Finally!! It has been ages. new photoshooting and interviewโค๏ธ Love the pics. https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/movies/a65619469/leonardo-dicaprio-paul-thomas-anderson-interview-2025/ Leonardo DiCaprio UnfilteredHow do you get the actor talking? Put him in a room with Paul Thomas Anderson. During hours of conversation, two era-defining menโon the record together for the first timeโwent deep. They cracked some jokes, too. A Leonardo DiCaprio performance is always an intense experience: Howard Hughes losing his mind, Jordan Belfort debasing himself, Hugh Glass surviving against all odds. We are watching one of Hollywoodโs greatest of all time at work. His latest film, One Battle After Another, is no exception. DiCaprio plays Bob Ferguson, a washed-up revolutionary and dad to a teenage daughter, Willa, played by Chase Infiniti in her first film role. Opposite him are Teyana Taylor as the absent mom, Benicio Del Toro as the ally, and Sean Penn as the villain. One Battle After Another is a big movieโan action film with car chases, a spy-craft yarn with a clandestine agent whoโs drunk and stoned, and a political thriller with reverberations for our interesting times. But at its core, the movie is a story about a father and daughter and what it means to show up for the people you love. Itโs also very funny. The writer and director is Paul Thomas Anderson, whose filmsโlike Boogie Nights, Magnolia, and There Will Be Bloodโare operatic renderings of human frailty. The movies are visceral and often haunting. They can also be hilarious, and theyโre always wildly entertaining. One Battle After Another is his first film with DiCaprio. Both men rarely give interviews, and their life and work are the subject of bottomless curiosity and speculation. This summer, they had two conversations: one in Leoโs kitchen, another over the phone. They recorded their talks and gave the transcripts to Esquire, which we edited and condensed. (Anderson also photographed DiCaprio for us in Los Angeles.) We gave them some prompts, some of which they indulged, others not so much. But the result is a rare glimpse into the minds of two of Hollywoodโs most daring and original men. Paul Thomas Anderson: Any regrets? Leonardo DiCaprio: Iโll say it even though youโre here: My biggest regret is not doing Boogie Nights. It was a profound movie of my generation. I canโt imagine anyone but Mark [Wahlberg] in it. When I finally got to see that movie, I just thought it was a masterpiece. Itโs ironic that youโre the person asking that question, but itโs true. Anderson: Why did it take us so long? DiCaprio: I know One Battle After Another has been on your desk for a long time. It was a personal story for you in a lot of ways and certainly pertinent to the world that weโre living in right now. But ultimately, wanting to do this movie was pretty simple: Iโve been wanting to work with youโPaulโfor something like twenty years now, and I loved this idea of the washed-up revolutionary trying to erase his past and disappear and try and live some sort of normal life raising his daughter. Anderson: Itโs a nice character, someone who starts out wanting to change the world on the far left but gets increasingly cranky and closed off as he gets older. Paul Thomas Anderson Jacket and shirt by Giorgio Armani. This article appeared in the Sept 2025 issue of Esquire subscribe DiCaprio: And lives in constant paranoia. It was fun creating a character thatโs weirdly a hybrid of both political parties and beliefsโand certainly not Father of the Year. Anderson: No one can outrun whatโs inevitable, which for him is to be a father and to have another generation come up from behind. So whatโs inevitable is middle age. Whatโs inevitable is complacency. Whatโs inevitable is looking at the next generation with disdain simply because theyโre not doing it how you think they should, which is just a code for โTheyโre not doing it like we did it.โ And so what comes next is being cranky, no matter how liberal and rah-rah you were in your youth. When you get down to the mundane, daily battles of life, they just wear on you. DiCaprio: Especially if youโre living in secrecy. What are your options? Youโre going to sit there and microdose and smoke pot and watch old revolutionary movies and not have a cell phone, right? Which became another huge theme in the movie too. Anderson: Iโm going to ask you a question, and youโre going to answer as quickly as you can. If you didnโt know how old you are, how old are you right now? DiCaprio: Thirty-two. Anderson: Good answer. What youโll have to do is investigate what happened when you were thirty-two, and then youโre going to discover and uncover why that was your answer. Hereโs how that relates to your character in the film: He fell in love with a woman named Perfidia. She broke his heart into a million pieces, put it back together, smashed it again, put it back together, and smashed it once more for good measure. She left him stuck in time, unable to move forward. Whatโs inevitable with that broken heart is to sit around with it for a long time and stew in it. All you do is stay in one place. By the way, my answer was twenty-seven. Anderson: By the time I came to you, four or five years ago, the script was probably 80 percent there. I had never quite figured out the storyโs policies on phones. DiCaprio: You were always into this idea of a no-phones world. Paul Thomas Anderson Coat, sweater, and trousers by Brioni; Oyster Perpetual 41 watch by Rolex. Anderson: I knew it had to be addressed. You brought me to the idea that Willa having a phone is a choice to rebel against her fatherโs wishes. Now that was a good idea. Itโs always fun when that happens with a new idea, that immediate shift where you lean into something that you were entirely opposed to. The movie benefited from it. DiCaprio: Itโs about the disconnection between generations. Itโs about how this daughter and father relate to one another, and that we are living in a completely different world than the next generation. We think we understand it, but we donโt. This is how they communicate. Anderson: If youโre from a generation that either enjoyed or was driven mad by the mystery of wondering where somebody is or when they might call next, or thinking, I have to rush home to my answering machine to find out if somebodyโs called, imagine if someone had said you could walk around with an answering machine in your pocket. To her generationโs point, why would I not let somebody know where I am every second of the day? I donโt understand what your problem is. Why wouldnโt you film yourself dancing? How could you dance and not film yourself? DiCaprio: I remember with my little sister and her friends, they asked, โWhat was it like?โ I lived in the days where there was an answering machine, and when you had plans, you either needed to be there on time, or youโd call on a pay phone to check your answering machine to see if they left a message, to see if they were going to be late. And then youโd have to call their answering machine so they could check their answering machine. They were like, โYou guys must have never had plansโhow did you ever communicate?โ There was a lot of waiting around; you had to stick to your word. Anderson: Do you remember when we were both starting, if you met anybody from the generation before us, and they were successful Hollywood players, they had answering services. That was like, Holy shit, they donโt have an answering machine; they have an answering service. DiCaprio: I tried to explain beepers. If it was stressful, youโd say your number and then 911911911. That means stop whatever youโre doing and call. Anderson: Well, beepers were generally for drug dealers. DiCaprio: Thatโs not true. We all had beepers. Paul Thomas Anderson Shirt by Zegna; sunglasses by Brunello Cucinelli. Anderson: I never had a beeper. My drug dealer had a beeper. DiCaprio: All my friends had beepers. They would click it on their jeans and youโd run aroundโbeep beep beepโjust look and like, Oh my homeyโs calling, โWhere are you?โ Anderson: Hereโs a question Esquire wants me to ask. โYou turned fifty last year. Does it feel like a natural time for reflection?โ DiCaprio: โYou turned emotionally thirty-five last year.โ Anderson: โYour age is fifty, but your emotional maturity is thirty-two.โ How does that feel? DiCaprio: So theyโre asking about age? Anderson: Theyโre asking if itโs a natural time for reflection. DiCaprio: Well, it creates a feeling like you have a desire to just be more honest and not waste your time. I can only imagine how the next few decades are going to progress. I look at my mother, for example, and she just says exactly what she thinks and wastes no time. She spends no time trying to fake it. Anderson: Yeah. Paul Thomas Anderson Shirt and trousers by Gucci; Oyster Perpetual 41 watch by Rolex. DiCaprio: Being more upfront and risking having things fall apart or risk the disagreements or risk going your separate ways from any type of relationship in lifeโthe personal, professionalโitโs that you just donโt want to waste your time anymore. You have to just be much more upfront. Itโs almost a responsibility because much more of your life is behind you than it is ahead of you. Anderson: Thatโs a good answer. DiCaprio: What was it about this movie that made you want to dedicate twenty years to it? Anderson: Political films can be like eating your vegetables. There are many exceptions of great films that are political; however, right now the only thing I want to see is a story that I can relate to. And the only thing that matters is the emotional. The emotional comes from the story of a family. It comes from the way we love and hate. When films preach, I stop listening. Itโs impossible to keep pace with the state of the worldโthis is why itโs best to focus on the things that never go out of style. You can figure out what never goes out of style by realizing what in a story is going to be the thing an audience really cares about. Our question is: Can a father find his daughter? Or: What does it mean to be a family? DiCaprio: You are considered a very art-house director. Would you call it that? What do you call it? Anderson: Well, thereโs no need to be insulting. Paul Thomas Anderson Jacket by Tom Ford; shirt and trousers by Giorgio Armani. DiCaprio: No, whatโs the term? You donโt do incredibly commercial movies, letโs put it that way. You are a writer, director. You have your own vision. Whatโs the term? Anderson: Box-office challenged? DiCaprio: No, you do appreciate big-budget movies, like a Marvel film. Iโve heard you talk about Terminator 2โabout going to film school and somebody saying, โIf youโre here to make Terminator 2, youโre in the wrong place.โ And you said, โWell, fuck that. Terminator 2is a fucking great movie.โ This, to me, is a Paul Thomas Anderson version of an action film. I was like, car chases? Howโs Paul going to do French Connection? What is he going to do that we havenโt seen Michael Bay do and make it a Paul thing? Anderson: Twenty years ago, I started writing this story, and the kernels of it were basically just to write an action car-chase movie. I would go to this story every couple years. Sometimes I thought I would like to adapt Thomas Pynchonโs Vineland, a book written in the eighties about the sixties. But I was looking at it in the early 2000s, thinking of what the story means at that time. Cut to a whole other story that I had floating around that was about a female revolutionary. In other words, for twenty years Iโve had all these various strands, and in a way, none of them ever went out of style, because whatever seems to be happening politically seems to always be the same. Same shit, different year. DiCaprio: A lot of people say One Battle After Another was based on Vineland. I never read Vineland. You never spoke to me about it. Thereโs a lot of references to the book, but I since have read it, and I see some of the roots of where this story came from, and the whole idea of what happens to these revolutionaries in their post-sixties life. Paul Thomas Anderson Clothes and sunglasses, DiCaprioโs own. Scarf, PTAโs own. Anderson: Vineland was always going to be too hard to adapt, so I stole the parts that spoke to me and just started running like a thief. I guess thatโs what all us writers doโweโre fucking thieves. I always liked the structure of Les Misรฉrables. You have a wild and crazy first act, and then you settle into the story, and you must pick up the pieces of the wreckage or you must reckon with the choices you made in the first act. This is a very good dramatic structure. DiCaprio: There are themes of Star Wars and Terminator 2 in this. Itโs interesting to see how you merged your vision of the zeitgeistโof what everyoneโs talking about today politicallyโbut with these very relatable themes for a larger audience. Anderson: Those mythical characters, at least the ones those Star Wars characters are based on, have been around forever, and they never go out of style. It is the classic โnothing changes.โ The story of a chosen child and opposing forces in pursuit of her magicโthis is an oldie but a goodie and certainly one that fits these times. Once you settle into a story that works, the next question is the tone, and our tone ended up reflecting everyoneโs character. Our tone reflects the absolute absurdity of human nature. DiCaprio: My character is not your typical heroic Terminator-type character that has any superpower, any special ability, but heโs just relentless, you know? Anderson: Well, that goes back toโ DiCaprio: The Bad News Bears. Heโs in The Bad News Bears of modern-day dad heroes. Anderson: Thatโs rightโheโs got a lot of Walter Matthau from Bad News Bears. When I watched the Mission: Impossible films, they usually start out with a code that Tom Cruise has to give back and forth. I would daydream, What would happen if Ethan Hunt forgot that code word just once? Would the other end of the line say, โItโs okay. I know youโre Ethan Hunt. Letโs just get on with it.โ Or would they say, โSorry, I know youโre Ethan Hunt, but I still need the password.โ Paul Thomas Anderson Jacket, shirt, and trousers by Giorgio Armani; loafers by Dior Men; socks by the London Sock Company; Oyster Perpetual 41 watch by Rolex. DiCaprio: We had a lot of talks about how to create a heroic character and bring a sense of reality and not have it be the typical choices that weโve always seen. You said to me, Itโs in the relentless pursuit of wanting to protect his daughter, not giving up, being there for her. Itโs a story about a father and daughter and what you do in those positions, even if youโre up against all odds. There was some point in which we were talking about him going to John Wick extremes. I was like, No, give me a shittier gun, or what if there is no gun? Eliminating the violence from his character was the key to unlocking him. Anderson: I also thought it was interesting that we never quite knew exactly how it was going to end. But I like where we landed. The dramatic center of it was for Willa to say, โWho are you?โ Saving the day was you saying, โIโm your dad.โ DiCaprio: And thatโs what the storyโs really about. Anderson: Thatโs heroic. Thatโs more heroic than shooting somebody. Saving her is saying: โIโm the guy whoโs been here the whole time. Iโm your dad.โ Anderson: If itโs a Saturday and Iโm flipping around thinking, What do I want to watch? chances are Iโm going to land on something that has some kind of action-adventure element to it. The first thing that pops to my mind is Midnight Run. Iโve been dreaming of trying to make a film as fun as Midnight Run since I first saw it. DiCaprio: A masterpiece. Anderson: I saw it three or four times the week it came out. Itโs the high-water mark of a great film for a broad audience. Usually we shove an action movie into a section of the room that disallows us from taking it too seriously. There are exceptions, like Mad Max, but for the most part we donโt let our action films cross with our more dramatic stories, as if you canโt have good acting and someone driving a car or shooting a gun. But Midnight Run is the total package. DiCaprio: I was recently talking about that movie, and a very famous comedian was like, โThat may be the greatest fucking two-man comedy ever done. Itโs brilliant.โ When my dad was telling me about what acting is, he took me to the theater in Burbank to watch Midnight Run. He said: โYou want to be an actor, son? Thatโs the guy right thereโthatโs acting.โ Anderson: Do you ever watch any of your old movies? Paul Thomas Anderson Shirt and trousers by Loro Piana; Oyster Perpetual 41 watch by Rolex; sunglasses by Brunello Cucinelli. DiCaprio: I rarely watch any of my films, but if Iโm being honest, thereโs one that I have watched more than others. Itโs The Aviator. Thatโs simply because it was such a special moment to me. I had worked with Marty [Scorsese] on Gangs of New York, and Iโd been toting around a book on Howard Hughes for ten years. I almost did it with Michael Mann, but there was a conflict and I ended up bringing it to Marty. I was thirty. It was the first time as an actor I got to feel implicitly part of the production, rather than just an actor hired to play a role. I felt responsible in a whole new way. Iโve always felt proud and connected to that film as such a key part of my growing up in this industry and taking on a role of a real collaborator for the first time. Anderson: I can stop and watch it anytime. DiCaprio: We should talk about Adam. [Adam Somner was a British-born first assistant director who worked with Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Ridley Scott, and Anderson before his death from cancer last year. He is credited as a producer on One Battle After Another.] Anderson: Sure. DiCaprio: There was nobody like him. The fact that this man would just go to the utmost extremes to somehow bring everything into order was one of the most magical things I would see in my whole career. And he worked with the greatest directors in the world, and they trusted him. It allowed me to watch you or somebody like a Marty juggle so many different departments with so many different questions, which is why I donโt have a powerful urge to direct. Because Iโm just trying to figure out what is this line going to be. I would go into a spiraling vortex for hours about how to say that line. I know we get emotional talking about him, but there was just absolutely no one better. Anderson: Without question. As it relates to you and me, we had wanted to work together for twenty-five years or something like that. It was always going to be the right time when it was the right time. But Adam, since heโs been working with you, has been saying, โGet going. You guys are gonna fucking love it. Iโm telling you because Iโve been with you both independently. Nowโs the time!โ DiCaprio: I didnโt know that. Paul Thomas Anderson Shirt by Zegna Anderson: It was nice that his match of us together got to come true. There was a pretty large waiting room of customers to get the services of our man Adam. Iโd like to think I was at the front of the line, but we all know Steven was, as Steven is the king. But the joy of giving him the script and waiting for his feedback and approval, which was always supportive, but he was never a yes-man. He is not going to tell you itโs great if itโs not great. That is worth everything. Youโre surrounded by your own insecurities and your own confidence. When one rises, when the other one falls, to have somebody whoโs so steady and secure and has good taste on top of talent, well, itโs all you can ask for, and thatโs what he was. But he was also somebody who knows how to set a table for an actor, keep it quiet, keep it cool, let them do their work. Itโs why Daniel Day-Lewis would fucking not be on a set without Adam Somner keeping it cool, you know? Itโs why you feel safe. DiCaprio: I remember listening to Martyโs story about Adam when we were doing the orgy sequence in Wolf of Wall Street. We had an intimacy coordinator there for the first time in cinema history, I believe, because it was a full-on Caligula orgy on a 747. Adam worked with the intimacy coordinator, and it was like a dance. Adam would say, nasty bit, nasty bit, hover over here, nasty bit, nasty bit. For Marty, it was one of those Chia Pet things, everything was already grown for him. Anderson: I donโt know what itโs going to be like when we have to go to work again without him. Itโs going to be a big gaping hole. DiCaprio: Chase [Infiniti] was incredible. Anderson: Yes, she was. DiCaprio: We did an extensive audition process, and there was some point at which you said, โThis is the one.โ And I said, โYes, this is the one.โ And this was her first movie. Anderson: We started with filming your scenes with her. I remember thinking, Iโm really going to keep an eye on her today; she must be very nervous. And she wasnโt nervousโmaybe she was, we all probably were. But the point is, she was so instantly a professional. We shot the final scene at the beginning. I think we all collectively said, โThis will never be in the movie. Weโre going to go make the movie, and weโll come back to this; weโre never going to get anything good here.โ And lo and behold, I think we got something quite magical. DiCaprio: That final sceneโitโs very, very moving. And then Teyana [Taylor] was just absolutely fantastic. What an ability to improv and embody that character. Anderson: Teyana was best when you just give her the green light to cut loose. Just let her cook and make sure youโre filming it right. Thatโs the best way to do that. DiCaprio: And Sean, of course. Anderson: Sean Penn, I mean, heโs just old enough that, for us starting out, he was this hero. Youโre like, Wow, thatโs an actor, thatโs a man. DiCaprio: After knowing him so long, Iโm just so happy he got to have a character like this, because it wasnโt going to be the traditional way to play him. You knew Sean was going to bring some element that was askew. I only got to do one scene with him. Anderson: Itโs just one in the supermarket, right? I will always remember that as a great day, when you kept looking around, asking, โAre we going to close this supermarket down?โ Me saying, โNo, weโre just going to shoot.โ And then the cashier at the checkout, in the middle of your scene, takes out her phone and starts taking pictures of you. That made me laugh. I guess she got bored taking pictures after a while. DiCaprio: Do you like the idea of controlled chaos in what you do? Paul Thomas Anderson Jacket, shirt, and trousers by Giorgio Armani; loafers by Dior Men; socks by the London Sock Company; Oyster Perpetual 41 watch by Rolex. Anderson: Yes. I donโt think itโs good all the time. You have to pick and choose when you think itโll be appropriate. There are certain moments when youโre like, I want to feel the unknown entering. We shot a scene in Punch-Drunk Love of Adam Sandler on a telephone calling Emily Watson in a hotel room. Heโs standing in a street in Honolulu, and he calls her, and itโs fantastic. But when we were standing there, I said, โWell, itโs good, but itโs a little low energy, and I donโt really know what else I would do to fix it.โ As we were wrapping up for the day, someone said, โYou canโt leave your truck hereโtomorrow is this huge Japanese American Parade day.โ And of course we say, โWait a minute, thereโs a parade going on? We could put the phone booth right there and shoot in the middle of a parade? Letโs come back.โ That was the kind of thing where thereโs something larger happening than your film. Sometimes youโre going to fail. But there are other times where you can catch lightning in a bottle. Adam was supposed to get quite angry at his sister on one of these phone calls, and he was kind of getting there, but not really. These drummers are coming down the road making this tribal banging at the same time heโs supposed to reach this peak. The music had to affect him. He fucking launches into this fantastic take of anger; heโs lost his mind. DiCaprio: Itโs the โIโm walking here!โ moment, right? Anderson: Thatโs right. We got quite lucky with some of that stuff on this film. We shot underneath a freeway underpass, forty feet from the border of Tijuana, while we were raiding the immigration camp. I couldnโt tell the real immigrants who were sneaking across the border from the background artists that weโd hired. No one could. Iโd watch them walk in the back of a scene and think, Is that a background cross or is that somebody really crossing? And it would be people that were really crossing the border. DiCaprio: Tell me about the line from Benicioโs character. About freedom. Anderson: Itโs a Nina Simone line. An interviewer asks, โWhat is freedom to you?โ And she says, โIโll tell you what freedom is. No fear. Thatโs what it is.โ That wasnโt in the script, but the deeper we got into shooting, that kept reverberating in my mind. Donโt be afraid. Keep going. It became perfect to throw it into Benicioโs mouth. And as a philosophy, it certainly holds true for me. Freedom is no fear. Letโs hope we can all get there. DiCaprio: What do you make of the state of the movie business today? Anderson: Iโm just trying to rapidly live in reverse to hold on to any shred of the Olden Times thatโs left. This is called denial and nostalgiaโwish me luck. Iโm only half kidding. The irony is that the best part of life is the constant forward momentum. It only moves in one direction, so hop on and hold tight. Every โsky is fallingโ panic has been screamed and screamed again. Best to remain calm, keep your head down, and dedicate yourself to the work at hand. The rest is just noise. I love our business, and Iโve seen it flourish and eat itself and then turn around and grow strong and then make the same mistakes it made years earlier. Through it all, itโs still standing. Or in other words, โYou never got me down, Ray.โ Paul Thomas Anderson Shirt and trousers by Zegna. Oyster Perpetual 41 watch by Rolex. Scarf, PTAโs own. DiCaprio: Raging Bull. Anderson: This is not me talking; this is Esquire. โYou give so much to every role you play, once filming wraps, what do you do to come down from it?โ DiCaprio: Sheesh. Anderson: How do you recover? What is what? What does a jet-setter like yourself do? DiCaprio: Ironic, because Iโm on a yacht off Croatia right now. Anderson: Iโd expect nothing less. Iโll rephrase the question: Do you get the blues after filming? Because I sure do. How do you avoid it? DiCaprio: I think Iโm good at it because I take a lot of time off between films. I do things more sparingly, which means youโre anxious to get back to your real life once youโve finished filming. Life goes on hold when youโre filming. Everything stops and gets put on the back burner in your real life. I might be more concerned if I worked too much. To go from film to film, I would be scared about what do I have to come back to? Iโm very fortunate for that. Anderson: That makes sense. Sometimes when a film starts, itโs very hard to get used to how little structure there is. How far from normal it is. The lack of sleep, the circus lifestyle of it all. And then, when itโs over, a hundred days later, itโs very challenging to return to the structure of everyday life. DiCaprio: Itโs much more difficult for directors, in my mind. We get to go home and bounce back into our normal rhythm and in a much different way until promotion time. Anderson: Which leads me into the next question, which Esquire wants me to ask: โWhat do you worry about? What keeps you up at night?โ Besides saying dumb shit while youโre promoting your movie. You know what, donโt answer that.
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