 Jonah Hill was offered the role of Scotty Harmony , a gambler who loses Broomhilda to Candie in a poker game , but turned it down due to scheduling conflicts with The Watch . Sacha Baron Cohen was also offered the role , but declined in order to appear in Les Misérables . Neither Scotty nor the poker game appear in the final cut of the film . Hill later appeared in the film in a different role . Joseph Gordon @-@ Levitt said that he " would have loved , loved to have " been in the film but would be unable to appear because of a prior commitment to direct his first film , Don Jon . DiCaprio played his first role as a villain as the cruel plantation owner Calvin Candie . 
