NEW YORK, USA – Disinformation, tech companies cozying up to top government officials, billionaires wielding influence, podcasters and social media figures threading into politics. Sound strangely familiar?
That’s the timely as today’s world of Netflix’s Zero Day, which marks Robert De Niro’s first lead role in a limited series.
True to form, De Niro is quietly commanding as former US president George Mullen, who was assigned by current president Evelyn Mitchell (Angela Bassett) to head the Zero Day Commission to track the masterminds behind a debilitating cyberattack.
The massive computer disruption created nationwide chaos and caused many fatalities as a result of traffic lights and railway safeguards suddenly not working, trains crashing, air traffic control going haywire, and other effects of technology going kaput.
The depiction of a very real threat of a nation crippled by a cyberattack came from three creators, two of whom have news backgrounds — Noah Oppenheim, former president of NBC News, and Michael Schmidt, The New York Times’ Washington DC correspondent. Eric Newman, a film and TV producer, completes the trio.
Aside from De Niro and Bassett, the cast includes Joan Allen as the former first lady, Lizzy Caplan as the daughter of the ex-POTUS, and the main cast, including Jesse Plemons, Connie Britton, Dan Stevens, and Matthew Modine.
Lesli Linka Glatter, whose credits include Homeland, Pretty Little Liars, and Mad Men, directed all six episodes set in New York and Washington DC.
Clik here to view.
Fittingly, Netflix held two hybrid press conferences (in person and via Zoom), one after another, in New York in The Plaza Hotel of US president Donald Trump (speaking of headlines).
Cinema legend De Niro, who participated in the first press conference at The Oak Room, talked about filming in this city: “That’s one of the reasons it (the show) got started because I was talking to my agent about doing something in New York for a while, in five, six months, and then we talked about a limited series.”
“My agent introduced me to Eric and we talked. Coincidentally, Eric had something that he and Noah were talking about in New York just a few days earlier. He sent me a treatment of that and then a couple of episodes and I saw it was terrific. So I was happy, ready to go.”
“There is nothing like shooting in New York City,” Leslie concurred. “The energy of the street, what you get by being in the city is profound. And this is a New York story. It’s also a DC story and an American story.”
“But filming it here made New York a character, juxtaposed to what’s going on in the story, with our amazing cast. So there’s no place like New York.”
Eric added, “New York has a very long and complicated history within this country and continues to. And when you work with Robert De Niro in New York, things open up and I think Netflix would probably agree.”
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“We shot for 103 days,” said Lesli, who also directed another series set in the White House, The West Wing.
The director cited the importance of filming in the US amid the current events. “I do have to say how important it is to shoot in America right now. I love shooting overseas. I’ve shot all over the world,” she said.
“But right now, given what’s happening in our country, it’s really important to shoot here. I’m glad we weren’t making New York in any other city.”
De Niro, who occasionally sipped from a cup of tea, praised the creatives sitting with him, Noah, Eric, and Lesli (Joan also joined this first round).
“The script and what these guys have done was so good. There wasn’t any sort of preparations for us before,” said De Niro. “We rehearsed every scene, of course, but it was all there — the dialogue was good.”
“It could have been corny or this or that, or pretentious or tendentious or whatever it would have been.”
“And we had some rehearsals,” Lesli pointed out. De Niro, ever a man of few words but a bit more loquacious in recent years, added, “So it made it easy for us.”
Lesli elaborated on the benefits of rehearsals. She said, “We are able to really dig deep into the characters and the history of the relationships. So we weren’t discussing that on the set, but again, it speaks to the writing and how rounded the characters are and realistically real.”
Clik here to view.
The filmmaker also brought up the importance of consultants from agencies like the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, and the Director of National Intelligence in this show that brings up a cyber weapon that may have been created by a government unit.
“We had great sources with Noah, Eric, and our amazing consultants, but from years on Homeland, where we had so many advisors, from heads of CIA, NSA, DNI, you want to really use those consultants and be sure it feels authentic while still telling a narrative story,” Lesli said.
“And supporting the depth of the characters because that’s what we care about, these characters going through this world and how they behave.”
De Niro, one of the greatest actors of our time, was asked about also being one of the show’s executive producers. “The fact is that my contribution would have been the same whether I was an executive producer or not,” he replied.
“You know, it’s a nice credit. I don’t want to go off on this but sometimes people have too many of those credits out there and they don’t really deserve them because it could be connected to the main person that they want.”
The multi-awarded actor added, “So, okay, well, give me a credit. Now it loses its meaning. But yeah, so I’m happy to have it, but everything I said with everybody would have been the same.”
Clik here to view.
Rappler asked Noah to talk about how prescient the story of Zero Day is, especially with the current real-world relationship between big tech companies and government.
“We started working on this show several years ago,” Noah answered. “It has been really wild to see all of the ways in which the real world has mirrored some of what we depict and ways in which our show has turned out to feel prophetic.”
“Although I don’t think either of us thought of ourselves as prophetic when we were writing it. At the core of it is, as Eric alluded, this big question of how do we navigate a world in which we can’t agree on truth.”
The former senior producer of NBC’s The Today Show brought up an important point that the miniseries mirrors.
“If you think about all of the threats that we face, whether it’s a cyber weapon like the one that is depicted in our show or whether you think it’s climate change or nuclear war, whatever keeps you up at night, I think the greatest threat that we are all confronting is this inability to agree on a shared set of facts, a shared reality,” Noah said.
“Because, without that foundation, we can’t address any of these other challenges that the world is confronting. Once we started building our story from that point, we started to think about what are the dynamics in the world in which you could see this play out?”
“Obviously, the relationship between powerful technology companies, powerful business leaders generally, and the government has been a throughline in American history since the robber barons in the 19th century and now, the tech barons of today.”
Clik here to view.
Angela talked about working with De Niro again since their first collaboration in Frank Oz’s 2001 film, The Score. “That was very intriguing to work with Mr. De Niro again. It’s my second time working with him.”
The actress enthused about playing a Black woman president — “the opportunity to see this representation of a woman who looks like me in that seat of power in that Oval Office. It’s very unique in particular so I was excited about that opportunity.”
Lizzy, on the other hand, talked about her character’s dynamics with De Niro’s former POTUS. The actress, as congresswoman Alexandra Mullen, is at odds with her father, politically and personally.
“The stakes are obviously astronomically high for all of the characters and what’s going on in the world,” Lizzy said. “Our world within the show is so massive but what was important to me was that the relationship between the father and daughter felt as huge.”
“I think many daughters think they know better than their fathers. But not many daughters are telling the former president of the United States how to do their job better, how they could have done it better.”
She added, “And juggling both of those things at the same time made every scene very rich but also you had to hold a lot of stuff in your brain all the time. Bob (De Niro) came at it from (a perspective of) I did the best I could.”
“And I came at it with a lot of resentment towards my father for many things, and hopefully, the macro and the micro lean on each other when you watch it.” – Rappler.com