Jonah Hill and Martin Scorsese on Gossip, Cancellation, and Why It Had to Be Keanu

Jonah Hill has been famous long enough to have been celebrated, scrutinized, written off, and underestimated. For most of his adult life, he’s been one of the most recognizable faces in American movies and he’s absorbed the good, the bad, and the ugly that comes with it. That dynamic—between the public and the private, the person and the persona—informs every scene of Outcome, his second narrative feature as both writer and director. In the dark comedy, Keanu Reeves plays a beloved movie star whose carefully maintained public image is about to come undone, unless he can do something about it. When Hill connected with none other than Martin Scorsese, who directed him in The Wolf of Wall Street and makes an appearance in Outcome, celebrity, cancellation, and the American sport of tearing down its heroes were all on his mind.

MONDAY 9 AM FEB. 16, 2026 SO-CAL

JONAH HILL: Hey, Marty. I think you’re muted, my friend.

MARTIN SCORSEESE: Am I okay?

HILL: I can hear you. I can see you.

SCORSESE: There you are, young man.

HILL: How are you, sir?

SCORSESE: I’m okay. The picture’s really good.

HILL: My picture?

SCORSESE: I finally saw it. It’s hilarious and moving. It seems to have an interesting progression from your first picture, in terms of visual interpretation of the frame. I actually saw it by myself and I enjoyed it by myself. It’s really something to be proud of, Jonah.

HILL: Thank you, Marty. My biggest fear in doing this was that you’d have to lie about liking the movie.

SCORSESE: [Laughs] I’d say, “Listen, I can’t do the interview,” or something.

HILL: I was saying to my wife, “He’s seeing it over the weekend, so what if he hates it but already agreed to do it?”

SCORSESE: When we see each other, we’ll go into more detail. This is your third film, but the second one was a documentary?

HILL: Yeah, exactly. This is my second narrative film. Thank you for being a part of it. Your character is my favorite. Was it hard to watch yourself?

SCORSESE: I forgot it was me. I couldn’t see what you and your DP were doing with the camera.

HILL: Do you remember when you walked on set and I was like, “Do you want to see the frame?” You had to fight against your instincts to look, but you knew you were in good hands with Benoît [Debie, the cinematographer].

SCORSESE: Well, what you have in the frame is a narrative. So I did forget it was me up there, which was really interesting. That’s because of your guidance and your patience, and Keanu. Poor Keanu.

HILL: He really eats it the entire movie.

SCORSESE: How did you approach this provocative subject matter, both as an actor and a director? I wonder if you could just slam on about that for a bit.

HILL: Sure. I’ll just bore you to tears on that, Marty. Need a good nap? I got you.

SCORSESE: [Laughs] It’ll be fine. I’ll just doze off for a second.

HILL: I love Keanu Reeves. He has this one part in Parenthood, and it’s the only time you ever see him lose his shit, where he seems out of control in a way I related to. He loses his temper, his patience, and is frustrated with the world.

SCORSESE: Right.

HILL: And I thought, “God, I wish Keanu Reeves would do more parts where he’s a mess of a person.” When all this cancel culture stuff was happening, I thought, “Who’s the one person that people would be the most bummed about getting canceled?” It would be Keanu Reeves.

SCORSESE: We all love him.

HILL: I just called him up and said, “Can you come over? I have an idea for a film.” I said, “You’re this guy who’s a beloved movie star, but there’s something that’s going to come out that may threaten what people think of you.” He loved Mid90s, and to his credit, the man stood by me. He said, “Go write it.”

SCORSESE: In terms of the cancellation, people have always been able to make money off someone else’s desperation. That’s what the confrontation at the end is really about.

HILL: I think people are just fucking struggling. Ultimately, we’re so wrapped up in ourselves. To me, the whole movie’s an allegory for social media.

SCORSESE: But it doesn’t play like an allegory, Jonah. An allegory is a lesson. This plays like a story about people.

HILL: You’re right. Wrong word. Not many people can relate to a movie star, but the way I view it is, we’ve all turned ourselves into scorched, middle-aged movie stars by putting our lives up for judgment on social media every second of every day. You go through the same exact feelings being Tom Cruise as you do being a mom in Salt Lake City putting her kids up online for public judgement.

SCORSESE: You’re right.

HILL: You build an identity just like a famous person does. Look at me, or you. “Martin Scorsese. World-renowned director.” “Jonah Hill, great actor, moron.” Then you have to live up to the packaging you’ve put out into the world. I started noticing it with younger people, where they have the same feelings I felt as a public person.

SCORSESE: Yes! There’s something about just existing—you’re judged simply for being. That’s what stardom really is, when you think about it. And it’s not new. There’s a film I mentioned to you, It Should Happen to You. George Cukor directed it. Jack Lemmon’s first film. It’s all right there.

HILL: You told me to watch that for this film.

SCORSESE: That’s right. And we thought at that time, “What a strange thing.” But it’s happened.

HILL: Now it happens to everybody. You’re the Reef Hawk [Reeves’s character] of your school because people on social media are following you the same way tabloids follow famous people. I saw my nephews walking through life scared of perception in a way we weren’t in when we were in high school.

SCORSESE: That’s right.

HILL: And all you do is lie awake at night freaking out about what people you’ll never meet think of you, versus the three people who know you best and have to tolerate you on a day-to-day basis. I wouldn’t wish the paranoia Reef lives in on my worst enemy, but I have to say at times, I’ve related to it.

SCORSESE: It’s constant. That’s the world now. Everything is filmed and photographed. It’s the nature of building up a god and goddess and then wanting to tear them down. Talk about how you approached that as a writer and within the structure of the picture.

HILL: Thank you for pointing that out. It’s very much about how since the dawn of entertainment, since Fatty Arbuckle, there’s the entertainment of the hero soaring, the entertainment of them being knocked down, and then the entertainment of them rising from the ashes.

SCORSESE: That’s right.

HILL: But the truth is, modern entertainment is pretty much just tearing someone down.

SCORSESE: I’m afraid so.

HILL: I wish it wasn’t. My form of entertainment is your films, or books or music. But if you look at “entertainment,” the business around it plays to our sickest parts.

SCORSESE: The weakest part of our personality is the gossip part. I’m old now, but over the years, I really disliked hearing it.

HILL: It’s so low.

SCORSESE: But also I’m afraid of enjoying it. You know what I mean, Jonah?

HILL: [Laughs] Yeah. Because we’re human. If Reef Hawk saw that Tom Cruise was going through the same thing the next day, he’d read that article. It’s always been that way. When I drive by a car crash, I look.

SCORSESE: Yes.

HILL: Our mutual friend Spike Jonze taught me the greatest lesson by accident. One time we were in a car and a bunch of people were gossiping, and Spike, after five minutes, goes, “That’s enough gossip. Let’s change the subject to something positive.” I use that all the time. It’s our lowest form of connection and communication.

SCORSESE: Yeah that’s true. Your compositions and your DP’s lighting were really remarkable. At first it has a feeling of a graphic novel. There’s the great film The Ladykillers—Alexander Mackendrick did the original one, and later the Coen brothers did a version of it, quite good. But the original is like an Edward Gorey drawing. Everything is real, but there’s an almost animated feeling to it. You’ve got that here in the first third of the picture. There’s something going on with the shots of that Malibu house. Oh god, the terror of that beautiful sky. Everything’s going to come down.

HILL: A beautiful nightmare. I really wanted it to feel heightened, almost not real.

SCORSESE: Heightened is the word. You’re a writer and I’m not.

HILL: I don’t know. I see a co-writing credit on Goodfellas and a lot of other films.

SCORSESE: [Laughs] Yeah, a few pictures. Was this something you were generating when you were doing Stutz?

HILL: It’s funny because I’m editing my next movie now. I made a very conscious choice to be in post while this one comes out. I never wanted to be in the position where I finished such an emotional film with nothing to do.

SCORSESE: Because you will live in that hell.

HILL: I finished Mid90s and I finished Stutz with nothing on my plate and no ideas. It was torture. When you finish a movie like Stutz, where you rack your brain and talk about death and your insecurities, you’re like, “Well, what’s next?” How about nothing? How about the blank page?

SCORSESE: Get out of town.

HILL: This marked a trilogy of very emotional movies. My next one is way more farcical and funny.

SCORSESE: Rhythm and pacing. That’s the hardest.

HILL: You helped inspire this movie. You gave me A New Leaf, Elaine May’s first movie, when we did The Wolf of Wall Street.

SCORSESE: It’s a masterpiece.

HILL: I watched it during Wolf of Wall Street and it has my favorite sequence in a movie maybe ever, where Walter Matthau says goodbye to being rich. I thought I really want to make a comedy with a man and a woman where they both go through that excruciation of not being rich anymore. What do you do in that circumstance? So me and Kristen Wiig are adults who get cut off in their mid-40s by their parents, Nathan Lane and Bette Midler.

SCORSESE: Oh my god, disaster.

HILL: I wanted to make a movie that has emotion, but the jokes are at the forefront of the engine.

SCORSESE: You worked with your editor on this for a couple of films?

HILL: Nick Houy and Nick Ramirez were co-editors. Nick Houy works with Greta Gerwig and me, and he’s pretty much been bouncing back and forth between us two.

SCORSESE: The rhythm and pace is really well done.

HILL: I can’t wait to tell them that. I love that I get to leave this call and go edit.

SCORSESE: That’s the best part.

HILL: It’s the fucking ace of spades, man. I get to leave and work on the best puzzle in the world, right?

SCORSESE: Exactly.

HILL: I get to be in the process, knee-deep in fixing puzzle problems in a Rubik’s Cube. I’m not thinking about how my interview with Marty went, because now I’m working to make a movie.

SCORSESE: That’s what’s going on now in the pre-production of my new film, it’s a Rubik’s Cube constantly.

HILL: You’re getting 500 billion questions a day in a hotel room in Prague.

SCORSESE: Beautiful place, by the way.

HILL: Beautiful place, but you’re away from home.

SCORSESE: That’s the problem. I’ve got to be here for another two months. I’ve got to get back to New York.

HILL: I know what that’s like. And I have two kids now. The only thing that could ever separate me from my family is the editing room. I love the writing, I love the shooting, but editing—

SCORSESE: Editing is the best.

HILL: It’s like dessert every day. Even the problems are dessert.

SCORSESE: I would do it for free.

HILL: I say the same thing. And Rick [Yorn], our mutual manager, says, “Don’t tell anybody that.”

SCORSESE: I got away with a few. A couple I did for nothing.

HILL: [Laughs] Thank god for Apple. They let me make a movie with movie stars that reaches for real depth. I’m not saying I’m a great filmmaker, I’m not saying I made a great film, but I’m swinging at depth. Sometimes that can feel like a fool’s errand in today’s culture, because when you were coming up, movies were more culturally important than they are now.

SCORSESE: That time has changed. It doesn’t mean they’re less important. It’s how they’re presented. It’s where you see them. When you go to a theater, the film begins at a certain time. It demands your attention. At home you can turn it off, go get a glass of water, come back, sit down. You command that. But in the theater, the film commands you and tells you, “Look at me and go into this dream,” in a sense. And that’s why I think to be able to have, as you say, Apple in this case, and also for my new film and the last film—

HILL: Apple’s producing the film you’re about to make?

SCORSESE: Yeah. To give us the chance to make something where we’re trying to—

HILL: Swing at something.

SCORSESE: Yeah. I see a lot of the newer films and I’m amazed by what I see, but I can never do it. But I do think Apple gives you the chance. They’ve given us the chance to make something that’s different, that takes a little time maybe to seep in.

HILL: Man, that’s like your movies to me. They hit you more two days later. What I don’t love about fast-paced culture is that you experience it, it’s candy, and you’re onto the next.

SCORSESE: Yeah, yeah.

HILL: Before we leave, I want to share with the world or anyone who’s reading this who wants to be a director. Before I shot Outcome, we all had a big dinner, you, me—

SCORSESE: In L.A.?

HILL: Yes, when you were promoting Killers of the Flower Moon. Me and my producing partner got to dinner and we were talking about the movie, and you gave us some advice. You told us, “Just make sure to listen to the movie.” Do you remember saying that?

SCORSESE: The movie’s going to tell you. Sometimes you go off on different roads, but it’s going to pull you back. I think it was Haskell Wexler who said it—you go with a design in mind, and then you come back with what you think you got. Very often you get exactly what you want, but in most cases you don’t. Are you okay with what you got? Because it’s going to change.

HILL: I think that’s important for people to know if they want to be directors, because it’s crazy how much my movies have changed in the process of making them. And I learned that from acting for you. Obviously we went to millions of crazy places during Wolf of Wall Street.

SCORSESE: Yeah, well you guys did it. You and Margot Robbie and Leonardo DiCaprio.

HILL: But you showed me how much a movie can change through making it. It would be cool to hear you expand on that a little bit for someone who’s reading this and may be going to make a movie.

SCORSESE: Well, in some cases. Not everybody works that way. In other cases people get exactly what they want and that’s the film. That’s great. What we did on Wolf, you know what that is. Suddenly you are off in the ozone layer or something, and I have to bring you guys down. I don’t believe I told Jon Bernthal to hit you, did I?

HILL: I said it was okay. It wasn’t against my consent [Laughs]. You didn’t tell him to hit me in a mean, fucked-up way. We were discussing it—you, me, Leo, and Jon.

SCORSESE: And then we had to get out because the man who owned the house was really getting mad at us.

HILL: For context, the guy who owned Jordan Belfort’s house was desperate to get us out. He goes, “Guys, I’ve got to get back in my fucking office. Ten minutes ago you said you’d be out of here.” Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese are shooting a scene in your office. A woman has money taped to her breasts. What do you have to do that’s cooler than this?

SCORSESE: And I’m saying, “How the hell do you want me to get her out of here? She’s got money taped all over her.”

HILL: This guy’s pointing at his watch like, “Get the fuck out of here, Marty.” And listen, did the guy lose 45 minutes of valuable whatever-the-fuck-he-does time? Yes. I’ll leave you with this, Marty. I co-raised my nephews and they’re now 18 and 16. They’re great boys. But we had to have these rules of which of my movies can they see and which they cannot see, right?

SCORSESE: Oh yeah, I know, the whole thing.

HILL: Yeah, I’m sure you’ve had that your whole life with kids. The point was that the only movie off-limits when they were like 11 or 12 was Wolf of Wall Street. We let them see Superbad and 21 Jump Street and everything else.

SCORSESE: Yeah, sure.

HILL: So we’re at dinner and they’re 13 or 14, and the older brother agrees with something in a very hearty way, and he goes, “Uh-uh, uh-uh, uh-uh.” And I look at him and I’m like, “You saw Wolf of Wall Street,” because he’s doing Matthew McConaughey’s hitting his chest. And the younger brother’s like, “You fucking idiot. You fucked us.”

SCORSESE: [Laughs] They’re always ahead of us. Oh, god.

HILL: Well, I love you Marty. I don’t like to performatively say it, but I love you. I appreciate you. Thank you for taking the time to do this and to watch my film. Thank you for being in my film.

SCORSESE: Thank you.

HILL: Your words about it will mean more than anything else, except for the process.

SCORSESE: It’s terrific.

HILL: Love you, Marty. Thanks.

SCORSESE: Love you too. Bye.

Grooming: Jason Schneidman using California Born at Solo Artists.

Tailor: Megan Bright.

Photography Assistants: David Katzinger and Irene Tang.

Fashion Assistant: Sasha Campbell.

Production Direction: Alexandra Weiss.

Photography Production: Georgia Ford.

Production: Eppy at Radish Films.

Via: Interview Magazine