As societies around the world grapple with lurches toward authoritarianism and struggle with the wide-scale spread and embrace of disinformation, stories that unpack social unrest against the backdrop of sprawling political canvases gain greater and greater resonance.
Witness Netflix’s Zero Day, a limited event series starring Robert De Niro. In some respects, the six-episode political thriller tells a distinctly American story. But its bigger themes and juicy, conspiracy-theory plotting make it both relevant and relatable across the borders of nation states.
In only the second headlining television appearance of his lengthy career (he also popped up in 2023’s Argentine drama Nada), De Niro stars as George Mullen, a respected former American president who stepped down after one term in office, for reasons debated if not fully known by the public.
When a deadly cyberattack kills over 3,000 people and plunges the country into crisis, President Evelyn Mitchell (Angela Bassett) and the United States Congress authorize a special commission with expansive powers of search, seizure and arrest to attempt to both prevent another attack and also determine and bring to justice the culprits responsible. To lead the controversial commission, they select Mullen.
As Mullen seemingly struggles with cognitive decline and memory issues, he tries to walk a moral tightrope, leaning into both support and pushback from a wide array of characters which include his wife Sheila (Joan Allen), an experienced candidate for a federal judgeship; longtime aide Roger Carlson (Jesse Plemons), an ex-addict who may be compromised; his daughter Alexandra (Lizzy Caplan), herself an ambitious Congresswoman; his former chief-of-staff Valerie Whitesell (Connie Britton); a formidable Speaker of the House (Matthew Modine); a longtime CIA Director (Bill Camp); a noxious right-wing television personality (Dan Stevens); a billionaire (Clark Gregg) used to getting his way; and the arrogant, neurodivergent owner of an influential social media platform (Gaby Hoffmann).
Recently, Brent Simon had a chance to attend an international press conference for Zero Day, select excerpts of which follow below, condensed and edited for clarity:
Question: What discussions did you have about filming and grounding the series in New York City?
Director/Executive Producer Lesli Linka Glatter: There is nothing like shooting in New York City. The energy of the street, what you get by being in the city is profound. And this is a New York story. It’s also a (Washington) D.C. story, and an American story. But filming it here, I think, made New York a character, juxtaposed to what’s going on in the story, with our cast, our amazing cast. There’s no place like New York.
Co-creator/writer/executive producer Eric Newman: Yeah, we knew from our earliest conversations with Bob that New York was the setting for this show for a lot of reasons, not least of which is that it was our nation’s capital for a while and it was occupied at some point. It has a very long and complicated history within this country, and continues to. And I think when you work with Robert De Niro in New York, things kind of open up. (laughs) I think Netflix would probably agree. You know, you always have a conversation when you shoot something about where you’re gonna go, like, “Hey, can you guys go to New Mexico? Or what about, Canada?” And I remember having that conversation with Netflix early on and going hey, you know, Bob would very much like to shoot this in New York and so would we. And they were like, “Okay, fine.” So it was great, and (added so much).
Question: Noah and Eric, how did you set about crafting dialogue for characters that is dense at times and impactful when it needs to be, but avoids the trap of becoming preachy?
Co-creator/writer/executive producer Eric Newman: Well, I’m glad it doesn’t become preachy. You know, these are conversations that we had at the time, which was fun — the idea to talk about what could happen in this country (versus) what we hope happens in this country. And it really came out of these conversations that Noah and I had about our relationship with the truth. And I think it’s bigger than just the United States. I think it’s global at this point, you know? We have entered into this post-truth era, where [people’s] truths can be mutually exclusive. We always thought there was this objectivity when it came to what’s true, and then one day, there wasn’t. So it was fun to put into the mouths of characters things that either we were terrified people were saying, or we were hoping people were saying.
Co-creator/writer/executive producer Noah Oppenheim: Yeah, in terms of that balance of message and entertainment, I think first and foremost we wanted this to be an edge-of-your-seat thriller, and we wanted it to be about people who felt real and authentic. You know, I’ve had another life as a journalist. And obviously one of our other co-creators, Mike Schmidt, is a New York Times reporter. So we’ve spent a lot of time around public figures, with folks who work inside these government agencies, and we tried to bring that experience to the crafting of the dialogue and the creation of these characters as three-dimensional people.
Question: Mr. De Niro, you’re not just the star of Zero Day. You’re also an executive producer. What excites you about getting involved behind the scenes of projects you work on?
Robert De Niro: Well, I mean, the fact is that what my contribution would have been the same whether I was an executive producer or not. You know, it’s a nice credit. I don’t want to go off on this, but sometimes people have too many of those credits out there, and they don’t really deserve them. It could be that they’re connected to the main person that [its makers] want, so they’re like, “Okay, well, give me a credit.” Now it loses its meaning. So I’m happy to have it, but everything I said with everybody was what I would have said anyway.
Question: Lesli, you’re no stranger to shows set against a political backdrop, with credits on The West Wing and Homeland. What is the research process like for a show like Zero Day, and what is really important to get right?
Director/Executive Producer Lesli Linka Glatter: Well, I love doing research, especially anything that’s based on something that actually could happen — because, again, it is a paranoid conspiracy thriller. It is a story, not a documentary, though a zero-day event is, of course, a real thing. But what we do in the script has never happened, thank goodness. But for me, I have to jump into research. I have to know, like, in a cellular way, what the story is, what the reality is. Because if we’re gonna go away from something that’s real in any way, we need to know. And of course we had great sources with Noah and Eric and our amazing consultants, but from years on Homeland, where we had so many advisors (from the intelligence world), you want to really use those consultants and be sure it feels authentic, while still telling a narrative story. Everything [is built around] supporting the depth of the characters, because that’s what we care about — these characters going through this world, and how they behave.
Question: Can you talk about how prescient the story of Zero Day is, especially with the current real-world relationship between big tech companies and governments?
Co-creator/writer/executive producer Noah Oppenheim: I mean, we started working on this show several years ago, and it’s been really wild to see all the ways in which the real world has mirrored some of what we depict, and ways in which our show has turned out to feel prophetic.
Although I don’t think either of us thought of ourselves as prophetic when we were writing it. I think at the core of it, as Eric alluded to earlier, is this big question of how do we navigate a world in which we can’t agree on truth? I think if you think about all of the threats that we face — whether it’s a cyber weapon like the one depicted in our show, or whether you think it’s climate change or nuclear war, whatever keeps you up at night — I think the greatest threat that we are all confronting is this inability to agree on a shared set of facts, a shared reality.
Because without that foundation, we can’t address any of these other challenges that the world is confronting. And so once we started building our story from that point, we started to think about the dynamics in the world in which you could see this play out. Obviously, the relationship between powerful technology companies, powerful business leaders generally, and the government has [had] a through-line in American history since the robber barons in the 19th century, up to the tech barons of today.
Question: Joan, what appealed to you about the relationship dynamics between Sheila and George? She’s not only supporting him, but also pulls some strings behind the scenes to protect him.
Joan Allen: I think it’s a long relationship. They’ve been together a long time and they’ve been through some pretty serious things as a family as well. And I just think that her concern and her belief in him is such that she’ll go to great, great lengths to protect him. And I think some of the experiences that she’s having with some episodes that he’s having at home, [wondering if he] is okay, is deeply concerning. So she’ll do anything to make sure he is protected and all right. I think that’s just who she is. I think that’s what the relationship is about, and that there’s a great deal of love and respect.
Question: Lizzy, Alex and her father have a very complicated relationship. How did you approach that dynamic, and what was most important to establish and convey between your two characters?
Lizzy Caplan: Yes, well the stakes are obviously astronomically high for all of the characters and what’s going on in the world. Our world within the show is so massive, but what was important to me was that the relationship between the father and daughter felt just as huge. I think that many daughters think they know better than their fathers. But not many daughters are telling the former president of the United States how to do their job better, or how they could have done it better.
Kind of juggling both of those things at the same time made every scene very rich, but also you had to hold a lot of stuff in your brain all the time. And I think that Bob came at it from [the point-of-view] “I did the best I could.” And I came at it with a lot of [energy]. I have a lot of resentment towards my father for many things, and hopefully the macro and the micro sort of lean on each other when you watch it.
Question: Connie, your character navigates complex relationships and personal politics between George’s wife Sheila and also Mullen’s right-hand aide, Roger. What’s important for viewers to understand about these relationships and where she comes into the mix?
Connie Britton: Well, I do think it’s always interesting when we are seeing these very highly politicized situations to remember that there’s also humanity there, and that these are actually human beings. And so I think it was a very interesting, complex relationship triangle, if you will — even more so, you know, it really shows too how choices that we make can impact everybody around us. So that was really fun to play, and yet also trying to just maintain the decorum and the high stakes of the office. Those balancing acts are what we do in real life as well, you know? Even if we’re not doing high-stakes espionage or [dealing with] cyber-attacks, we are all trying to find those balances between our deeply held responsibilities and our intimate relationships. So it was fun to play that.
Question: There are a lot of personalities in media and on the internet today similar to the character you play, Dan. For you, did you find any degree of satisfaction from playing a character of that ilk who manages to have a story arc that ends up with some degree of redemptive consequences?
Dan Stevens: Gosh. I mean, yes, I suppose is the short answer to that. I mean, the fact that they made this character so complex and gave him such an arc, it was a really interesting thing. I mean, I would have jumped at just playing Evan Green, the annoying television personality, you know? But the fact that we get to see a little bit behind the veil the hypocrisy of this character, who pretends to be a man of the people but actually lives in this giant mansion on the bay, and just getting into some of the arrogance of the personality like that, [that was incredible].
You know, Evan Green really represents a corner of the landscape that operates around a story like this, and we tried not to base him too specifically on one particular personality. You can kind of choose your basement podcast host that annoys you the most that he is based on, and the answer would be yes, it’s based on them — and a bunch of others. He is an annoying character. He’s annoying to President Mullen, he gets, really, quite literally, in his head. But he is a divisive figure, because these characters (in real life) they thrive on divisiveness, that’s their currency.
Question: For everyone, did shooting the series change at all the way you approach technology — be it anything from your cell phone to how you look at your bank accounts on technology devices in a different way?
Dan Stevens: Make sure you have those backup batteries charged, you know? Always have some bottled water in the house. I don’t know. (laughs)
Connie Britton: I’m very concerned about cookies. So now I’m even more concerned about cookies. I reject all, and if I can’t reject all, I go down the rabbit hole of trying to figure out how to reject some.
Lizzy Caplan: Yeah, I’m the same.
Angela Bassett: I don’t like anything online. I let somebody who knows more about those things do it for me on their laptop.
Lizzy Caplan: I do that too. But I also sort of feel like I just don’t think I can have anything on my phone that I don’t want everyone to see, you know? It’s sort of like that’s my rule of thumb.
Angela Bassett: I feel that way too.
Connie Britton: Except what’s terrifying is that we put a lot of faith in these banks and institutions that people aren’t gonna screw us. So… haha, yeah.
