Leonardo DiCaprio’s performance in The Revenant is his latest, perhaps greatest attempt at winning an Oscar. But lately, the media’s focus has turned to his CGI bear co-star. Whether it’s Jonah Hill falsely taking credit for the beast’s subtle performance or the the crazy rumor that she rapes DiCaprio’s character during the bear attack scene, the narrative has veered into some…unexpected domains. That makes the timing of a Global News interview with Glenn Ennis, the actual stunt actor who played the bear, a welcome respite from the nonsense.
In the interview, Ennis explained that he wore a blue suit with a bear head, likening the outfit to that of a “big Smurf bear,” which somehow sounds simultaneously more cuddly and more terrifying than what the CGI artists eventually painted in. He also detailed how the sequence was shot chronologically over the span of two minutes:
It was very difficult if you look at the geography where the attack takes place. Leo is thrown against a tree, turned over, rolled over, tossed, batted and then he crawls…he had three wires attached to him the entire time. Those got tangled in my feet, around his legs, around his head. Everything had to be choreographed in order to unwrap the wire so we could make the next move.
As for that whole “bear rape” scenario, Ennis said that “in order to have the bear’s jaw in the small of his back, basically my face was in [DiCaprio’s] butt,” but that’s about as far as things went. He called the rumor “bizarre” and “it was people with no life, I guess, who started that.”
[h/t Uproxx]