Why Filming The Wolf Of Wall Street Put Jonah Hill In The Hospital
"The Wolf of Wall Street" is, in many ways, a film about excess. From its 180-minute running time to its extreme amounts of onscreen nudity and swearing, the Martin Scorsese-directed film is intent on depicting both the rewards and costs of living a life of endless luxury and debauchery. The film's visual and narrative excess isn't unwarranted, and it actually makes sense given its subject matter.
Based on the memoir of the same name by Jordan Belfort, "The Wolf of Wall Street" details how Belfort and his brokerage house achieved immense success on Wall Street by committing fraud and engaging in countless illegal activities. It takes Belfort's carefree, unapologetic perspective on the situation, and it doesn't shy away from showing the clear pleasure he took in making money — regardless of how he did it. As a result, the film goes out of its way to show what kind of lifestyle Belfort and his crooked colleagues were engaging in at the height of their "success."
However, while the film's numerous party sequences work to illustrate the absurdity of Belfort's escapades, shooting them was by no means an easy task for its actors and crew. In fact, it turns out that filming some scenes in "The Wolf of Wall Street" resulted in one of its lead stars needing to go to the hospital.
The fake cocaine in The Wolf of Wall Street sent Jonah Hill to the hospital
During an appearance on "Any Given Wednesday with Bill Simmons," Jonah Hill revealed that he was hospitalized with bronchitis because of his work on "The Wolf of Wall Street." Hill played Donnie Azoff in the film, who ends up being one of the closest confidantes and friends of Leonardo DiCaprio's Jordan Belfort. As a result of their close connection, Donnie often participates in many of the same parties that Belfort does throughout the film, and some of the most debaucherous scenes in "The Wolf of Wall Street" ended up taking a toll on Hill. It was his character's constant drug use, in particular, that ended up sending him to the hospital.
"I did so much fake cocaine in 'Wolf of Wall Street' that I got bronchitis for three weeks and had to be hospitalized," Hill revealed on "Any Given Wednesday" back in 2016. While the fake cocaine in the film was actually vitamin powder, Hill explained that, "If you ingest that much matter into your lungs, you will 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 think I could have lifted a car over my head."
In other words, it sounds like even the staged craziness in "The Wolf of Wall Street" was too much to handle at times for those involved. For what it's worth, Hill's efforts in the film didn't go unnoticed. He received a Best Supporting Actor nomination at the 2014 Academy Awards for his performance in "The Wolf of Wall Street," which itself earned a total of five Oscar nominations that year (via IMDb), including one for Best Picture.