The Wolf of Wall Street true story: How accurate is the movie?

While many might know that The Wolf of Wall Street is based on a true story, exactly how accurate is the movie? Read to find out how much of it is real, and how much was for entertainment purposes. 

Martin Scorsese at the helm, Leonardo DiCaprio and Margot Robbie leading the cast, a killer soundtrack, visual flair, and an epic true story of drugs, money, and mayhem – it’s no wonder The Wolf of Wall Street still holds up 10 years after its release. 

The narrative kicks off 1987, telling the true story of the rise and epic fall of stockbroker Jordan Belfort, who made his millions defrauding wealthy investors. But his life of sex, drugs, and partying comes into threat when the FBI starts coming after him and the life he’s built with his wife Naomi, aka The Duchess. 

With The Wolf of Wall Street dropping on Netflix this week, he’s everything you need to know about the true story behind it. 

The Wolf of Wall Street true story: How accurate is the movie?

As the late, great Tony Wilson once said: “When forced to pick between truth and legend, print the legend.” And it seems The Wolf of Wall Street does exactly that, with many of the moments depicted in Scorsese’s epic having been exaggerated or fictitious. 

The film itself is based on a non-fiction book of the same name, which was written by the man at the center of the story, Jordan Belfort, meaning he is our source for the facts. Has he embellished some of the stories for entertainment purposes? 

There’s no doubt he and his Stratton Oakmont cronies got up to a lot of no good: Quaaludes, cocaine, sex workers, and money laundering were just part of the job description. But according to Belfort’s right-hand man Danny Porush – who Jonah Hill’s character Donnie Azoff is loosely based on – most of the events have been made-up. 

“The book is a distant relative of the truth, and the film is a distant relative of the book,” he told Bustle back in 2013, so much so that even the title is inaccurate – as no one referred to Belfort as a “wolf.”

That’s not to say all of the stories were fake, however, with Porush shedding light on some of the wild instances that did actually happen in real life. That includes the delightful scene in which Hill’s character swallowed a live goldfish. 

“I said to one of the brokers, ‘If you don’t do more business, I’m gonna eat your goldfish!’ So I did,” said Porush. Same goes for the Stratton employee who shaved her head for a fast bit of cash. “Stratton was like a fraternity. A lot of goofing around, hazing – but the worst we ever did was shave somebody’s head and then pay ’em ten grand for it.”

The scenes that weren’t true, according to Porush’s accounts, include: the moment he and Belfort taped money to a woman’s breasts to get it through to a Swiss bank; having a chimpanzee at an office party; throwing little people as human darts; and there was no memo demanding Stratton be a “f*ck-free zone from 8am to 7pm on workdays.”

Dr Nadine Caridi, currently known as Nadine Macaluso – Belfort’s real-life ex-wife, played by Robbie and named Nadine in The Wolf of Wall Street – has also shed some light on the accuracy of the movie and how it depicted their life together. 

Taking to TikTok last year, she explained: “If you look at it through Jordan’s lens it’s really accurate. I think that if you look at it through my lens it wasn’t, and that makes sense because that was actually how our marriage was.”

But Macaluso, who now works as a therapist and helps women leave abusive relationships, said that while a lot of the movie isn’t true, there was one thing Belfort’s version of events got right: the rather x-rated moment a man pleasured himself in front of her at a party. 

However, it wasn’t quite as casual as is depicted in the film. “So you guys have been asking, ‘How did you meet Belfort, the Wolf of Wall Street?’ Well it’s actually pretty similar to the movie,” she explained.

“I was 22 years old and modeling, my boyfriend at the time said, ‘Do you want to go to the party in West Hampton at a house on the beach?’ I was like, ‘Sure.’ We pulled up and I remember walking into the house. There were all these people and they were acting really weird. Little did I know, they were all Quaalude-d out, I had no idea.

“They were all there with their wives but they were making lewd and weird comments. That scene where someone exposes himself to me was true. I actually got terrified by that. I’m 22 and I said to my boyfriend at the time, ‘We have to leave this party,’ and we left right away.”

So, as you can tell from these accounts, Belfort appears to have written his memoir with Wilson’s ethos in mind: print the legend. 

The Wolf of Wall Street drops on Netflix on September 12. You can check out some of our other Netflix hubs below: 

The Gentlemen | Will there be Firefly Lane Season 3? | Sex Education Season 4 | Beef Season 2 | Monster Season 2 | Will there be Ginny and Georgia Season 3? | Black Mirror Season 7 | All the Light We Cannot See | Stranger Things Season 5 | Florida Man Season 2 | Obsession Season 2 | The Sandman Season 2 | The Lincoln Lawyer Season 3 | Bodies