Jonah Hill was apparently hospitalized for overdosing on fake cocaine while filming “The Wolf of Wall Street.” While he was on the synthetic stuff made specifically to make things like drug use in movies more realistic, it clearly didn’t agree with him. Thankfully, he was alright in the end.
If you’ve never seen “The Wolf of Wall Street,” let’s fill you in
Set in the 1980s, the movie is a semi-biographical tale about a man named Jordan Belfort. In real life, Belfort was a stockbroker on Wall Street who made millions by defrauding tons of rich people out of their investments.
Jonah Hill plays Donnie Azoff in “The Wolf of Wall Street.” Azoff was Belfort’s business partner, and both men were very, very into using cocaine.
What was in the “fake” cocaine?
While many actors would go the method route, Hill and his co-stars thankfully did not. Instead, they used Vitamin D powder to mimic drug use. While Vitamin D is fine in small amounts, it’s possible to have too much of it. That’s what Hill experienced.
So, what happened to Jonah Hill?
Incidentally, he shared this story back in 2016 on a show called “Any Given Wednesday.” Talking to host Bill Simmons, Hill revealed: “I did so much fake cocaine in The Wolf of Wall Street, I got bronchitis for three weeks and had to be hospitalized.”
Hill said he got so ill because it went into his lungs. “[It] doesn’t matter [what it was made of], because if you ingest any matter, that much matter into your lungs, you will get very sick.” He added that it was worse because “we were just literally doing fake coke for like, seven months. Every day.”
The overdose wasn’t the only downside of working on the movie
Jonah Hill also admitted he took a major salary cut to work with director Martin Scorcese on “The Wolf of Wall Street.”
“They gave me the lowest amount of money possible,” he recalled on “The Howard Stern Show” in 2014. “That was their offer, and I said, ‘I will sign the paper tonight. Fax them the papers tonight. I want to sign them tonight before they change their mind. I want to sign them before I go to sleep tonight so they legally can’t change their mind.’ I would sell my house and give him all my money to work for him.”
Given that he was ultimately nominated for an Academy Award for the role, he very likely has few regrets.
