Robert De Niro’s Number One Priority Is Getting Rid of Trump

Robert De Niro has had a hell of a year. In April, the screen icon welcomed a daughter, Gia, with his girlfriend Tiffany Chen. Three months later, he lost his grandson, Leandro, to a drug overdose at just 19 years of age. Then came the actors’ strike, causing an industry-wide shutdown that put him out of work for the next four months and prevented him from promoting Killers of the Flower Moon, a masterful crime saga boasting his best performance in years. Finally, he was embroiled in a legal nightmare with an ex-assistant that, after a heavily publicized trial, found him not personally liable for gender discrimination, but left his company with a $1.2 million judgment.

It’s been trying for the 80-year-old actor, to say the least.

More from Rolling Stone

• Rudy Giuliani Declares Himself Bankrupt

• Trump Vows to Amp Up the Hitler Talk

• MAGA Convention to Nikki Haley: "F-ck Her!"

“It’s a lot,” he says, choking up. “I have no choice but to plow through. And my biggest concern now, with everything else, is us getting out of this situation with a monster in Trump. This is a classic grift. This is unreal.”

He pauses. “If you look at other totalitarian countries like Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union, it will affect everybody in ways you can’t even imagine.”

I’m seated across from De Niro at his office in Tribeca. The walls are adorned with photos of De Niro posing with luminaries like Nelson Mandela and Federico Fellini, while one of the corner tables has enough bottles of champagne for a Gatsby jamboree. The venerable star of film classics like Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Goodfellas, and Heat is digging into his lunch: a glass of coke and thick-cut Canadian bacon, cutting it into pieces and stabbing it with a knife and fork.

We’re here to discuss his chilling turn as William Hale in Killers of the Flower Moon, an anti-Western of sorts about the Reign of Terror — when white settlers in 1920s Oklahoma, led by Hale, systematically married and murdered wealthy Osage Nation tribal members for the headrights to their oil-rich land. Hale urges his simple-minded nephew, Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio), to marry and poison Mollie Kyle (Lily Gladstone, extraordinary), an Osage woman from an oil-rich family. But Mollie won’t go quietly into the night. The film marks De Niro’s tenth feature with Scorsese over 50 years, since 1973’s Mean Streets, in what is arguably the richest actor-director relationship in cinema history.

Rolling Stone spoke with De Niro about the Oscar-worthy film, his special relationship with “Marty,” and the aforementioned orange man who, he says, “gives New Yorkers a bad name.”

I want to congratulate you for welcoming a half-Asian baby into the world. I’m half-Asian myself and we’re always happy to grow our ranks.
Oh, me. Yeah. Half-Chinese. I want to try to teach her Chinese and show her nursery rhymes in English and Chinese. I’m hoping to have her learn both.

Did you and Al Pacino talk about becoming fathers at this age together? It was a weird coincidence. The news reports hit not too long apart.
No, I didn’t know he was having a kid! I don’t know under what conditions he had the baby, but I was happy for him and wish him luck. I don’t know what the story is with Al’s baby, but when I see him, we’ll talk.

You also have children who are half-Black. What are your fears for your children in today’s America?
Years ago, Joe Pesci said to me, “You’re more American than most Americans,” because I had two children at the time that were mixed. And I never thought of it at all. But then I said, “You know, he’s got a point.” That’s what this country is. But every group has to get out there and vote.

You said that Apple censored a portion of your recent Gotham Awards speech where you spoke out about the dangers of another Trump presidency.
What happened was I was working on the speech with a writer, Lewis Friedman, and he gave it to them, and then one of the consultants had put something in the speech about how kids in Oklahoma aren’t even able to read the book Killers of the Flower Moon. And then I didn’t hear anything. They gave me the script, and I looked at the prompter, and I asked after, “What happened?” And they assumed that I had spoken to Marty or somebody about it, but I hadn’t. They assumed that I would be OK with it, and maybe I’m still getting it wrong, and I wasn’t. Marty and I spoke about it the next day and he said, “Yeah, I had sent you a text and [Apple] asked if you could dial it down, respectfully.”

Apple also recently is alleged to have canceled The Problem with Jon Stewart in part because Stewart’s show was critical of China.
Oh, that’s interesting. I didn’t even want to blame them, but I was annoyed in the moment with whoever did it. If Marty had called me and said, “Apple asked me to do this and that,” then we would’ve gone over it. But I told Marty, “Everything in that speech is leading up to what this movie is about. And I don’t want to take away from the movie. It’s not a rant about Trump. It’s appropriate.”

Did you ever see that viral video of a Staten Island Trump supporter destroying a framed portrait of you from Goodfellas after you criticized Trump?
No. You can’t please everybody. There’s always going to be somebody who doesn’t like you for this or that. All I know is: Trump brings out the worst in people. He’s a monster. I didn’t think that in the beginning when he was first elected. I thought, “Maybe he’ll straighten out.” Now, this guy is beyond dangerous, and I just hope people can realize it. Once you go down that road, it won’t be easy to come back. I was just at the White House for the Kennedy Center Honors with Billy Crystal, and I got emotional. The bands were playing Christmas songs, and it was so upbeat, and I thought, “This is what it has to be.” Like, what’s going on with this Trump stuff? This is crazy.

Do you think Biden is the right guy to take on Trump?
I think that if Biden was on a gurney and couldn’t move anything but his eyes to blink “yes” or “no,” he’s our person. There’s no way that he’s not the guy to take Trump down. Nikki Haley, maybe? We need anything to get rid of Trump. If she came in it could at least throw him off and have her be the nominee. But Biden is the best person at this point. All I hope is that everybody gets out to vote, and all the minorities and young people get out and vote, vote, vote. You’ve gotta get out there and vote.

Trump responded to your Gotham speech by calling you a “loser.” Not his best work.
I saw. The problem is that people respond to him. God forbid he did become president — this is a road where, if we go down it, it will be very hard to turn around. As Liz Cheney said, “He will not leave.”

He tried not to leave. You look at January 6^th and I don’t understand how those images of people storming the Capitol aren’t seared into the minds of every American.  
It’s unbelievable. There was the crazy one with the hat and the horns. It was the inmates running the asylum.

Author David Grann told a story about researching Killers of the Flower Moon where he paid a visit to a local Osage Nation museum in Oklahoma and was observing a panoramic photo of the Osage tribe with some white settlers, but a panel was missing. So, he asked the museum director why and she said, “The devil was standing right there.” It was William Hale.
Parts of him I don’t understand. A part of him might even have thought he really loves them, but they’re not his equal, therefore he has the right to take what’s theirs — because he does. It’s entitlement is what it is.

You’ve played the actual devil in Angel Heart, and Max Cady in Cape Fear, but I find William Hale to be scarier than both of those characters.
It’s the banality of evil. He’s a pillar of the community in some ways and is a part of that frontier tradition. You know, the older I get, with the behavior of some of the people we’re seeing today, it’s just crazy.

There are parallels between William Hale and Donald Trump. Both put on that front that they’re these pillars of the community and helping people when in actuality they’re bleeding them dry.
And he feels, whether he’s rationalizing it to himself, that he loves the people and speaks their language, but there’s another part of him that’s disconnected from it to such a point that he’s having people killed. That’s horrible. Now, if Trump gets elected, the “deep state” and all the things that he says, are things he’s created. It’s all projection from him. What scares me is that people buy what he’s saying. He’s done a lot of damage.

Killers of the Flower Moon is a corrective of sorts to the ways Hollywood has historically treated Native Americans. In Westerns in particular, they were the nameless villains.
I think it’s a masterpiece. A great movie. I don’t know how corrective it will ultimately be, but the story is there and it’s for the audience to decide how it affects them. With Marty and Leo, it was their idea to change it so that the white guy from the FBI named Tom White didn’t come in and save the day. It’s about the relationship between Ernest and his uncle, and Ernest and Mollie, played by Lily Gladstone, who’s just wonderful. It’s complex and asks a lot of questions. The conflict is not even that clear with Leo’s character’s intentions.

This year marks 50 years since the release of Mean Streets, so 50 years of Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese. What are the odds that two guys growing up blocks from each other in Little Italy back when it was a pretty rough area could become Hollywood icons?
Is it? Wow. Fifty years. I was on Kenmare and Broome, and Marty was over on Elizabeth. Marty and I had a mutual friend who would go between our groups. Because I was interested in acting, our mutual friend would say to me, “Oh, Marty’s doing this over at NYU.” And he’s only about eight months older than me. It’s kind of amazing.

And there was initially tension between both of you since you were from different parts of the neighborhood, right? And you were in a gang at the time?
I was in a group called The Forty Thieves and Marty was in another group over on Prince Street, which is two blocks north of Kenmare.

They called you “Bobby Milk” back then.
Sometimes they called me that, or “Bobby Irish,” or “Bobby the Blond” — because my hair was light. I did a movie with Barry Levinson about a year ago and it’s about Vito Genovese and Frank Costello, and how they knew each other when they were young. It’s written by Nick Pileggi and produced by Irwin Winkler. They had this club there, Alto Knights, that I used to hang out in on Kenmare and Mulberry, and I said to Nick, “Where did you get the name of this club as a location? That’s a place I know very well!” They changed the name of the film from Wise Guys, which was a little too obvious, to Alto Knights. I never thought I’d do another [mob] movie but this one was interesting. It was Irwin’s idea for me to play both parts, Genovese and Costello.

You’d worked with De Palma before Scorsese, but looking back on your first collaboration with Scorsese, playing Johnny Boy in 1973’s Mean Streets, what was that experience like?
Marty and I met at a mutual friend’s Christmas dinner when I was 26, 27. Brian was there, too. I told him, “Who’s That Knocking at My Door is terrific.” He knew that world because he’s from that world. And then somehow, Mean Streets came up. It was titled then Season of the Witch, and he said there were a couple of parts I could do. I was trying to decide which part to do and finally settled on the Johnny Boy part. I remember talking to him on the phone, on a regular landline, and saying to Marty, “They all have interesting elements to them!” Then I ran into Harvey Keitel, who was playing Charlie, on the street and he said, “You should do that part!” That pushed me in that direction.

You and Scorsese have made 10 films together. Do you have a favorite of the bunch?
I don’t know! I’ve always enjoyed working with Marty on everything. It was always fun. Not that it wouldn’t happen with other terrific directors, but with Marty, it was always an extra-special thing. I always felt that I could do something and he’d be willing to try it, and the worst thing that could happen would be that he’d cut it out or we’d try another version of it.

And the “You talkin’ to me?” monologue from Taxi Driver was improvised. It might be the most famous improv in cinema history.
It was! Who would’ve thought? [Laughs]

On the subject of Taxi Driver, that’s a film that I think becomes more relevant with each passing year. Travis Bickle is a guy on the fringes who’s lost touch with reality, has become alienated from society, has had bad luck with women, and becomes fixated on politics and violence. He’s basically an early cinema version of an “incel.”  
Incel?

It means “involuntary celibate.” It’s a group of young men, primarily online, who have become hostile toward women because they can’t attract them and start shitposting about politics while fantasizing about exacting violent revenge.
Yeah, I can see that.

The King of Comedy has aged like a fine wine, but it got killed at the time.
I remember that I was standing at a payphone at 8^th Avenue and 43^rd Street and the producer told me, “It bombed.” I said, “Oh god.” From that standpoint, it was rough. It wasn’t accepted. It wasn’t a commercial movie. It was thought to have some commercial potential, if you will, but you never know with things. All I know is we did a movie that was personal in some ways, and the person who wrote it, Paul Zimmerman, was a film critic from Newsweek. And I loved the script.

I remember watching This Boy’s Life as a kid. That was the first time I was wowed by him as an actor. And it came out thirty years ago this year. How did you find Leo for that role? Because I imagine you had a say in who would be cast.
We had a [script] reading of it at Warner Bros. with myself, [producer] Art Linson, [director] Michael Caton-Jones, Leo, and other actors, and at the end of the reading I said to Art, “He was interesting, this kid.” I didn’t say we had to use him, but he was. Leo was terrific. Leo later told me that he gave it his all because he didn’t think he was going to get it anyway.

I was reminded of This Boy’s Life while watching Killers of the Flower Moon because there’s that sequence of you flogging Leo’s behind which brought me right back to you strangling him in the kitchen.
Leo joked in an interview that Killers of the Flower Moon is just a continuation of what we did thirty years earlier. [Laughs]

Do you have any cherished memories of working together with Marty?
We get there, we do the thing, and I just have a great time with him. I remember on Taxi Driver and things later, when we were talking about a scene, I would say, “Look, this reminds of this thing that happened to me, and it seems applicable to this scene,” so out of that we’d get specifics that can be applied to the scene. I loved those talks. I guess he wanted to be a priest at one time, so he has a great listening quality. That’s very important as a director. He’ll take what you’re talking about and find a way to apply it and put it in a scene. I hope that we can do other films together. I hope there’s something there, and whatever it’ll be, it’ll be special. I’ve had an idea for years that I would love to do with him. We are talking, so maybe we can get it to another level. I see myself going and going…

Best of Rolling Stone

• 70 Greatest Comedies of the 21st Century

• Risky Business: Every Tom Cruise Film, Ranked – Updated

• 70 Greatest Music Documentaries of All Time