Aya Cash reveals a wild behind-the-scenes story from when she worked on The Wolf of Wall Street. The black comedy directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Leonardo DiCaprio explores the journey of real-life stockbroker Jordan Belfort as he climbs to the top and commits corruption and fraud in his firm. The Wolf of Wall Street also stars Matthew McConaughey, Jonah Hill, Margot Robbie, Kyle Chandler, Rob Reiner, and Jon Bernthal. The film is memorable for featuring extreme profanity, explicit sex scenes, and intense drug use.
Cash played Belfort's assistant Janet in the satirical biopic and has had an illustrious career on screen and stage, well known for her main roles in You're the Worst, Fosse/Verdon, and The Boys. Cash has also appeared and starred in many comedy films such as Begin Again, Scare Me, and the upcoming We Broke Up. While Cash did not appear too much in The Wolf of Wall Street, she does have some tidbits of the wild antics that happened behind-the-scenes of shooting the film.
In an interview with Collider, Cash shared her experience working on the movie and also disclosed a story she heard that happened during shooting a scene that she was not in, involving an orgy with graphic nudity. Since the scene featured many people that were nude, there was some confusion over which parts were real. Cash's full story can be read below:
The craziest story I heard - and I won’t say who the actor is - but there’s a certain scene where they’re in an orgy and they had hired actors and non-actors wanting people to be comfortable with their bodies because there’s a lot of nudity, and there was some confusion about what was real and what was not. And this actor had to say to his scene partner, ‘Please stop licking my balls. It’s fake.’"
The Motion Picture Association of America gave The Wolf of Wall Street an R rating. The movie also set a Guinness World Record for the most use of profanity. With Scorsese in the director's chair, audiences can always expect him to go the extra mile with his storytelling and originality. Of course in a scene that features an orgy and many people pretending to perform sexual acts, it can lead to some awkward and uncomfortable moments.
Since Cash told the story with humor, the situation on set sounds like a simple misunderstanding, but in a film that is as explicit as The Wolf of Wall Street, it is important to communicate and be aware of the level of comfort when coordinating vulnerable and intimate scenes. Many productions now employ an intimacy coordinator on set whenever called for to ensure the comfort of the actors in the scene. Though humorous, it seems unlikely a situation like what Cash described for The Wolf of Wall Street will happen again.
Source: Collider