The moment we’ve all been waiting for: Leonardo DiCaprio broke his silence and addressed the controversial door scene featured in 1997’s Titanic.
As a refresher, DiCaprio’s character, Jack, rested his arms on top of a floating door as his love interest, Rose (Kate Winslet), lay on top of it. Jack subsequently died from hypothermia since the majority of his body remained in the freezing North Atlantic Ocean. Since the film’s debut, fans have frequently argued that there was room on the door for both Jack and Rose.
DiCaprio, who shot to worldwide fame after starring in the flick, hadn’t publicly commented on the moment until he joined Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie for an interview with MTV News on Monday, July 15. While the bulk of the discussion was centered around their upcoming film Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood, the conversation shifted as the Oscar winner was asked whether Jack could “have fit on that door at the end of Titanic.”
Robbie, who also starred with DiCaprio in The Wolf of Wall Street, recalled “bawling my eyes out when I was a girl” watching that scene in the film. When Pitt weighed in, he said he was “gonna go back and look” at the scene in question.
“That is the biggest controversy, I think, in modern cinema,” Robbie, 29, suggested as DiCaprio chimed in to add, “Ever.”
Pitt, 55, then teased his costar by asking: “Could you? Could you have squeezed in there? You could’ve, couldn’t you?” The 44-year-old laughed, and then said: “No comment, Brad.”
When Robbie then inquired further to determine whether DiCaprio asked if the door should be made “smaller,” he replied: “Like I said, I have no comment.”
While the Aviator star didn’t have much to add to the debate, Winslet shared her insight on the matter during an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live! in 2016. At the time, the Oscar winner argued that Jack “could have actually fit on that bit of door.”
James Cameron, who directed the beloved film, has also addressed the much-debated scene. When Cameron spoke with Vanity Fair in 2017, he was asked why Rose did not make space for Jack on the door.
“The answer is very simple because it says on page 147 [of the script] that Jack dies. Very simple. Obviously, it was an artistic choice,” Cameron, 64, said at the time. “The thing was just big enough to hold her, and not big enough to hold him … I think it’s all kind of silly, really, that we’re having this discussion 20 years later.”
Cameron then noted that Jack “had to die” because Titanic is “about death and separation.” He also added that “had he lived, the ending of the film would have been meaningless.”
Titanic hit theaters in December 1997 and has since become one of the highest-grossest films of all time, after Avatar and Avengers: Endgame. It also scored several Academy Award wins, including Best Picture and Best Director.
