Inside The Wolf of Wall Street’s iconic yacht scene with Leonardo DiCaprio, from Kyle Chandler
Kyle Chandler recalls the pressure-cooker yacht scene he shot for The Wolf of Wall Street with Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese — and what made it so tense.
Out on the real yacht where Martin Scorsese staged Jordan Belfort’s smug victory lap, the scene wasn’t landing. The early takes between Kyle Chandler’s straight-arrow FBI agent Patrick Denham and Leonardo DiCaprio ’s Belfort kept slipping through their fingers. Chandler remembers spotting Scorsese pacing the dock, thinking through fixes as the mood tightened on board.
Chandler told BAFTA that even the simple act of facing DiCaprio threw him for a second: had they actually met before? The awkwardness showed up on camera until he reset his approach during a break and let some heat into Denham’s cool exterior.
“I came up with something, and I started getting angry at Leo’s character,”
he said, explaining that a little disdain for Belfort finally gave the standoff its bite. When they ran it again, DiCaprio turned to him with a grin and said, “Dude, we got it.”
“I see Leo DiCaprio coming across, and I don’t think I’ll call whether we met or not,”
Chandler admitted of those first beats on the yacht, before the take that clicked. After they nailed it, the adrenaline hit.
“I felt 10 feet tall then and just wanted to go jump in the water and swim home,”
he joked. That sharpened, needling energy is what ended up on screen in The Wolf of Wall Street — Denham quietly cutting Belfort down to size while the waves slap the hull.
From Wall Street to Lanterns
Chandler has since traded white-collar crime for cosmic policing, headlining HBO ’s Lanterns as veteran Green Lantern Hal Jordan opposite Aaron Pierre’s John Stewart. The series blends superhero lore with a grounded murder investigation in the American heartland, giving Chandler a flinty, seen-it-all presence while Stewart arrives as the newer recruit.
The case they’re working winds from an Earthbound mystery into the larger duties of the Green Lantern Corps, framing the show as more detective yarn than space opera. IMDb currently lists Lanterns among its most popular titles, with Chandler and Pierre front and center.
Warner Bros. Discovery says the show drew 9.3 million viewers globally across HBO and HBO Max in its first three days, including 6.6 million in the United States. The debut became DC Studios’ biggest series premiere on HBO Max.