Fabrizio Shares His Best Stories From'Titanic'
Twenty years after the premiere of Titanic, people still have fierce debates about whether or not Jack and Rose could both have fit on the door, but there's a far more important mystery the movie left unsolved: Why didn't Fabrizio punch Jack in the face for ditching him? Fabrizio, played by Danny Nucci, was Jack's lively Italian BFF, who - 20-year-old spoiler alert - died from a serious case of "crushed to death by a smokestack." Fabrizio was there when Jack won passage on the voyage, he was there when the ship launched, and he was there when Jack declared himself king of the world, but after that? It was all Rose all the time.
Danny, who now stars on Freeform's hit show The Fosters, says Fabrizio was doing fine, even if a lot of his action happened off-screen. In deleted scenes, Fabrizio had a full-fledged love affair with a girl named Helga (with whom he dances in the steerage party scene), but unfortunately there was only time enough in the already long movie for one love story on the high seas. Here, Danny talks about long nights spent shooting the movie in freezing cold water and shares his favorite on-set memories.
What was the audition process like?
I’ll tell you the whole sordid story. I got a call that I had to go meet James Cameron at [his production company] Lightstorm. I was in Toronto doing a movie called That Old Feeling with Bette Midler and I read the script while having a latte in the Four Seasons café. I sat there for three-and-a-half hours and read the script in one sitting. Like I didn’t move. I went into the audition, thinking Jim was gonna be sitting on a couch, watching like most producers. But no, no. Not James Cameron. James Cameron was the one holding the camera, and he says, "OK, go ahead." The first scene was the card scene with Leo, so it was complete jubilance and excitement. [Then] in the original script I had a love affair with a character named Helga. The second scene was me telling her to follow me, and she said she wouldn’t follow me and I knew that it was the end, so it was a gut-wrenching, heartbreaking, "I’ll never see you again" kind of scene. I did both scenes and he looks out from behind the camcorder and he goes, "Oh, you’re an actor."
At what point in the filming did you do the famous "king of the world" scene?
I want to say it was February. The way we shot the "king of the world" scene was they had a huge platform that was basically just the front of the ship. There was this hydraulic ladder that brought us up and down. We couldn’t have any coats or anything, so we just had our costumes and it was freezing. It was a big deal to take us down, so when they reset the cameras [to shoot] it from all angles, Leo and I were stuck up there having to pee. We were literally on a platform with the entire crew all around us, so we couldn’t pee, we couldn’t eat, we were starving, and we were frigging miserable and cold. The minute they called "action" was the greatest moment of our lives and then we would just be miserable again. This went on for hours.
Leo ad-libbed that line, right?
If he did, I’m not aware of it. Everything’s 20 years ago, so I could remember it right, maybe I don’t. But as far as I remember, that line was in the script.
So when you were filming it, you didn’t realize it would become iconic because it was such a miserable experience.
Listen, when we were filming this, we thought we were filming Heaven’s Gate. That’s what we thought we were making. There were suits there every week going, "What are you doing?" and Jimmy was out of his mind. He was under tremendous amounts of pressure. It was nuts. We were already making up the headlines of what it was gonna be. "Titanic Sinks," blah blah blah.
Yeah, it's kind of mind-boggling that he built an actual ship and sunk it.
The actual hydraulic ship? That was the best part. That was amazing. We were doing this scene where I have to cut the ropes to get the lifeboats to float and the front of the boat starts to go under and there’s chaos everywhere. I’ll never forget, we’re ready to shoot it and there are all these extras, 200 people, and the boats are set and Jim’s got one tight camera on me cutting the rope. The front of the boat goes on hydraulics, starts to sink in the water, and I’m cutting the rope and there are 20, 30 background artists climbing over me and it’s chaos and screaming until you hear "cut." And then "cut," the hydraulic goes back up, all the extras go change into dry clothes, I go change into dry clothes, reset the rope, and take two. We had to dry everything - dry the deck, dry the boat, and do another take. It was nuts. I’d never seen anything like that. Never been part of anything like that, before or since.
How cold was the water?
Freezing. Frickin' freezing.
Did you get sick at all?
Yes, everybody got sick. Everybody had a cold of some sort. They had these hot tubs that we were able to go into after we’d been in the cold water, so that helped. But it wasn’t a hot tub party. It was like, "Oh my god, I’m dying." And then just as you thought, "I’m just so miserable, thank god they have these hot tubs but man I can’t believe they’re making us do this," you’d look at the background artists, freezing also, and they don’t get to go in the hot tub. So it made you really grateful that you actually were able to sit in there for a minute.
So did Fabrizio’s romance with Helga get filmed, or was it cut from the script before shooting?
Oh yeah, it’s filmed. I think it’s in one of the versions that has deleted scenes. Fans send me that scene all the time on Twitter. When it got cut it hurt. I was blown away by the movie but I was more blown away by the fact that I was no longer in it in the way that I had filmed it. I remember [producer] Jon [Landau] and Jim after the first screening, they didn’t want to say anything, but they knew. They were like, "Look, sorry. It’s a three-and-a-half hour movie, it couldn’t be five-and-a-half hours." Things had to go!
How was the death scene shot?
Well, which one? The original death scene or the one that ends up in the movie? Because the original death scene is I’m swimming in the water and I get past my hypothermia and I get over to a boat that Billy Zane’s character [Cal Hockley] is on. I’m trying to get on and and he’s paranoid that it’s going to sink and I go,"No, no, you don’t understand, I have to get to America" and he takes an oar and he smacks me in the head. And he says, "It’s that way!" Then I got a call from Jim probably a couple months after we finished filming and he said, "You know, I’ve gotta change this. Remember when you were swimming away from the smokestack?" I said, "Yeah." He goes, "Well, now you don’t make it."
When the movie came out, did you get recognized on the street as Fabrizio?
Yeah, it’s the only time it’s ever happened. It was odd for the first time in my life going somewhere and having people stare at me. At that point I’d been an actor, but it was always, "How do I know you? You look familiar." Then it just became, "Oh my god, Fabrizio!"
How long were you there for shooting?
In total it ended up being about six months. I went back and forth a little bit because my daughter was born. When we were shooting the sequence where Jack and Rose are dancing and I’m dancing and that’s where I meet Helga and all of that, that’s when my daughter decided to come out. So I got in a limo and went up to L.A. and was there for three or four days and I got a call from Jim’s producer going, "Hi, um, can you come back? We’d like to finish shooting!" I was like, "OK, I’ll come back, just give me another day."
We have people in the office who are too young to have ever seen Titanic. You’re on The Fosters with similarly young types - are there people there who haven’t seen it? Or were shocked when they found out you were in it?
That’s the joke on my Twitter feed. Anytime somebody goes, "Oh my god, I didn’t realize that Mike was Fabrizio," I retweet that. Also, [my co-star] Teri Polo never misses an opportunity when anybody new comes on the set - they could be a nervous 20-year-old guest actor who’s never been on a set before, it could be somebody who’s watching us tape, it could be a famous person that’s visiting the set - she'll go, "Oh my god, did you know Danny was in Titanic?" Never misses an opportunity!
I have another story for you. We’re shooting Titanic - I call it The Boat now, my friends all call it The Boat. So I’m shooting The Boat and Billy and and Jason Barry [who played Tommy] and I went to San Diego for the day, and Billy gets stopped and somebody’s going, "How do I know you?" and he’s sitting there for five minutes talking to this guy. Finally Billy ends this conversation and I’m like, "Dude, what the heck was that? Why didn’t you just tell him you’re on TV?" and he goes, "Because I’m not doing the verbal résumé - 'You look familiar,' 'Yeah, I’ve been in this movie,' 'No, I didn’t see that, what else?''" Since I did The Boat, anytime somebody goes, "What have I seen you in?" I have an answer.
Did you keep anything from set?
Yeah, I’ve got a bunch of stuff. They sent me one of the deck chairs. I’ve got a White Star Line deck chair on my deck!
What was the craziest thing that happened while you were filming?
It’s gotta be the chowder and I wasn’t there [for that]. [Editor's Note: Near the end of the shoot, about 50 members of the cast and crew were reportedly served lobster chowder that was laced with PCP or angel dust.] That’s easily the craziest thing. That happened on the Halifax set. But you know what else is crazy, I didn’t realize how much British people drank. Woo! Holy cow. I mean they can party. Sunday morning at 7 a.m. is when the party started on Titanic, because that’s when we were done. We shot nights [on weekends] so the Friday night was Sunday morning at 7. Monday evening at 5 you were back to work. It was six-day weeks at night for six months. It was taxing.
Was it also cold outside or was it just the water?
You were just wet all the time, and then you’d have to change clothes. It was a big, big undertaking but it was a lot of fun too. Instead of trailers, which is usually what you have on a film set, we actually had dressing room complexes so it was like dorms. We were all there because sometimes Jimmy didn’t know which scene he wanted to shoot, so we would be sitting there all day and you would just go to the next person’s room and go, "Hey, what are you doing?" which made for some very good jams. Billy would come into my room with his bass and we would jam. I played guitar and we’d sing and do covers. Leo and I would play video games for hours. It was fun. We made the most of it.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
Titanic turns 20 on December 19. Read more anniversary articles here.
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