Robert De Niro wasn’t shouting at pro-Palestinian protesters in viral video. He’s filming a TV show
By Elizabeth Wagmeister, CNN
(CNN) — A viral video clip circulating online suggested that actor Robert De Niro had confronted pro-Palestinian protesters in New York City, but CNN has learned that the actor was actually filming a TV show.
In the video posted onto social media, De Niro is seen yelling, “This is not a movie! This is not a movie! … Move behind the barricade. You like talkin’ nonsense? Then you gotta go home!”
Some pro-Israel accounts began sharing the video on X Tuesday, with captions that suggested De Niro stood with Israel and was taking on pro-Palestinian protesters who were supposedly off-camera. (No protesters can be seen in the video.)
“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,” De Niro says in the video, which was edited to include a variety of different captions to suggest the actor was talking about Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel.
But De Niro’s publicist told CNN the origin of the video was taken out of context by social media users, and that the actor was performing lines directly from a script for a new TV show he is filming in New York City.
“What you saw was a direct scene from the Netflix series ‘Zero Day’ with Robert De Niro reading lines as written in the script,” the actor’s publicist, Stan Rosenfield, said.
A Netflix spokesperson told CNN that the video was shot “during an on-location rehearsal” for the series “Zero Day,” on April 27.
In the video, “Civil War” actor Jesse Plemons – who co-stars with De Niro in the series – is seen standing in the background.
“Zero Day” is an upcoming political conspiracy thriller in which De Niro plays a popular but complicated former American president who is pulled from retirement to head a commission tasked with investigating a devastating global cyber-attack, per Netflix’s official description.
The six-episode limited series is currently in production, after being shut down during the writer’s strike.
On Wednesday morning, after being rapidly shared by numerous pro-Israel accounts and influencers, the video was deleted by many users across social media.
The video was also shared by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz with the headline, “Watch as Robert De Niro confronts pro-Palestinian protesters in New York,” but the article has since been taken down. The editor in chief of Haaretz told CNN in a statement, “We ran a piece that was inadequately vetted in terms of sourcing and did not meet our editorial standards. We took the piece down soon after it ran.”
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