Best boss ever! Actress Kasi Brown recently opened up in a new interview with the Huffington Post about working as Leonardo DiCaprio’s personal assistant in 2003.
“Leo and I always had fun on set,” Brown said. “He’s extremely down to earth, and he likes to share stories and life experiences with people.”
Brown landed the gig through her best friend, coincidentally named Kayce Brown, who was The Revenant actor’s assistant while filming Catch Me If You Can in 2002 and The Aviator, which filmed in Montreal in 2003. Kasi Brown headed to Canada to visit the set and the trio “would go out on the town” at night.
When Kayce moved on to assist Kate Hudson, and The Aviator set relocated to Los Angeles, Kasi took over as Leo’s new right-hand woman. “[Kayce] asked me if I was interested in taking over the position,” Brown said. “I thought, why not? It would give me the opportunity, as a filmmaker, to watch Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio work. I’d be an idiot to turn down a learning opportunity like that!”
Throughout the fall of 2003, Brown became part of the future Oscar winner’s day-to-day life. They even had an inside joke together in which they would act like he was a diva. “Sometimes, I would pretend that he was the stereotype of an entitled celebrity and when he would ask me to do something, I would bow and in a beaten-down voice say, ‘Yes, sir, anything you like sir, anything else, sir?’ and he would laugh and tell me to knock it off,” Brown said. Brown did, in fact, have to occasionally hold an umbrella over his head — but only so the paparazzi “couldn’t snap photos of him making weird faces while he rehearsed,” she explained.
What did Brown learn about DiCaprio? He’s “very smart” and has a “wicked sense of humor” and a vast knowledge of “politics, pop culture, history, you name it.” They even bonded over their love for rap music and Halloween. She recalled that the Titanic star would spend his limited free time chatting with crew and extras on set, and when The Aviator wrapped, he gave the entire staff embroidered flight bags with a note written in the style of his character, Howard Hughes.
This dedication to his character was something Brown frequently noticed. “On the way to set one day, I saw that he kept stepping on all the cracks and spots on the floor in our path,” she said. “He was playing Howard Hughes, who has OCD, and I realized that he was getting into character.”
Long after she finished her stint as DiCaprio’s personal assistant, the two still kept in touch as she pursued her own film projects. The Wolf of Wall Street actor gave her feedback on a sketch comedy show she produced almost a decade later, and when she wrote and directed her fist movie Gone Doggy Gone, he “gave [her] encouragement all along the way.”
