Leonardo DiCaprio says he brought his father and stepmother to the set of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood—and co-star Brad Pitt mistook them for extras.
The Academy Award winner received the title of TIME’s Entertainer of the Year last December, and in an accompanying video, he discussed the mishap that occurred while filming the 2019 Quentin Tarantino-directed movie. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood also starred Margot Robbie.
“I know they look like they’re extras in this movie, but that’s really them,” DiCapiro joked. “My stepmother is a Sikh. My father is from this sort of, hippie counterculture. [He] grew up in San Fran and Los Angeles, hung out with a lot of the underground art movement in Los Angeles in the ‘70s.”
DiCaprio then explained that when he and Pitt were leaving from Musso & Frank Grill in LA, he pointed out his father, George DiCaprio, and stepmother, Peggy DiCaprio.
The actor’s biological mother is Irmelin Indenbirken, who divorced DiCaprio’s father when he was a child.
Pitt apparently laughed off DiCaprio, insisting that his father and stepmom were Hollywood extras, as the film focused on the 1970s Manson Family cult.
“‘No, that’s them,’” DiCaprio recalled telling Pitt. “He’s like, ‘Yeah, right.’ I’m like, ‘I know they look like they’re extras in this movie, but that’s really them. That’s how they dress every day.’”
DiCaprio called it an “amazing moment” that he’ll “never forget.” DiCaprio’s father would appear on the big screen several years later in the Paul Thomas Anderson-directed Licorice Pizza, which was set in the ‘70s.
“I created a picture of a guy who owned a wig shop that sold these waterbeds, and I couldn’t put my finger on it. I kept saying, ‘Who do I know who looks like this?'” Anderson told The New York Times’ Kyle Buchanan.
“And like a bolt of lightning, I remember, like, ‘Leo’s dad looks exactly like this,'” he continued. “So I tracked him down, asked him if he’d ever be interested in being in a film. He said, ‘Sure.'”