Inside Robert De Niro’s ‘Zero Day,’ a Chillingly Prescient Political Thriller

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A few years ago, veteran producer Eric Newman (Narcos, Griselda) took a meeting with Noah Oppenheim, then the president of NBC News. Smack in the middle of Biden’s presidency, Newman asked the news executive to identify “the thing that we’re not talking about that we should be talking about.” Oppenheim replied with a clear answer: “Our relationship as a country with the truth.” He spoke about the cultural silos that create a disorienting sense of competing realities. Facts, Oppenheim had noticed, were being increasingly treated as subjective. While news junkies like Newman had been certainly, casually aware of this development, Oppenheim underlined its significance—and the potential threat it posed. They began talking about how to dramatize this dynamic, to make a statement about where we could be headed.

By the time you get to the end of Zero Day’s first episode, you’d be forgiven for assuming the show was written very recently, with a clear intention to model itself on the American political scene’s current main characters. De Niro’s Mullen is tapped to lead a Patriot Act–style commission in response to the terrorist attack, resisting pressure to pin it on Russia given current relations and the nature of the cyberwarfare. His perspective gets muddied as he starts showing signs of cognitive decline, recalling the fierce debate surrounding Joe Biden’s candidacy for reelection before he took himself off the ballot.

From there, more parallels emerge. Mullen’s daughter, Alexandra (Lizzy Caplan), is a relatively progressive member of Congress whose popularity and forthrightness on Instagram signals her as a rising, AOC-esque star. His chief adversary, meanwhile, is Evan Green (Dan Stevens), an inflammatory basement-dwelling commentator clearly inspired by the likes of Tucker Carlson and Ben Shapiro. The sitting US president Mitchell is portrayed by Angela Bassett, notable in the wake of Americans again rejecting the chance to elect the first female president in Kamala Harris.

“We did not expect Biden’s cognitive issues to become a campaign issue. We did not expect a Black woman to become the candidate,” Newman says. “If anything, in my mind, [President Mitchell] was more based on Michelle Obama or something.”

Both the momentous subject matter and De Niro’s involvement set the stage for a historically impressive cast. In addition to the aforementioned actors, Jesse Plemons shines in a meaty role as Mullen’s deceptive right-hand man, while Connie Britton portrays a savvy strategist who’s got a personal past with Mullen. Character actors like Bill Camp and Clark Gregg get plenty of room to play too. “Every single cast member, we got our first choice,” Newman says. “When you read the script and you realize this is very much about the era in which we live, it’s something you want to be a part of.”

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