Jonah Hill on being directed by Martin Scorsese in The Wolf of Wall Street

Last Updated on July 31, 2021

Although I don't have anything against Jonah Hill and have definitely enjoyed his work in the past, it did strike me as somewhat surprising when it was announced that he would be working with Martin Scorsese in THE WOLF OF WALL STREET. When all was said and done, Hill did some great work in the film, but he was definitely nervous about working with the great director for the first time. Jonah Hill appeared on Any Given Wednesday with Bill Simmons recently to promote WAR DOGS and was asked to tell his favourite "Martin Scorsese is an unbelievable director" story.

If you don't have three minutes and a half minutes to spare, here's what went down: after performing take after take of the scene where Donnie Azoff calls his boss to quit and go work for Jordan Belfort (here's the scene), Hill began to get overly anxious and it started to affect his performance. Martin Scorsese then sent the crew on break and called Jonah Hill over to come and sit with him, but instead of questioning why Hill wasn't able to do the scene, Scorsese ignored him and read the paper for twenty minutes. Whatever works. This wasn't the only setback Jonah Hill encountered on the set of THE WOLF OF WALL STREET, he also wound up in the hospital from doing too much fake cocaine.

I did so much fake cocaine in Wolf of Wall Street I got bronchitis for three weeks and had to be hospitalized. It’s vitamin powder, but it doesn’t matter, because if you ingest that much matter into your lungs, you’ll get very sick, and we were just literally doing fake coke for, like, seven months, every day. I never had more vitamin D in my entire life. I could have lifted a car over my f***ing head!

WAR DOGS is now playing in theaters so make sure to check out a review from our own Chris Bumbray!