De Niro Does the Right Thing

[This story contains major spoilers from the finale of Zero Day.]

Is there a way out of our divided country’s seemingly hopeless predicament? Zero Day offers both a skeptical and aspirational answer to the question.

Netflix‘s conspiracy political thriller starring Robert De Niro, which is now streaming all six episodes, tackles truth and accountability in a post-truth era. A crippling cyberterrorism attack called a zero day event (a cyber breach targeting unknown vulnerabilities) downs dozens of U.S. systems for an entire minute, causing widespread catastrophe and the deaths of more than 3,000 people. Former President George Mullen (played by De Niro), who is described as being the last nonpartisan POTUS, leads a Zero Day Commission to uncover, by any means necessary, how and why this happened, and prevent it from happening again.

What Mullen discovers is that the zero day perpetrators are not from foreign soil. The attack was home grown — too close to home for Mullen. The co-conspirators were a group hailing from Big tech, like CEO Monica Kidder (Gaby Hoffman), and the U.S. government — including the Speaker of the House (played by Matthew Modine) and Mullen’s own daughter, Rep. Alexandra Mullen (Lizzy Caplan).

An ideological Alexandra tells her father that her intentions were actually to unite the broken country. She rails about how America is so divided that Congress hasn’t passed a single piece of legislation in 18 months. She never intended for anyone to get hurt. Dreyer similarly explains that they wanted to cut off the political fringe on both sides, expose a vulnerability that has been mistaken for freedom and then restore “a shaken faith in our ability to govern.”

Mullen is faced with an impossible choice when it comes to sharing his commission findings. Despite a plea from the current president (Angela Bassett) to not reveal the full truth, Mullen lays it all out in front of Congress and Americans watching at home. He reads a speech written to him by his daughter, who has decided to turn herself in. He then returns to an empty home, his wife (Joan Allen) having left him, with the idea of losing two children (after they lost their son to an overdose) being too much to bear.

“George Mullen does the right thing, and it costs him everything except his integrity,” co-creator, co-showrunner and executive producer Eric Newman explains to The Hollywood Reporter of the ending and its larger takeaway. “The people who want these jobs to govern us have to understand that that is what is asked of them.”

Both Newman and co-creator/executive producer Noah Oppenheim, the former president of NBC News, who created the series with New York Times journalist Michael S. Schmidt, agree that “the mechanism for which we determine truth is collectively broken,” which makes their ending even more compelling. Zero Day also intentionally doesn’t identify political parties, so as to not distract from the series. “One of the themes that we wanted to tackle from the very beginning was the question of what people in power are willing to do when they think they’re saving the country,” adds Oppenheim.

When speaking to THR about his first TV role, De Niro agreed on the nonpartisan message. “It had to be more about an honesty between people in order to get anything done,” he said of his character. The limited series begs the question of how Zero Day‘s version of America will pick up the pieces after this crisis, but Newman and Oppenheim won’t be plotting that future. “It was always important to Bob that his character makes a sacrifice to do the right thing, which makes it almost impossible for him to go on in any leadership capacity,” says Newman of the series truly being limited. De Niro also compared filming Zero Day to shooting three movies at once, and said he wasn’t sure how quickly he’d be returning to TV.

So, the minds behind Zero Day now offer viewers a chance to digest and think about the version of America they put forth. Below, in a chat with THR, Newman and Oppenheim discuss the parallels to real-life politicians and others in their orbit — some they predicted, but many they couldn’t possibly have — while revealing the research that went into their cautionary tale in hopes it ends up being aspirational.

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I understand that Zero Day came out of a meeting you two had years ago, when Noah was still president of NBC News. Can you tell me when that meeting was and your seed for the show?

ERIC NEWMAN: November of 2021, we had a meeting. At the time, Noah had already had a number of conversations with his childhood friend Mike Schmidt about a story he had been trying to run down about an investigation that was hindered by someone’s mental acuity. I had asked Noah about where we were going as a country with our respective relationship with the truth, and his answer was alarming to me. He said that what should be objective fact becomes subjective, and there are competing truths that, despite being mutually exclusive, somehow coexist because people refuse to see it any other way. The combination of that idea, and the idea that Mike and Noah had been discussing, created the perfect story device to tell this story about the truth in a post-truth era.

You then pitched the show to Robert De Niro. How much of the idea was formed when you brought it to him?

NEWMAN: Bob got it instantly. We met Bob and sat down over dinner and told him the story, and he instantly was like, “That sounds great. I’d like to read that.” And, by the way, if I had a dollar for every time someone said, ”I can’t wait to read that,” I’d be a rich man. But in his case, he read it immediately and he loved it. He understood completely what we were trying to say and the themes the show presents and posits.

So, you had your former president with De Niro’s George Mullen, and then you would go on to cast Angela Bassett as the show’s current president. Who were both of these presidents based on?

NOAH OPPENHEIM: Neither of them are based on any one individual, but they both tap into important themes and emotional truths that we were trying to represent in a character. President Mullen is a figure who the country turns to in the aftermath of this catastrophic attack. People are terrified, seeking reassurance and comfort. You needed an actor who could immediately embody that dignity, reassurance and confidence. There’s a pretty short list of people who can do that. Bob brings with him this long history with the audience so that immediately when you see him walk into the Oval office and he is handed the weight of this responsibility you think, “That makes sense. Here’s a guy who can handle the task of recomforting the country, and who also has the inherent toughness to track down the truth.” That’s what also makes it so unsettling, when you start to see the cracks and you realize he may not be the guy everyone thinks he is.

With Angela, you needed a current president who had the self confidence to hand the reins over to somebody else in this moment, and who had so much else going on. She has an agenda in the show that is not immediately clear. When she hands over the investigation to President Mullen, she has the reasons that she states openly for doing so, and then she has the reasons that she’s holding back from him and from the audience. So that is somebody who immediately when you see them in the Oval office behind the desk you think, “this person belongs there.” They are incredible in all the scenes they have together, you feel like you have two titans going head to head.

I’m very curious about all of the research that went into plotting Zero Day. I’ve read that veteran Washington staffers consulted on the series, and that De Niro brought in Cold War-era CIA sources for his preparation as Mullen.

OPPENHEIM: What Eric has done in all of his shows, from Narcos to Painkiller, is that he’s really made a commitment to authenticity. He was hugely insistent that this show reflect that as well, even though it’s taking place in a fictional world. We’ve had the benefit that I’ve spent this other life and career in journalism. I’ve spent 25 years covering politics and so I’m fortunate enough to know and have been present behind closed doors in the White House, on Capitol Hill and in government agencies. Then Mike Schmidt still to this day covers politics. So we really tapped into all of our networks of experts currently and formerly serving government officials to find out, how would this actually unfold? What would these conversations really sound like? We wanted it to be as real as possible.

In the series, in the days and weeks after the attack, we see that America is on the brink of societal collapse. In your research and in making this show, what’s scarier: the world of Zero Day or our current world?

[Both laugh]

NEWMAN: We talk about that all the time. Because I’m not a pessimist but I try to be self-aware, I’m thinking, what is the thing where we could come up short? Is the reality that we face scarier than the reality of our show? I think no, but we could get there pretty quickly. The pace at which things move and things happen, and the cascading nature of shit going south, anything can happen. There have been 20 things that if you had told me in 1999 were going to happen in the next 25 years I would have said you’re out of your mind, you don’t know what you’re talking about. And here we are.

Eric, how did having partners in Noah and Michael S. Schmidt (co-creator and EP), given their political journalism backgrounds, help you fact check. What were some things you changed?

NEWMAN: There were numerous things that we would get right after [these conversations]. Noah knows this world better than anyone. Between Noah, Mike, Eric Schulz, who worked in communications for Obama and continues to, and Jeremy Bash [former chief of staff at the CIA and the Pentagon under Obama], there were a lot of people who were able to say, “Yeah, that’s not how it works.” We are replicating a world that exists right now and so there’s no shortage of people who can offer their consulting services.

OPPENHEIM: If anything, we’ve been most surprised by the number of things we were writing that felt, at the time, were a little bit of a leap. Like, here were going to take some creative liberty for the purpose of entertainment and drama, and now those things have actually played out in the real world. Literally half a dozen instances where writing it we were like, “Ok, this is where we’re going to have some fun with it.” And then we proceeded to see the real world catch up to that.

I was going to ask you about that because you have the parallel between De Niro’s cognitive state being questioned and former President Joe Biden stepping back from reelection. [Note: Zero Day wrapped filming in June of 2024 before Biden would ultimately step down to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris.] Are there other examples you can share, particularly with this show coming out so soon after President Trump’s reelection?

OPPENHEIM: We just came out of a presidential election where we had two of the oldest candidates in history, so the idea of people in power facing cognitive challenges is not specific to President Biden. However, the way in which that came front and center during the campaign was certainly something we could not have anticipated when we were writing Mullen’s storyline. Obviously, the controversy and dilemma over what happens when the child of a powerful person commits a crime and then their parent is in a position to potentially save them from the consequences, is something we’ve seen play out in a really interesting way. And then, one of the themes that we wanted to tackle from the very beginning was the question of what people in power are willing to do when they think they’re saving the country. How many norms they’re willing to blow through and how many laws they are willing to break if they feel like their cause is righteous? Those are both timeless questions, and also very timely.

NEWMAN: There’s a great quote that I love that originated from Goethe, the German philosopher, which is that if you give someone a choice between disorder and injustice, they will chose injustice every time. What people do in crisis, what they’re willing to do and, perhaps more significantly, what they’re willing to have done to them when their order is threatened and when they’re scared. When whatever system of government, likely some supremacy, is threatened, people will do anything. They will give up almost anything to feel security. Nothing that anyone does in our show do we believe is something someone wouldn’t do. And not only would they do it, they would have a justification that in the right light would make sense to you.

Some of the characters are very of this exact moment, particularly with the tech leaders.

NEWMAN: Obviously, we don’t want any people in the tech world making any decisions about what we can and can’t do, and I certainly wouldn’t want anyone having access to my tax records or whatever, but the Elon Musk thing is a bit of a surprise.

OPPENHEIM: If anything, what this has shown is the extent to which history rhymes. There’s this notion that you see these patterns repeating themselves and whether it was the robber barons of the 19th century or these tech billionaires of today, this tension between the rich and powerful in this country and our democratic institutions has always existed. It’s been interesting to see how an idea that we were writing about three years ago is playing out today. That doesn’t mean that we’re prophetic in any way, that’s just been a throughline of American history.

You tackle fears around Big tech, disinformation, a divided country, distrust in the government… but then you deliver this aspirational ending that we don’t typically see in political thrillers. Is Zero Day a cautionary tale or is it hopeful? Where do each of you land on that and what you want people to take away?

NEWMAN: For me, it’s undeniable that the mechanism for which we determine truth is collectively broken, or at least we’re using a different metric or translator. I believe what that means is that the pressure is on what do you do with that information, your truth. The right thing becomes even more important. Actually being able to make a difficult decision, do the right thing, even when you’re not entirely sure what the truth is, there’s still an objectivity in that. The character of George Mullen does the right thing, and it costs him everything except his integrity. The people who want these jobs to govern us have to understand that that is what is asked of them.

OPPENHEIM: I’m so glad you found it to be an optimistic ending, because that is the intent. As Eric said, as broken as our institutions and our media landscape may be, each and every one of us does still have a moral compass. All of us make a series of decisions every day when we wake up in the morning. It could be how we conduct ourselves when we go to the grocery store or when we go pick up our kids at school. But all those decisions, small ones, add up and we can be decent and kind and generous to our neighbors if we choose.

There’s a message for everyone in this show, but it does feel like De Niro’s character is speaking to politicians saying, “This is the person you could be.” Has there been any buzz in political circles about the show and do you hope politicians watch?

NEWMAN: Noah knows this world better than I do. I know a few of these people. I don’t know what they watch but yes, of course. You hope it prompts some conversation. We’re doing press now and people are asking interesting questions about how we see art and what art’s role is in times like this when there is such a disconnect. Our hope is that people will watch it without feeling it’s political and understand the message, even if it’s from their own lens.

It’s something I’ve said to you a number of time about Narcos, the thing that really surprised and pleased me about Narcos was that from either side — the side that believes the drug war is a battle we have to win and can win, or the side, like me, that believes in the futility of the drug war and the fact that we will never solve a problem by attacking the supply and ignoring the demand — both sides were able to be educated to the extent of the proliferation of cocaine and how much we are importing into this country. Similarly, they might not agree on how to do it but I don’t think you can watch our show and not think there’s something wrong with our civilization that we’ve moved this far away in terms of our interpretation of the truth. That’s my hope. Whether they are politicians or voters, they look at it and go, “Wow that does feel like our world and we need to start to address this in some way.”

OPPENHEIM: The reality is that the places where these conversations would have been had 25 years ago no longer exist. Or they don’t exist in such a way that you can have a conversation between two sides where anyone is persuaded. So ironically, for better or worse, a thriller on Netflix that is built first and foremost to be entertaining is probably one of the few places where you are going to get people with all sets of beliefs all having a shared experience. Maybe that’s a place where people can start to collectively think about the problems that we confront.

You don’t identify political parties in Zero Day, was that an easy decision to make or did you debate it?

OPPENHEIM: It was an easy decision because we’re not making any partisan statement with the show. Our hope was to build something that plays as a really compelling whodunnit, that plays as a propulsive thriller and keeps people entertained through six episodes. Trying to put partisan labels on individual characters frankly is a distraction from that. It’s also about multi-dimensional people and, having been around politicians as long as I have, there are very few of them who fall cleanly into the bucket of hero or villain. They are all complicated and if you put a partisan label on somebody it’s an obstacle to complexity.

We never get an answer on if President Mullen was cognitively declining, if he was poisoned by a neurological weapon or if he was simply cracking under immense pressure. Why did you leave that open ended?

NEWMAN: Like the theme of our show, it is open to interpretation. You can see what you want to see and it doesn’t change where we end up. It was an interesting experience for me. You have to make a decision when you write something and at some point, Noah and I decided that it was happening. Whether we ever truly confirm it and provide incontrovertible evidence that it’s happening or not, for us it was happening. When I watch it now, it’s an interesting thing. Even though we decided, I kind of feel like it wasn’t happening!

OPPENHEIM (Laughs)

NEWMAN: Taxi Driver is one of my favorite movies ever. There’s a sequence at the end that I’m convinced is a dream. I had the opportunity to ask Paul Schrader, who wrote Taxi Driver, about the scene. I said, “Was that a dream?” He said, “No, it’s not a dream.” And honestly, I don’t agree with him! I think that’s the way we experience stories. There is some subjectivity to interpretation.

OPPENHEIM: It’s not only how we experience stories but how we experience life. Two people can go into a room, have a conversation and emerge with a completely different understanding of what took place inside that room. You multiply that at scale and you add in the technological revolution that’s taken place in the last 20 years and that’s what’s landed us here. You could take even the same set of facts to some extent and, depending on how you arrange them — which ones you omit, which ones you prioritize — come away with a completely different understanding of what has happened. Like Eric said, whether or not it was a weapon or whether or not it was something going on inside Mullen, it doesn’t change the impact it had on the course of the investigation. And even if we said one thing, if it were convenient or comforting to a group of people to believe the other thing, they would believe the other thing.

What did you base Proteus on? The show’s neurological weapon.

OPPENHEIM: It’s inspired by the phenomenon dubbed Havana syndrome, which is these American diplomats beginning with the U.S. and then in Cuba waking up with symptoms that mirrored brain trauma. It’s happened subsequently in Vienna and in locations all over the world impacting CIA officers and senior U.S. diplomats, and there’s an ongoing and still open debate within the U.S. intelligence community whether this is the result of most likely Russia using some kind of neurological weapon against government officials or whether it’s some sort of mass hysteria or some sort of other explanation. But it’s still very much a heatedly debated topic and a very real thing.

Zero Day is a limited series. You leave us in a place where you could certainly follow how the country picks back up after this crisis. Is this series definitely done?

NEWMAN: Right now it feels like we said what we need to say and could only muck it up by doing more! We may one day call each other and be like, “What if this happens…?” It was always important to Bob that, at the end of the day, his character makes a sacrifice to do the right thing, which makes it almost impossible for him to go on in any leadership capacity. It’s a great world though, we had fun in it. So I think we definitely would revisit the political thriller conspiracy story. We’d do anything with Bob because we love him. It was a great cast and team. We loved working with [Zero Day director] Lesli Linka Glatter, she’s truly the hardest working woman in show business. It’s not an easy thing to say we wouldn’t continue, but at the same time, no immediate plans.

When did you write the finale?

NEWMAN: We were supposed to shoot in June of ‘23 and the strike derailed us on our first day, so we had written the finale certainly I think by the spring of ‘23.

Did you make any changes when you came back to filming?

OPPENHEIM: Not dramatic. Nothing major, no.

When you imagine the next day after Zero Day ends, is it a country healing after the truth or one that remains divided?

OPPENHEIM: (Laughs) We might have two different opinions about this. Looking at the world that we live in, I think you wake up the next day and Speaker Dreyer [Matthew Modine] is a hero to half the country. He claims he’s been falsely accused. I think you have a media ecosystem that is claiming this was all George Mullen’s fever dreams and that he’s maligning his political opponents. It’s possible that Alexandra Mullen [Lizzy Caplan], whether she wants to be or not, has become a hero and a martyr, and I think you have another set of people who are trying to fight back but who have lost the moral high ground because of the abuses of the Zero Day Commission and probably have much less of a leg to stand on in trying to combat that. Doesn’t look pretty to me!

NEWMAN: I’m slightly more optimistic. I agree with everything Noah says except I think that in the center of it all is a strengthening of the middle. Certainly, if you’re inclined to believe those are the bad guys and we’re the good guys, you’ve calcified further into that position. And the converse is true. But I also think there is a group in the middle that’s like, “Wow, we got a problem here. This is a constitutional crisis.” Our favorite characters to write were Roger Carlson, Jesse Clemons’ slightly scumbaggy lobbyist, and Matthew Modine because he’s kinda right. There’s nothing he says that you don’t say, “Yeah I would kind of like to see that. If you told me that you’ll get rid of your fringe crazies and we’ll get rid of our fringe crazies and everything will be fine, I like that idea. I can support that.” There’s no way to do that without undermining the very thing that we would be saving. It’s that old Vietnam adage that you have to burn the village to save it, and that just doesn’t work.

OPPENHEIM: I like your optimism, though, about the middle being reinvigorated. The funny thing about leadership is that you don’t know where it’s necessarily going to come from next. That is the beauty of imagining what the world looks like the day after: the character who could emerge from the aftermath who has watched this all happen and realized, “If we don’t do something to fix all of this, we’re going off a cliff.” And how that person gets a handle on things and has their voice heard.

Comparisons have been made to your characters: Alexandra Mullen (Lizzy Caplan), a rising AOC-esque star; Evan Green’s (Dan Stevens) radical host, like Tucker Carlson and Ben Shapiro; and Angela Bassett’s President Mitchell, Kamala Harris. Are these characters more like amalgamations? 

OPPENHEIM: There aren’t any one-for-one comparisons for any of them. They’re all composites and all inspired by a collection of people.

NEWMAN: That was all by design. Any time we have in an interview suggested someone, it was more in answer to someone being put forward. The last thing we wanted was someone to say, “That’s so clearly so and so,” and that includes the tech space. There are a variety of types in the tech space, from Peter Thiel to Elon Musk, who do different things, but the relationship between tech and politics is the same as the relationship between John D. Rockefeller and politics, and Andrew Carnegie and politics, and so and so.

OPPENHEIM: It’s also important to say that these characters are not archetypes designed to represent specific forces in our government or in our culture. They’re hopefully people. Alexandra Mullen is the daughter of a beloved former president. That’s a unique burden to bear if you are trying to carve your own path in public service, and that’s not something that I think there is a specific real-world parallel for.

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Zero Day is now streaming on Netflix.