Robert De Niro‘s first foray into series television proved to be an endurance test for the legendary actor, who compared filming Netflix‘s “Zero Day” to swimming the English Channel — with no sight of either shore.
“It is like doing three features back to back,” De Niro said at a preview event in London on Wednesday. “I was in most of it. And so I had to keep up with everything, even as simple as knowing the lines. So I likened it to being in the English channel — swimming to England from France, looking behind me and not seeing France, looking ahead, not seeing England. I gotta keep going, otherwise I’m gonna sink.”
The Oscar winner leads the cyber-thriller as former U.S. President George Mullen, who leads the Zero Day Commission in investigating a devastating cyber attack that has caused nationwide chaos and thousands of fatalities. The situation forces Mullen to confront his own dark secrets while navigating a landscape of disinformation and competing interests from technology, Wall Street and government power brokers.
Co-creator Eric Newman (“Narcos”) developed the six-episode series with former NBC News president Noah Oppenheim after discussions about society’s relationship with truth. “You can look at two different news sources and come away with a completely different version of the truth and that terrified me, and when something scares me, generally, it sort of inspires me,” Newman said at the event. He pitched the concept to De Niro over dinner, noting that he was their first choice. “If you have someone playing the president, a former president, and someone who needed a level of authenticity and credibility and gravitas — it’s a very short list, and Bob was at the top of it.”
For De Niro, who also serves as executive producer, the project came together organically. “I told my agent that I’d like to do something where I’m in New York for five or six months,” De Niro said. “We talked about a limited series. Eric sent me every few weeks one episode, a few of them, enough to say: ‘Yeah, I’m ready. I’ll do it.’”
The series features Jesse Plemons as a political aide with a complex connection to De Niro’s character. “It was really interesting to meet two characters that have a very long, complicated history that is sort of revealed slowly over the show,” Plemons noted about their dynamic.
Written three years ago, the series has gained unexpected relevance. “Things have happened since that we could not possibly have predicted,” Newman said. Despite its dark themes, he flags the show’s ultimately hopeful message. “My hope is that the takeaway is that there is hope for us, even in this world where every day seems increasingly hopeless,” he said.
And on De Niro’s casting as a U.S. president, Newman said, “That’s the sort of the aspirational part of it — it’s the person in the job you wish was in the job.”
The series is directed by Lesli Linka Glatter, who helms all six episodes. Michael S. Schmidt and Jonathan Glickman join Newman, Oppenheim and De Niro as executive producers. The star-studded cast also includes Lizzy Caplan, Connie Britton, Joan Allen, Matthew Modine and Angela Bassett.
“Zero Day” premieres globally on Netflix on Feb. 20.
