-Robert De Niro,
thank you so much
for being on the show tonight.
I really appreciate it.
You know I'm a big fan of yours.
And I am happy that you're here.
I'd love to know your thoughts
of what's going on
in the country right now.
It's certainly a turning point
in a lot of ways
for the country,
hopefully a turning point
for a lot of people personally.
What are you reflecting
about right now
with everything going on?
-Well, it's an interesting time,
you know, for me personally,
but I'm more fortunate.
I have a place I can be at
which is comfortable.
And, I mean, there are still
things that are difficult,
but it's not good
for the country,
the major part of the country.
And this whole thing
could have been avoided
if Trump had listened to his --
The people
in the intelligence community,
they kept telling him
something was coming.
A woman named Messonnier,
she disappeared all of a sudden,
because he didn't like
what she was saying.
And what scares me
is that people just were afraid
to tell him the truth.
And if you tell him the truth,
then he's gonna be mad at you,
and he's gonna let you go.
And then what?
And it's crazy. It's like
telling a crazy relative
that you avoid arguing with them
because they're gonna go crazy,
but they run the country.
You have to tell them.
-Yeah, he's the crazy
relative, yeah.
-You know, there's no choice.
Your allegiance
is to the country, not to him.
So, there's the insanity
of it all.
And we're all paying the price.
And the chaos is just,
from when he started to right --
to where we are now.
When he was a businessman
on his own, here we are.
We're all paying this price.
Granted, it might have been
worse than we would have hoped,
but never what it is now.
Never, never, never.
-Could you ever see
anything like this
happening in our country
or in our lifetime?
-No, no, it's unimaginable.
It's something --
It's like a surreal
science-fiction movie.
-It really is, yeah.
And do you think --
I know you're
a pretty hopeful guy.
I mean, are you hoping
for change?
Do you think it'll come around?
-I'm hoping that of course
there's change
and that not
many people will suffer,
because we also had
all the protests
and everything going on,
rightfully so.
People are so angry
that they didn't care, it seems.
They said, "I'm going out
anyway. I'll wear a mask."
I think a lot of people
did wear masks.
It seems that way.
But that's how angry
everybody was.
So, again, that's saying
another thing, again,
exacerbated by the situation
with this administration.
Then of course what they did
for him going out
on Lafayette Park
in front of the church
with the Bible.
It's beyond absurd,
beyond theater of the absurd.
It's crazy.
We need to stop it.
-Yeah.
People are upset, obviously,
and looking for actual change.
I feel like I'm hopeful
that something
is gonna come out of all this.
Have you had conversations
about race with your kids or --
-No, my children
are all half-black.
And I don't have --
Even me, I take certain things
for granted.
But my kids --
Well, in some instances,
they know,
and we don't say it, not much.
But it's something,
when you hear parents --
When people say
that they tell their kids,
"When you're stopped
by anybody or the cops,
keep your hands
on the steering wheel.
Don't make a sudden move.
Don't put your hands below.
Don't do this,"
you understand that.
That's scary. That's scary.
It has to change.
People have to feel, like a lot
of people have been saying,
that the cops have to help
in the community,
have a sensitivity.
And there are good cops,
of course,
who have that already,
but there are some who don't,
and they shouldn't be there.
Anybody who hurts another
person for no reason
other than self-defense
or the defense
of other people around
shouldn't be doing that job.
You've got to --
And I know I'm not a cop,
so I don't know
the day-to-day stuff
that they go through, but still,
there has to be a change,
and people have to be trained
and be more sensitive
to certain things.
And not that people aren't
many times,
but there's still people
who are not.
And so that's got to change.
-Yeah. You're right.
We were talking before
we started this
about the Tribeca Film Festival.
And when you first started,
was it Nelson Mandela?
Did he --
-Yes.
Nelson Mandela
came to the opening
of the Film Festival in 2002.
And we had Clinton,
and we had other people.
-That's amazing.
-Yeah, I mean,
and he would watch movies
in Robben Island.
It's well-known stories about
that, the way I understand it.
And I think he saw
some of my movies.
I'm assuming he did.
And from time to time, he would
call me someplace I'd be
and ask me, I forget,
some questions about something.
But we had a nice relationship.
-It's like when you need some
movies to lift you up sometimes,
and sometimes you can get
a really good message
from a really good movie.
-Well, that's what movies do.
They bring people together.
And you realize and see
that, as corny as it all sounds,
is that we're all together.
We're all human beings.
We're all in this together.
And especially as the world
gets more and more --
As people get closer
to each other with communication
and everything else going on
and this virus
that just spreads like nothing,
so we all have to
look after each other,
with climate change,
with everything.
It has to be.
It has to be.
It's a matter of survival.
And I don't understand people
who don't understand that.
They're looking at it
in a very short-sighted way.
It's inevitable
that we come together
to save this planet, you know?
-Yeah. We have to.
It's interesting, though,
some people not wearing masks.
And you go, "What are you doing?
What are you doing?"
-I know. I know.
And I'm wearing the mask,
and they go,
"You don't have to
wear the mask."
I go, "Yeah, I do."
-Yeah, yeah, you do.
-Everybody has to,
just until this is done.
What do you care? It's a mask.
-Well, it's such a more normal
thing to do in other cultures
like in China and Japan.
When I travel there, I see
people in masks all the time.
They have something, they don't
want to give it to somebody,
they wear a mask.
It's very common.
-Yeah.
-So we're gonna
have to get used to it.
-I think so, too.
You have a thing you're doing
with the Tribeca Film Festival,
'cause you had to postpone it
due to the pandemic.
But you have
a really good answer,
and I want to talk about that
when we come back.
More with Robert De Niro.
