In person, and unlike some of his more iconic roles, Robert De Niro tends to be quiet, reserved. He’s not much of a talker. But make him mad, as a certain former president well knows, and look out. The legendary actor was in court Monday and Tuesday of this week, giving testimony in a civil trial involving a former personal assistant who’s suing him for, basically, allegedly being an abusive boss. He’s countersuing her for other matters. On Tuesday it got pretty ugly.
Per Deadline, while on the witness stand, De Niro blew up when asked about one particularly sketchy allegation. The ex-assistant, one Graham Chase Robinson, claimed he audibly urinated during a phone call with her as he was on the toilet. That prompted De Niro to shout across the room, “Shame on you, Chase Robinson!”
Robinson, who worked at De Niro’s business and personal services company Canal for 11 years, has accused De Niro of gender discrimination, wage theft, and retaliatory behavior. Other allegations include unwanted physical contact, “stereotypically female duties like housework,” plus assorted other “office wife” duties, such as making her “scratch his back, button his shirts, fix collars, tie his ties, and prod him awake when he was in bed.”
Some of the accusations drove De Niro to exasperation. “Give me a break with this stuff,” he grumbled towards the end of his second day (of two) of testimony. At one point he told one of her lawyers, “You got us all here for this?” He also thundered, “I don’t take liberties with people who work for me,” saying that claims that he does are “so ridiculous, I don’t know what to say.”
When asked about a claim that he had asked her to scratch his back, De Niro admitted that was true, but that he was just asking her to help out with a hard-to-reach spot. He also admitted that he may have called her a “b*tch” one time and that he told her she was “finished” after she failed to make an important call to him while she was in Europe, where she sometimes worked remotely.
“I berated her,” De Niro said. “I wasn’t abusive. I was annoyed.”
But he blew up at her claims of eternal servitude, saying, “She implies that she’s out in front of the building on her knees scrubbing the floor.”
Jurors in the trial also have to weigh in on De Niro’s counterclaims, which include that she misused a company credit card, absconding with over five million frequent flier miles.
De Niro can currently be seen in Killers of the Flower Moon, his latest picture with Martin Scorsese, in which he almost never gets mad but simply smiles like a kind grandpa as he helps orchestrate the murder of people he claims to love.
(Via Deadline)