching the climax of the scene because it was very scary. You know, I was saying, “Oh, guys, you know, I think we have to do it again, because my wig is pulling” I was stalling, stalling, but I did eventually push myself and complete the scene. I will never forget the feeling I had living in Juliet’s shoes in that particular moment. I can’t explain to you how strong the silence surrounding me was, I felt the warmth of the candles and the massiveness of the cathedral, and I felt so completely and utterly alone. That’s really fun, as an actress, to be able to jump off of those cliffs and just see where you land.
LD: I had so much emotional stuff to do in this movie, more than any other film I’d done. I mean, usually there’s some scenes where you’re sort of wrecked and crying, but here, in almost every other scene I was in a shambles. So Baz would understand that before each one of these things, I’d have to have like 20 minutes alone in a corner and I would just visualise horrible things and try to make myself feel horrible.
ON THE NEXT STEPS
BL: The studio actually wanted a sequel to Romeo + Juliet. I kid you not, they said, “So we want sequel rights in the deal.” I said, “Well, you know, they’re dead. They’re all dead. It’s a tragedy.” I think they settled for prequel rights… [laughs]
LD: I’ve been working with some great directors, but I want to try and work with a master like Scorsese, that would be a dream for me. I’d love to do that. I just want to keep doing movies.
ROMEO + JULIET IS AVAILABLE ON BLU-RAY, DVD, DIGITAL DOWNLOAD, AND DISNEY+.
‘IN ALMOST EVERY OTHER SCENE I WAS IN A SHAMBLES’ LEONARDO DICAPRIO