Robert De Niro says he will never play Trump on screen because 'there is nothing redeemable about him'
Robert De Niro recently called President Donald Trump a “nasty little b*tch” in an interview with The New York Times.
A long-time critic of the U.S. President, the lead of ‘The Irishman’, answering a question about Trump’s rhetoric emboldening others to make threats or enact violence, he said: “They might, but Trump has people who follow him who are crazy and want to do crazy things. What we’re doing in film, it’s like a dream. We know it’s not real. There are people who will take anything to be real and that we have no control over. The president is supposed to set an example of trying to do the right thing. Not be a nasty little b*tch. Because that’s what he is. He’s a petulant little punk. There’s not one thing that I see in him or his family, not any redeeming qualities. They’re out on the take. It’s like a gangster family.”
On being asked about his character Frank in ‘The Irishman’ being as fundamentally inhumane as written on the page, and how De Niro has had a way of infusing “all these vicious characters with something approaching soul,” the actor said, “The rule in acting is you never make a judgment about your character. The characters have their reasons, and you understand them. You’re trying to look at their point of view. I mean, in ‘The Irishman’, Frank has a problem with his daughter. He has problems that anybody can relate to. I never thought of him as being amoral or immoral. He lives in a world where the penalties are harsh if you don’t do what you’re supposed to do. He says he’s going to do something, he does it. I don’t like to go to Trump, but he is a person who, to me, has no morals, no ethics, no sense of right and wrong, is a dirty player.”
On being asked if he could find his way into the character of President Trump, De Niro flatly said, “I wouldn’t want to play him. He’s such an awful person. There’s nothing redeemable about him, and I never say that about any character.”
He added, “There’s not one moment that Trump said: ‘I’m sorry. I realize I’ve done something that I shouldn’t have done.’ He has not one speck of redeemability in him. He’s not owed one speck of redeemability.”
Earlier this year, De Niro had called Trump a “gangster president” saying he “can’t wait” to see him jailed. Speaking to The Guardian, he had said, “It’s a resentment of people [who are] writing about what we see is obvious gangsterism. They don’t like that, so they say: ‘F*ck you, we’re going to teach you people.’ And they have to know they’re going to be taught… they can’t get away with bullying us – people who have common sense and see what is happening in this world, and in this country. They cannot do it. It’s a shame, it’s a shame that [the Republicans] behave so badly.”
On being asked whether he thought Trump was likely to be jailed as a result of the impeachment inquiry, De Niro had said, “Oh, I can’t wait to see him in jail. I don’t want him to die, I want him to go to jail.”
