Just like many of the characters he portrays in films like, Good Fellas and Casino, Robert De Niro is pretty bad ass and not one to be toyed with or asked questions with the words "bankers" and "Tribecca" in the same sentence. This is what an interviewer, Emma Brockes with Radio Times, learned after attempting to conduct an interview with the Meet the Parents actor; asking him questions that he refused to answer until he abruptly ended the interview by telling her to pause the recorder and walked out.
According to The Guardian, in promotion for his upcoming comedy The Intern, De Niro did an interview with Emma Brockes who asked a line of questions that the Oscar winning actor found to be "negative inference," and things went down hill from there.
"I'm not doing this darling" is what De Niro told Brockes after she asked about being on "auto-pilot" on set and about his views on "Tribeca, home to the New York film festival he co-founded, [having] been overrun by bankers."
Brockes tells The Guardian that it was at that moment that De Niro asked her to pause the recorder, got out of his chair,[and] paced about "madly." She recalled asking him again about the bankers and Tribecca, only to receive an unwelcoming response.
"All the way through. Negative inference," he stated. The interviewer attempted to gain clarification on which part of her questioning offended him and got him upset. He responded, "the whole way through and I'm not doing it. I'm not doing it, darling."
According to The Wrap, Brockes told De Niro that she found his comments to be "condescending" when referring to her as "darling." He responded, "Oh, you think "darling" is condescending?"
At that point, the interview was obviously over and not going to continue on a positive note. Brockes explained how in an interview as bad as this one, someone is bound to leave.
"When someone is being uncooperative in that kind of interview, when they are obviously grumpy and knackered, you ask them a number of straightforward questions and you leave," she said.
Unfortunately for her, in this case, it was De Niro who exited first. Reports state that he poked his head out of the door, looking for someone to escort him out of the room. She did try to give De Niro the benefit of the doubt saying the actor seemed like he was already aggravated after having "sat through a long day of multiple interviews" to promote The Intern.
Maybe all of the interviews, good or bad, has paid off for the actor and his co-star Anne Hathaway. According to Forbes, the movie is fantastic and hits theaters on Thursday Sept. 25.
