Leonardo DiCaprio wore fake butt to get spanked by Robert De Niro in ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’

He made sure his moon was fully protected.

Leonardo DiCaprio is an actor known to roll with the punches but when it came time to film a “shocking” spanking scene in the new film, “Killers of the Flower Moon,” the Oscar winner made sure he was fully prepared by wearing padding on his butt to soften the impact.

In Martin Scorsese’s new epic crime film, which was inspired by the real-life murders covered in David Grann’s 2017 nonfiction book “Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI,” DiCaprio plays Ernest Burkhart.

At the urging of his uncle, ruthless businessman William Hale (Robert De Niro), Burkhart marries Mollie Kyle (Lily Gladstone), a wealthy Native American as part of a bigger plan to kill dozens of members of the Osage family to gain access to their Oklahoma lands, where some of the world’s most valuable oil fields lay underneath just ripe for the plundering. 

But when Burkhart blunders that plan, he earns the wrath of his uncle, who takes him into a back room, tells him to bend over, and then brutally spanks him with a wooden paddle. Ironically the moment was actually brand spanking new (pun intended) and missing from the original source material.

“I don’t think that was in the first script,” cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto, 57, said in an interview with Insider. “That was something that was added, and it’s shocking in the film.”

The moment comes around halfway through the three-and-a-half-hour flick and was burned into Prieto’s memory.

“I do remember doing them quite a few times and thinking, ‘Oh, that must hurt,’ Prieto said. “There was some padding on [DiCaprio’s] butt. But you could tell De Niro, 80 was really hitting him. Leo is game for so much. He’ll do anything.”

Another memorable scene from “Killers of the Flower Moon” comes at the very beginning and in a recent interview with Variety, Prieto explained that he collaborated with Scorsese to pull off the film’s expansive and explosive opening in which shows oil busting out of the Osage lands and showering the natives in dark black petroleum.

“Scorsese kept talking about oil gushing up in the air,” Prieto said. “When you find oil, it bubbles under the surface, but he wanted to do something surreal and joyful, which contrasts with what that black gold brought them.”

In a press conference in May Chief Standing Bear opened up about the suffering his people had endured and the newfound trust he had found because of the film.

“My people suffered greatly, and to this very day, those effects are with us,” Chief Standing Bear said. “But I can say, on behalf of the Osage, Marty Scorsese and his team have restored trust, and we know that trust will not be betrayed.”

“Killers of the Flower Moon” is now playing in theaters nationwide.