Robert De Niro settled into the conversation with a familiar disclaimer: he looked at his schedule that morning and thought, ‘Oh, God.’ Amy Poehler, who had spent the preceding hour quietly interviewing three of his closest collaborators to prepare, took that as a promising sign. Because that combination of reluctance and warmth, the instinct to show up anyway without making a fuss about it, is exactly what everyone who knows him had warned her to expect. What followed was a rare, unhurried look at one of the most studied careers in American film, built not from grand pronouncements but from the fewest words you could possibly use to make a point.
What three people said about him before he arrived
Poehler structured the episode around preparation. Before De Niro joined, she pulled in three people who know him well.
Rachel Dratch, who shared the screen with him in the Debbie Downer sketch at the SNL 50th anniversary, described the immediate charge of working with someone that size. She had submitted a scene years earlier in which her entire De Niro impression consisted of backing up, closing her eyes, and opening her mouth slightly. It did not make air. For the anniversary sketch, she and writer Paula Pell built the premise around De Niro trying to get a drink at a bar while Debbie Downer informs him that microplastics are ‘taking up residence in your testies.’ His scripted line back was that he did not want to hear about the plastic in his balls. Dratch told Poehler she had offered, during rehearsal, to let him actually strangle her if he wanted. He took the offer. ‘I’m getting strangled by Robert De Niro,’ she said. ‘No comedy person ever thinks that’s going to happen to them.’
Seth Meyers, joining from his childhood bedroom in Bedford, New Hampshire, where a bobblehead of himself sat at a mock update desk his parents had assembled into what he called ‘a living museum,’ offered a practical warning: De Niro gives short answers. Not because he is bored or dismissive, but because when he has made his point he has no further need to speak. Meyers estimated he had encountered De Niro roughly 20 times through SNL and had never once been able to bring himself to call him Bob. He also noted that at table reads, De Niro laughed at everything, which led early writers to believe they had written perfect sketches, only to realize 25 sketches in that the laughing was simply generosity.
Jane Rosenthal, his producing partner of nearly 38 years and co-founder of the Tribeca Film Festival, told Poehler he probably would not want to be asked about weight. She also mentioned that after the London Film Festival premiere of The Irishman, De Niro redirected the group to Paris at around 11 at night because he had to try a specific restaurant. The place was closing. They kept it open. The group ate at one or two in the morning, jet-lagged. Rosenthal’s suggested question for the interview: what had he and his 14-year-old daughter Helen watched together lately.
Taxi Driver, a $75 apartment, and one saxophone regret
De Niro grew up in the Village, spending years in Little Italy on the corner of Kenmare and Mulberry, while Martin Scorsese was around Prince and Elizabeth. His parents were both painters and poets. He played the Cowardly Lion in a fourth-grade Wizard of Oz production at age 10, said his lines, and retained almost nothing else about it.
His first New York apartment was on Irving Place. The rent was $75 a month, possibly for a single room with a bed rather than a proper one-bedroom. For New York, New York, he taught himself the saxophone phonetically, worked very hard at it, and then never kept it up. He called that a regret. ‘It’s the skill you can’t take away,’ he said, ‘I just wish I made it something I would practice even half an hour every day.’
On the Goodfellas alley scene with Lorraine Bracco, he said his main concern was keeping everything casual and ambiguous: something could happen, or it could not. He made a decision as an actor that something probably would, but his job was to act as though everything was fine. On indicating, he put it plainly: ‘In life, people don’t do that. They just do.’
Poehler asked midway through whether she could call him Bob. He said yes immediately, and she told him she should have started there.
He told her he still listens to Channel 16 on Sirius, a station running music from the 1970s and 80s. ‘It was almost unconscious,’ he said of those years. ‘Brought back so many memories.’ On Helen and Stranger Things: she put him onto the show, and they went together to see the stage musical. On what he watches when the world feels too heavy: Modern Family, which his daughter also recommended. On what to do when hopelessness sets in: ‘You have to fight. You have to join people. Courage is contagious.’
The tissues nobody planned for
At the close, Poehler thanked him for speaking publicly and repeatedly about what is happening in the country, noting that it is usually people with the least power who are asked to carry that weight. De Niro went quiet. Then he cried. Poehler passed him Good Hang tissues.
The Debbie Downer clip rolled. On screen, De Niro told Deborah Downer he did not want to talk about plastic in his balls, that he wanted to laugh and feel joy and have a sliver of hope for three goddamn hours. Then he strangled her.
When the clip ended, he offered his review of the conversation: ‘It wasn’t bad.’ Poehler said that was exactly what she wanted her guests to feel. On Irving Place, sometime in the early years, the rent was $75 and the room held a bed..
