Kate Winslet hates to burst everyone’s bubble, but that iconic door scene in Titanic wasn’t as terrifying to film as fans assumed it to be.
In a new interview on the podcast “Happy Sad Confused,” Winslet, 48, who played Rose DeWitt Bukater in the 1997 smash hit, revealed that she and costar Leonardo DiCaprio filmed the door scene in “waist-height” water.
“Well that was quite an awkward tank, that one,” Winslet told host Josh Horowitz. “To burst a bubble, it was waist-height, that tank. So first of all, I was regularly like, ‘Ugh, can I just go for a pee,’ and then I’d get up, get off the door, walk to the edge of the tank that was sort of 20 feet away, and I’d literally have to fling my leg over and climb out the tank and go for a pee and then come back and crawl on the door again.”
Winslet then shared that DiCaprio, 49, was kneeling the entire time he filmed his (spoiler alert) death scene, which has been heavily debated over the years.
“It’s terrible to admit these things … Leo is, I’m afraid, kneeling down on the bottom of the tank,” she revealed. “I shouldn’t be saying any of these things. [Director] James Cameron’s gonna be ringing me like, ‘Why are you telling them all that?’”
Winslet continued: “The thing that was amazing about the edges of the tank was that it was an infinity tank, so there was constant water rushing, and you could hear the constant sound of water.”
Apparently, the sound of moving water was so powerful that Winslet said the dialogue in the last 20 or so minutes of the film was re-recorded in a studio, including Rose yelling, “Jack! Jack!”
A quick refresher (more spoilers): DiCaprio’s character, Jack Dawson, dies after being submerged in the freezing cold waters for hours following the sinking of the Titanic. His hand ends up being frozen onto Rose’s as she safely floats on a door in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean before being spotted by a lifeboat.
Over the years, many have questioned whether Jack could have fit on the door alongside Rose, ultimately giving fans the happy ending they so craved.
During the press tour for Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood in 2019, DiCaprio stated “no comment” when asked for his thoughts. His costars Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie, however, believed Rose could’ve made some room.
“I don’t f—ing know,” Winslet said when asked about her own take on the controversial scene in a previous interview with Horowitz in 2022. “Look, all I can tell you is, I do have a decent understanding of water and how it behaves. If you put two adults on a stand-up paddleboard, it becomes immediately, extremely unstable. That is for sure,.”
Winslet added: “I have to be honest: I actually don’t believe that we would have survived if we had both gotten on that door. I think he would have fit, but it would have tipped and it would not have been a sustainable idea”
She concluded, “Yes, he could have fit on that door. But it would not have stayed afloat. It wouldn’t.”
Filmmaker Cameron put the speculation to rest in the 2023 National Geographic special Titanic: 25 Years Later With James Cameron when he worked with a team of scientists to recreate the scene and test four different scenarios in which Jack actually climbed aboard the door.
Ultimately, he learned it would’ve been tricky for Jack to survive even if he did join Rose on the wreckage.
“I think his thought process was, ‘I’m not going to do one thing that jeopardized her,’ and that’s 100 percent in character,” the director concluded.
