There have been plenty who paid a price for The Wolf Of Wall Street. Margot Robbie, who gritted her teeth through uncomfortable sex scenes. The sleazy, shitbag swindler who sued for defamation of accurately portrayed character. The entire country of Malaysia. But perhaps none suffered so much as Jonah Hill, whose sacrifices in exchange for landing a role in a Scorsese film included a massive pay cut, taking a genuine punch to the face, being fitted for a pair of mouth-splitting veneers, and wearing what appeared to be the unearthed, acid-washed contents of a crumbling Mervyn’s warehouse. And as Hill recently told Bill Simmons on Any Given Wednesday, the shoot even landed him in the emergency room, after he hoovered way too much fake cocaine.
“I had to be hospitalized for three weeks,” Hill told Simmons. “If you ingest that much matter into your lungs you’ll get very sick, and we were literally doing fake coke for, like, seven months, every day.” Indeed, that’s a lot of fake coke—the kind of amount that only, say, anyone who’s bought coke during the last 20 years might have done.
Only in this case, Hill’s fake coke wasn’t your usual dealer’s choice potpourri of detergent, creatine, and cattle dewormer. No, Mr. Precious Hollywood Movie Star got to blow rails of pure vitamin powder, until he ended up with bronchitis and strong, healthy bones: “I never had more vitamin D in my entire life,” Hill added. “I could have lifted a car over my fucking head.”
Anyway, while it’s nice that Hill finally able to laugh off his brief brush with its debilitating/superpowering effects, hopefully his cautionary tale will serve as a PSA for others thinking of abusing fake cocaine. And it’s a damn good thing HBO canceled Vinyl, or Bobby Cannavale might have wound up dead.