This is a movie—well, sort of. The viral clip of actor Robert De Niro screaming at unseen people that “This is not a movie!” on a Manhattan set for Netflix’s limited series Zero Day, The Daily Beast has confirmed, is just him performing a scene from the upcoming project. But the clip took on a life of its own this week, after pro-Israel activists shared it as proof the actor had “had enough” of pro-Palestine protestors.
In the clip, originally posted on Sunday, April 28, De Niro can be heard saying, “This is not a movie! This is real,” in the muffled audio. “Let ‘em get their job done,” he also says before telling the unseen people he’s addressing to “stay behind the barricades” and “If you’re going to keep talking nonsense, then you gotta go home.” The most suspicious part of the speech is when he says “They say they’re gonna do it again! We don’t want that, you don’t want that, none of us want that.”
As De Niro has previously expressed support for Israel, activists were all too excited to interpret the words as shouting down pro-Palestine supporters. The video was shared widely with the caption, “Robert De Niro Stands With Israel!” and pro-Israel voices on X praised him for going after “pro-terrorism supporters” and “standing up to the Hamas supporting rabble protesting.”
Representatives for De Niro did not immediately respond to The Daily Beast’s requests for clarification.
However, according to actress Mozhan Navabi (neé Marno), known for her roles in House of Cards and The Blacklist, and who will appear in Zero Day alongside De Niro, Angela Bassett and Jesse Plemmons (who is also visible in the clip), the video was a speech she recognized from the upcoming limited series.
By the time Navabi addressed the clip, the idea that De Niro was shouting at pro-Palestine protestors had already reached Israeli media. Israeli newspaper Haaertz presented the clip as such (though it was later deleted), as did The Jerusalem Post.
Navabi spoke out, tweeting at the apparent reporter of the deleted Haaretz piece that “Just responding to an article you wrote in Haaretz. Robert Deniro is giving a speech as his character in the upcoming Netflix show Zero Day,” she wrote. “I’m also in it, and when I saw the clip, I recognized the speech. It’s fiction. Please verify before you publish.”
Zero Day, on which De Niro also serves as producer, is a conspiracy thriller that asks the questions, “How do we find truth in a world in crisis, one seemingly being torn apart by forces outside our control? And in an era rife with conspiracy theory and subterfuge, how much of those forces are products of our own doing, perhaps even of our own imagining?” according to the official logline.
The Daily Beast has reached out to Navabi and Netflix for comment.
