Stallone. Schwarzenegger. Ford. Old-school actors of a certain age are all getting into the TV game nowadays. Next up? Robert De Niro is set to star in Zero Day, a new political thriller from Netflix, the streaming king of political potboilers (see also: The Diplomat, House of Cards).
Although De Niro narrated and co-starred in the Argentinian dramedy series Nada last year and has played himself on shows like 30 Rock, Extras and Sesame Street, this is his first recurring role on an American TV show. The famously Trump-averse 80-year-old will portray George Mullen, a beloved former U.S. president who “comes out of retirement to lead a commission tasked with investigating a potential world crisis,” per Netflix blog Tudum.
The rest of Zero Day's cast is stacked, too, with the likes of Jesse Plemons, Lizzy Caplan, Angela Bassett, Dan Stevens and Gaby Hoffmann rounding out an ensemble fit for the Oval Office.
But what's Zero Day actually about?
It's early days—no pun intended, genuinely—and the creators (Griselda and Narcos' Eric Newman, screenwriter Noah Oppenheim, and New York Times reporter Michael S. Schmidt) are keeping their cards fairly close to their chest on plot specifics. The show's official logline, nevertheless, describes it as asking “the question on everyone's mind: how do we find truth in a world of crisis, one seemingly being torn apart by forces outside of our control?” An apt question to ask in the information age, wherein we have never been so connected and yet our airwaves are perversely clogged up with useless noise — oft deliberately so, with the phenomena of fake news and online bots in mind.
“And in an era rife with conspiracy theory and subterfuge, how much of those forces are products of our own doing, perhaps even our own imagining?” the logline finishes rather opaquely, which one should imagine is deliberate (as we say, they're holding their cards tight and out of view).
So, to answer the first question: we can't be entirely sure, but we know it'll be a political thriller with conspiracy theories front of mind. We'd put money on the plot centering on that aforementioned “world crisis” that Mullen comes out of retirement to deal with, too.
So, De Niro plays the ex-president. But what about everyone else?
The ensemble of characters is made up primarily formed people around Washington, be it within the drama's fictionalized White House itself or its ornately-fenced periphery.
Per Tudum, Lizzy Caplan plays Mullen's daughter Alexandra, a “young congresswoman” who is “hoping to distance herself from her father's political legacy.” Joan Allen (an Academy Award nominee for playing a U.S. vice-president in 2000's The Contender) plays former First Lady Sheila Mullen, who's now in the running for a federal judgeship.
Jesse Plemons steps in as Roger Carlson, who was George Mullen's aide before he retired. Dan Stevens will play an obnoxious TV host and Mullen's old public nemesis. Bassett will play the current U.S. president, a “brilliant and perceptive political tactician.” Gaby Hoffmann, for her part, comes in as a Musk-adjacent Silicon Valley type who both boasts brilliant vision and covets power for herself.
Seriously, everybody's in this thing. Clark Gregg as another, different sinister tech billionaire! Connie Britton as Mullen's former chief of staff! That Guy hall-of-famer Bill Camp as the head of the CIA! Stranger Things' Matthew Modine as the Speaker of the House!
When can I watch Zero Day?
Zero Day is yet to receive a release date, but our educated guess would be that it'll come out within the next six months. By which time De Niro may well have refashioned himself further at Trump's most prominent public skeptic.