Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic It is something, according to the logic of American filmmaking, which had to happen. As the US faces some of its most acute political challenges for decades, call for a fictional president who will provide succour for the nation: Martin Sheen\u2019s erudite and judicious Jed Bartlet in The West Wing, for example; Bill Pullman\u2019s Thomas J Whitmore, strapping himself into a jet fighter to smash aliens in Independence Day; Michael Douglas\u2019s Andrew Shepherd, defying opponents and conventional morals by courting a glamorous lobbyist in The American President.But Robert De Niro? Netflix\u2019s new conspiracy thriller Zero Day has chosen cinema\u2019s most distinguished portrayer of gangsters and paranoiacs to save, or at least salvage, the day in his role as former president George Mullen. The twisty, six-part series presents us with a world-weary commander-in-chief who retired after his first term in office following the death of his son, but is brought back to handle the political fallout of a cyber attack on the nation.\u00a0\u00a0It is in truth a perfect role for late-stage De Niro: never has executive power seemed so burdensome, nor De Niro\u2019s famously expressive features so harassed. It was, I say to him and showrunner Eric Newman on their visit to London, the complications of Mullen\u2019s character that must have attracted him to the role. \u201cYeah, he is complex,\u201d the actor replies. \u201cBut that is how life is.\u201d Long pause.The reductiveness comes as no surprise. De Niro, 81, has never been known for his expansive responses in interviews. He is affable and good-humoured, but a firm believer in the virtues of brevity.It is the first time he has played a lead role in a television mini-series, and I ask if it presented any new challenges. \u201cWell, you can do a lot more in six episodes. It\u2019s like doing three feature films back-to-back. There is a lot of jumping from episode to episode. But [director] Lesli Linka Glatter was right on it, in every scene \u2014 \u2018This is where we are, this is what has happened\u2019 \u2014 to give us the right perspective.\u201cI liken it to swimming in the English Channel,\u201d he says unexpectedly. \u201cSwimming to England, looking up and not seeing England, and then looking back and not seeing France either. I can\u2019t just stay here, I\u2019ve got to keep swimming, I\u2019ve just got to keep going and going, otherwise I\u2019ll sink.\u201dIt sounds scary.\u201cYeah, it is. It is very anxiety-provoking. But that\u2019s OK.\u201dThe same can be said of Zero Day: from the first episode, quite apart from the cyber attack, Mullen has to overcome a populist podcaster, wily hedge funders, a possibly corrupt congressman, a naively liberal daughter and a brain problem that plays a Sex Pistols song over and over in his head, and which may be the first sign of dementia, or not.I ask the two men if the brain malfunction was inspired by the debate over President Biden\u2019s mental health in the run-up to last year\u2019s election. \u201cNo!\u201d they chorus simultaneously. \u201cThat happened when we were shooting,\u201d says De Niro. \u201cWe were writing it in 2022 when it wasn\u2019t even a factor,\u201d adds Newman. \u201cIt was definitely a surprise to us.\u201dI am forced slightly to dance around any similarities between the series and real life, as the production team has insisted that there are no questions on the personal political views of either man. In De Niro\u2019s case, this is barely a setback as he is already on record as one of the most voluble critics of President Trump, calling him, on various occasions, among other things, \u201can idiot\u201d, \u201ca clown\u201d, \u201ca jerk\u201d, \u201ca moron\u201d, and a man who \u201cdoes not belong in my city\u201d (both men are from New York, and are otherwise spectacularly dissimilar).\u00a0I say I have spotted a couple of sly references to\u00a0the parallel universe of real life: the name of Mullen, who has to deliver a much-awaited and controversial report to Congress on the cyber attack, is reminiscent of that of (Robert) Mueller, who also had a highly contentious report to compile during the first Trump presidency. A coincidence. \u201cWe wanted to distance him from any [real-life] president,\u201d says Newman, straight-batting.And the fiery, liberal Congresswoman daughter, played by Lizzy Kaplan, who is called Alexandra? A nod to Democratic New York representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez? \u201cI often use the letter A when I\u2019m thinking of names. I don\u2019t know why that is.\u201d Noted.Newman, who was behind the Narcos saga on the drug wars in Colombia, as well as last year\u2019s crime series Griselda, is more loquacious on the overall theme of the series, which is the public\u2019s relationship with the news, and ultimately the truth.\u201cThere are now two versions \u2014 perhaps more \u2014 of the truth, rather than just one. But if truth is not objective, what is? For me, that inability to hold on to a single truth is way more terrifying than whatever disaster may befall us.\u201d\u00a0Newman put the idea to De Niro, who duly hopped on board. George Mullen is essentially an admirable figure, firmly in the traditions of previous fictional leaders. But he finds himself in one moral quandary after another, leading, in a notable scene, to his approval of an act of torture.\u201cHe is a good guy, with good intentions,\u201d De Niro says. \u201cHe is trying to do what is right, but is not always able to because of reasons that are very human.\u201d An acute sense of pragmatism, rather than any more obvious acts of heroism, is what defines this president, and De Niro conveys his internal struggles with a characteristically subtle touch. At the end of the dizzying twists in the story, he finds himself staring into the river, attempting to process what he \u2014 and the country \u2014 have gone through.What is he thinking, I ask? \u201cSomeone told me that when presidents come to the end [of their presidencies], they are in a bit of a vacuum,\u201d De Niro says. \u201cEverything stops. What do you do? Make your library. Write your memoir. That\u2019s what he is thinking.\u201d Newman embellishes: \u201cHe\u2019s the honest man who ends up alone.\u201dThat kind of darkness of tone is rare in a contemporary political thriller, and reminded me of those classic 1970s paranoia films, I say. \u201cOh, we were inspired by those,\u201d says Newman. \u201cThe Parallax View, Marathon Man, Three Days of the Condor. In that post-Watergate era, we saw what had been unthinkable until then, that the government could do some really terrible things. Which, by the way, it always had. We didn\u2019t become the US by being sweethearts.\u201dAnd, of course, there was Taxi Driver, Martin Scorsese\u2019s 1976 masterpiece on New York\u2019s moral depravity, which propelled De Niro to prominence. Did he realise at the time that he was making a state-of-the-nation work? \u201cNo, no, no. You can never tell what a reaction to a movie is going to be. But I\u2019m a New Yorker, and the alienation that the character [Travis Bickle] feels, I felt that myself. Somehow I identified with that.\u201dDe Niro\u2019s next movie, set for release in March, is Barry Levinson\u2019s The Alto Knights, centring on two prominent New York Mafia figures, Vito Genovese and Frank Costello. I wonder what keeps bringing the actor back into the familiar, crime-infested territory of Mafia politics. Does he not feel he covered it all in his garlanded performances in films such as 1974\u2019s The Godfather Part II and 1990\u2019s Goodfellas?\u201cI was brought the script by people who I have worked with many times before, and who I have great respect for,\u201d says De Niro. \u201cAnd another element was that, as a kid, I actually hung out in the Alto Knights [a social club in Little Italy], the actual place. And then I was asked if I would consider playing both roles, Genovese and Costello, which was kind of interesting. I never thought of doing any more Mafia films or gangster films, but this was good stuff. So I said, \u2018I\u2019ll do it.\u2019\u201dI finally say to him that, while researching his filmography, I noticed that his first film, in 1965, was directed by Marcel Carn\u00e9, who made the 1945 romantic tour de force Les Enfants du Paradis, frequently described as one of the greatest films of all time. It was not a connection I had expected to find.\u201cYeah, Three Rooms in Manhattan. I was an extra. I\u2019ve looked for a picture of me in that. Somebody found one and I thought, maybe it might be me, but, nah.\u201d Did he know about Carn\u00e9\u2019s classic? \u201cI knew that he had directed it, but I hadn\u2019t seen it.\u201dHe remembers his scene well. \u201cIt was [set in] a coffee shop on Lexington Avenue. And what I kept noticing were these things that were not like a coffee shop on Lexington Avenue. They had this old-style espresso machine, which of course they would not have had.\u201d It was there from the beginning, that famous concern for dramatic truth \u2014 and it shows no sign of leaving him.\u00a0\u2018Zero Day\u2019 is on Netflix from February 20. \u2018The Alto Knights\u2019 is in cinemas from March 21Find out about our latest stories first \u2014 follow FT Weekend on Instagram and X, and sign up to receive the FT Weekend newsletter every Saturday morning<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic It is something, according to the logic of American filmmaking, which had to happen. As the US faces some of its most acute political challenges for decades, call for a fictional president who will provide succour for the nation: Martin Sheen\u2019s erudite and judicious<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":207438,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-207437","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-culture"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=207437"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207437\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":207439,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207437\/revisions\/207439"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/207438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=207437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=207437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}