Robert De Niro’s publicist denies actor was shouting at pro-Palestine protestors in viral clip
‘What you saw was a direct scene from the Netflix series ‘Zero Day’,’ said De Niro’s publicist
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Robert De Niro’s publicist has denied that a viral clip of the 80-year-old actor shows him confronting pro-Palestinian protesters in New York.
The 34-second video has been widely shared on social media with the caption: “Robert De Niro stands with Israel!”
However, De Niro’s publicist Stan Rosenfield told CNN that the actor was in fact rehearsing a scene for an upcoming television show.
“What you saw was a direct scene from the Netflix series Zero Day with Robert De Niro reading lines as written in the script,” said Rosenfield.
In the video, De Niro can be seen yelling at a crowd: “This is not a movie! This is not a movie!… Move behind the barricade. You like talkin’ nonsense? Then you gotta go home!”
He continues: “That’s dangerous and they say they’re gonna do it again! Again! You don’t want that. You don’t want that. None of us want that. C’mon. Let’s all get serious.”
The video was shared by various pro-Israel accounts on social media, and includes subtitles that erroneously claim that De Niro was referring to Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel when he said: “They say they’re gonna do it again”.
No protestors can be seen in the video but actor Jesse Plemons, who co-stars in Zero Day, is visible stood behind De Niro.
According to Netflix, Zero Day is an upcoming political conspiracy thriller which sees De Niro play a former American president who is pulled out of retirement to head a commission tasked with investigating a devastating global cyber-attack.
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The six-episode limited series is currently in production. No release date has yet been announced.
The president and first lady Jill Biden hosted more than 200 guests at the glitzy event in the White House East Room, where they dined on a specially curated menu of house-cured salmon, dry-aged rib-eye steak and matcha ganache.
De Niro arrived hand in hand with his girlfriend Tiffany Chen. Also in attendance were former president Bill Clinton and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, Big Tech moguls Tim Cook and Jeff Bezos, who was joined by Lauren Sanchez, and JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon.
Both Biden and Kishida took to the stage for a lighthearted, warm address to the crowd, where the former spoke of the two nations’ “friendship” and the latter invoked an iconic phrase from Star Trek.
Speaking in English, Kishida told guests at the White House that he hoped the “unshakable relationship” between his country and the US would “boldly go where no one had gone before”.
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