Damian Lewis wears a TAG Heuer Monaco

For one scene in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Damian Lewis plays Steve McQueen at a Playboy Mansion party, and on his wrist is a TAG Heuer Monaco. The French watch magazine that spotted it noted the watch is clearly visible by the pool. The Monaco is, of course, the watch the real Steve McQueen made famous.

He made it famous later, though. The Monaco came out in 1969, the year the film is set, when Heuer built it as the first automatic chronograph in a square, water-resistant case, running the Caliber 11 it developed with Breitling, Hamilton-Büren and Dubois-Dépraz. It was not a hit. What rescued it was McQueen strapping the blue-dialed reference 1133B to his wrist in Le Mans, the racing film he made in 1970. That was two years after the night Tarantino is staging. The Monaco on Lewis is period-correct as an object and slightly ahead of itself as a McQueen signature: in 1969, McQueen was not yet the Monaco guy.