“Shark Tank” star Kevin O’Leary makes his acting debut in A24’s “Marty Supreme” alongside Timothée Chalamet, and one of his standout scenes involves spanking the Oscar-nominated actor with a ping pong paddle.
In the Josh Safdie-directed sports dramedy, O’Leary plays Milton Rockwell, a successful pen entrepreneur who is married to retired actress Kay Stone (Gwyneth Paltrow). After Chalamet’s aspiring ping-pong champion Marty Mauser becomes entangled with Kay, he realizes Milton could be his ticket to the world championship in Tokyo — but it comes with a humiliating price.
In an interview with Variety, O’Leary said that Chalamet had the option to sit out of the scene, but the 30-year-old actor insisted the film feature his real butt.
“When it came time to whack him, there was a stunt ass. There was a double,” O’Leary said. “[Chalamet] wouldn’t do it. He said he’ll do it himself. He didn’t want some other ass immortalized.”
O’Leary was supposed to use a fake paddle to soften the blow, but the prop immediately broke on the first hit, requiring him to use a real one. He says shooting the scene “went on for hours,” with Safdie demanding about 40 takes until 4 in the morning.
“Josh was saying, ‘You’ve got to wind up harder,’” O’Leary remembers. “I was really whacking him.”
O’Leary calls the spanking sequence “a pivotal scene of humiliation” for Marty, which was necessary for the cocky table tennis hustler because “he had pissed me off so much and insulted me so many times that capital punishment was correct.”
“I never felt satisfied that he suffered enough for what he did,” O’Leary says of the protagonist. “Even now, I’m still pissed.”
“Marty Supreme” premiered on Dec. 25 and quickly became A24’s second-biggest opening weekend to date with $17.4 million at the box office. The film has been revered by critics and has stirred up Oscars buzz for Chalamet, with many awards pundits deeming him the frontrunner for the best actor prize.
