Don’t Look Up: Who Leonardo DiCaprio Is Based On

In Don’t Look Up, several characters are obvious satirical parodies of real people, but Leonardo DiCaprio’s character, Dr. Randall Mindy, doesn’t seem to be based on anyone in particular. Most parallels between Don’t Look Up‘s cast and the real people they satirize need no explanation. President Orlean, with her public rallies and shameless nepotism, is an obvious jab at Donald Trump, and Peter Isherwell is introduced in the kind of stage demonstration put on by wealthy tech CEOs like Steve Jobs and Elon Musk. As a more humble figure, though, Don’t Look Up’s Randall Mindy represents less a specific person and more a symbolic showcase of the pitfalls of poor science communication.

DiCaprio’s acting inspiration for Don’t Look Up was a climate scientist named Dr. Michael E. Mann, director of the Penn State Earth System Science Center. It would be unfair, however, to say that the character of Randall Mindy is based on Mann himself. DiCaprio has been outspoken on climate issues for some time now and, in 2016, Mann was featured in DiCaprio’s climate documentary Before The Flood and the two have been friends ever since. In real life, though, Mann is very different from the protagonist of Don’t Look Up, noting himself that, “he makes personal choices that I would like to think differ greatly from the choices I would have made.” (via Newsweek).

Rather than being based on a specific person, Randall Mindy’s character in Don’t Look Up feels more like a warning to scientists who may need to speak up publicly about the serious issues facing the world and soon. Hesitant, self-absorbed, and poor at explaining things, Mindy is a showcase of everything not to do, as he gets swept up in the plot, distracted by glitz and glamour, and almost loses track of what it is he’s trying to accomplish in the first place. A big part of the message in Don’t Look Up is that, while the whole world undoubtedly doesn’t know how to listen, the two scientists at the center of the story also don’t know how to speak to the public. DiCaprio’s Randall Mindy, rather than being based on a real person, is a personification of the way the scientific and medical community continues to be terrible at messaging important ideas to the broader public.

In Don’t Look Up, DiCaprio’s Randall Mindy is emphatically not a good communicator. In fairness, he’s shown as being very effective as a teacher, surrounded by people who’re paying full attention but, unfortunately, he’s completely lost the moment he steps outside his comfort zone. One of the first things he mentions when contacting NASA is that he hasn’t published anything for a while, and his wife reminds him to speak clearly during a phone call. In the scenes where he has to actually explain things, he’s so busy mumbling out scientific details that people become distracted before he reaches the point he’s trying to make. It’s quite clear that this is because he has trouble separating what’s important to him from what’s important to everyone else. This is lampshaded when NASA scientist Teddy Oglethorpe advises him, “Just tell a story. No math,” to which Mindy’s confused reply is, “But it’s all math.”

The result is that Don’t Look Up tells a cautionary tale about why it’s important for scientists to have at least some skill in public speaking, not just research and teaching. In the real world, there’s a thriving community of science communicators all across the internet, who do an excellent job of making complex scientific topics accessible to anyone. This kind of communication in public spaces is increasingly considered a valuable part of working in science, and Don’t Look Up does an excellent job of highlighting why that really matters, especially with important issues that have the potential to affect the whole world. Any scientists who find themselves in front of a camera to talk about their work would do well to learn from Randall Mindy’s and Kate Dibiasky’s mistakes.

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