Don Rickles didn’t just roast celebrities in his stage act; he took those jabs with him to movie sets as well. 1995’s Casino, in which Rickles played Billy Sherbert, the head of security for Robert De Niro’s Sam “Ace” Rothstein, was no exception. In some behind-the-scenes footage shown during the 2014 tribute special, Don Rickles: One Night Only, the comedian is seen busting De Niro’s chops between takes after the legendary actor forgets one of his lines. “Learn the thing. You’ve got a pop-out trailer, sit in there and study,” he tells De Niro, who can barely keep a straight face. “Do the lines and let’s get out of here, for Christ’s sake.”
In a recent interview with Jay Mohr, Kevin Pollak, who played Phillip Green in the movie, revealed that Rickles would interrupt De Niro even when he hadn’t messed up his dialogue. Despite Rickles pouncing on him at any given opportunity, De Niro apparently had a good sense of humor about it. Joe Pesci, however, according to Pollak, was not amused with Rickles’s digs. After Rickles joked that Pesci was so short he was gonna ride him around like a Shetland pony, Pesci reportedly said, “No, no, I get it, I get it. I’m a midget, you’re a genius. Go f–k yourself.”
Rickles’s recollection about working with Pesci would seem to indicate that he did, in fact, get under the actor’s skin with his remarks. In 2007, Rickles told Playboy that while they were filming the scene in which Pesci’s character beats Rickles with a phone, Pesci got “carried away.” “I had on a rubber suit and it still hurt,” the comedian recalled. “If I didn’t have the rubber suit, I’d be dead. After the scene was over, I said to Pesci, ‘Joe, go take a Valium.’ I still get a little nervous any time somebody hands me a telephone receiver.”
Years later, when asked if he had any good Pesci stories, Rickles said, “Joe was a good guy. I think sometimes he believed he was with the Mob. But he got over that.” The two eventually reunited—in a way—for a Snickers commercial in 2011, but oddly enough, they never appeared in the same shot together:
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