Mark Wahlberg wasn’t all too pleased while shooting Martin Scorsese’s 2006 thriller “The Departed.”
Wahlberg, in an interview on the “Happy Sad Confused” podcast, told host Josh Horowitz that he was “a little pissed about a couple things” while he worked on the Oscar-winning film.
“But look, it all worked out in the end, I think,” said Wahlberg, who plays Staff Sergeant Sean Dignam in the film.
He continued, “Well, originally, I was supposed to play another part. Originally, I was supposed to get paid, and originally, I was supposed to be — and then even when we kind of agreed that I would play Dignam and, I saw the advantages of playing that part and how I would approach the situation with everybody else playing opposite me, I then had another movie after.”
Wahlberg added that he had just finished filming “Four Brothers” and was preparing to shoot “Invincible,” noting that his wig-like hair appearance in “The Departed” was due to him growing his hair out for his next film.
He said Scorsese had to deal with Jack Nicholson, Matt Damon, Leonardo DiCaprio, Alec Baldwin and the rest of the cast on top of him being “in and out in five weeks.”
“And so I went off to go and shoot ‘Invincible,’ got my hair extensions, came back, and then they were like, ‘Oh, you gotta take out the extensions.’ I was like, ‘Shit took eight hours, I’m not taking this out.’”
Wahlberg told GQ in 2018 that he originally wasn’t committed to being in the movie but his agent told Scorsese otherwise.
“Marty called me up acting like he was all excited about us making this movie together and I said, ‘I’m not doing the movie,’” said Wahlberg, adding that his agent asked him to go talk to Scorsese again at his office.
“He goes, ‘But look at this part, look at what you get to do with all these people’ and he knows I’m from that world. I talked to him about improvising and doing my thing and he said, ‘Dude, you’re free to do what you want to do.’”
The actor told Horowitz that he viewed the role as an opportunity to have fun.
“Originally, I was just thinking, OK, we gotta make this as realistic and credible as possible. It’s Boston, it’s gangster shit. You don’t see too many of that, those movies and I was thinking kind of broad big picture, not necessarily my own individual goals or even the opportunity for me as an actor,” he said.
“And then when I read the part again, I was like, OK, there’s, there’s something here.”