Robert De Niro revisited his recent Gotham Awards speech, which he said was censored by Apple to exclude his political remarks on Donald Trump.
At the November event honoring achievements in film, De Niro presented “Killers of the Flower Moon” with the Gotham Historical Icon and Creator Tribute, and planned to use his platform on stage in part to lambast former president Trump. As Variety originally reported, De Niro began reading his speech only to discover that it had been edited by Apple — the studio behind “Killers of the Flower Moon” — without his approval.
The actor, who plays William Hale in Martin Scorsese’s recent feature, opened up to Rolling Stone about the mishap. He explained that the speech was going to spotlight the censorship of David Grann’s book “Killers of the Flower Moon: The Murders of the Osage and the Birth of the FBI” in Oklahoma, where the events of the book and film unfold.
“What happened was I was working on the speech with a writer, Lewis Friedman, and he gave it to them, and then one of the consultants had put something in the speech about how kids in Oklahoma aren’t even able to read the book ‘Killers of the Flower Moon.’ And then I didn’t hear anything,” De Niro said.
He continued to elucidate the miscommunication that led to the shocking moment in which he realized his political commentary had been cut.
“They gave me the script, and I looked at the prompter, and I asked after, ‘What happened?’ And they assumed that I had spoken to Marty or somebody about it, but I hadn’t. They assumed that I would be OK with it, and maybe I’m still getting it wrong, and I wasn’t. Marty and I spoke about it the next day and he said, ‘Yeah, I had sent you a text and [Apple] asked if you could dial it down, respectfully.’”
In his Gothams speech, De Niro nevertheless went on to criticize Trump, reading from his phone instead of the teleprompter.
“Lying has become just another tool in the charlatan’s arsenal,” De Niro said at the event. “The former president lied to us more than 30,000 times during his four years in office. And he’s keeping up the pace in his current campaign of retribution. But with all his lies, he can’t hide his soul. He attacks the weak, destroys the gifts of nature and shows disrespect, for example, by using ‘Pocahontas’ as a slur.”
He also criticized Apple and the awards show: “I don’t feel like thanking them at all for what they did,” he said. “How dare they do that, actually.”
Speaking to Rolling Stone, De Niro clarified that he would’ve been open to reviewing the speech had he known about Apple’s wishes beforehand. A source close to the matter revealed to Variety that Apple wanted the speech to focus exclusively on the moviemakers and their accomplishments.
De Niro told Rolling Stone, “I didn’t even want to blame them, but I was annoyed in the moment with whoever did it. If Marty had called me and said, ‘Apple asked me to do this and that,’ then we would’ve gone over it. But I told Marty, ‘Everything in that speech is leading up to what this movie is about. And I don’t want to take away from the movie. It’s not a rant about Trump. It’s appropriate.”
Update: After this article was published, Variety was sent a statement from Martin Scorsese and the filmmaking team behind “Killers of the Flower Moon” regarding De Niro’s speech.
The statement reads, “The Gotham Awards honored the filmmakers and cast with The Historical Icon & Creator tribute, which recognizes significant moments in history and for bringing a story to life in an authentic way on screen. We all wanted to make sure that in the limited time available, the acceptance speech had space to acknowledge our Osage collaborators on-stage and at home, as well as our entire cast and filmmaking team. Apple has been a tremendous partner and there was no censorship. There was an unfortunate miscommunication regarding the final version of the speech. The event was a beautiful moment for our cast and collaborators to be reunited for the first time since the strikes. It was an incredible honor to receive this recognition.”
