Robert De Niro takes the stand as workplace discrimination trial begins
The long-gestating trial between Robert De Niro and his former personal assistant commenced on Monday
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A judge reportedly had to admonish Robert De Niro after things got a little too heated on the witness stand on Monday, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The actor appeared in court amidst a gender discrimination and retaliation lawsuit filed by his former personal assistant Graham Chase Robinson, who rose to the position of vice president of production and finance at his company Canal Productions before resigning in 2019. The suit has been pending for four years, and the trial finally commenced this week with De Niro himself called as the first witness.
Some background: Robinson began working for De Niro as his personal assistant in 2008 when she was just 25 years old. Over her years of employment, De Niro treated her as his “office wife,” the suit alleges: “De Niro subjected Ms. Robinson to gratuitous unwanted physical contact. He made sexually-charged comments to her …. assigned her stereotypically female duties like housework, and insisted that she be available to him around the clock,” the suit asserts (via Deadline).
The Oscar winner allegedly had his assistant “scratch his back, button his shirts, fix his collars, tie his ties, and prod him awake when he was in bed.” (Crucially, many of these tasks supposedly continued even after she was made an executive.) Among other alleged inappropriate behaviors (including reportedly calling her a “bitch” and a “brat”), Robinson claims he “stood idly by while his friend slapped Ms. Robinson on her buttocks” and that he “would joke with Ms. Robinson about his Viagra prescription.” He also supposedly “underpaid her because she was not a male breadwinner and denied her overtime pay even though she worked punishingly long hours.”
Meanwhile, DeNiro had filed what Robinson’s team described as an “abusive, preemptive lawsuit” full of “false allegations designed to inhibit Ms. Robinson from pursuing her claims, destroy her reputation, and obliterate her job prospects.” He accused Robinson of misusing company credit cards for personal use, stealing millions of frequent flier miles before her resignation, and binge-watching television on company time. Both Robinson and De Niro have denied each other’s accusations. In opening arguments, Robinson’s lawyer claimed “There was no one more loyal to Canal and Mr. De Niro as Chase Robinson” (per The New York Times).
A specific incident referenced in the trial regards an altercation between Robinson and De Niro’s girlfriend Tiffany Chen, who was reportedly suspicious that Robinson was romantically interested in De Niro. After a conflict between the women over a painting in the actor’s townhouse, Chen reportedly emailed De Niro that “This bitch needs to be put in her fucking place” (per The Hollywood Reporter). Robinson’s lawyers denied she had any romantic interest in De Niro but was pushed out of her work because of Chen’s jealousy; while De Niro’s side conceded that Chen was “sometimes a little opinionated” but denied that any retaliatory action took place.
On the stand, De Niro pushed back on Robinson’s lawyer’s assertion that she was asked to do “anything and everything” for the star. “I asked her to do anything within reason—within the confines of her job,” De Niro “snapped” (as characterized by Deadline). “I don’t know what you’re trying to say. … I don’t like that implication.”
De Niro claimed Robinson kept normal hours and was only called upon during off times if there was a crisis, like an occasion where he fell down the stairs at 4 A.M. He also claimed that, despite being promoted in name to V.P., she was “pushy” in asking for the title and her role at the company hadn’t really changed: “The job is what it is. The titles were not important,” he said (via THR). He further asserted that Robinson was “disrespectful” to Chen, saying, “I wanted everybody to be happy and play nice. Unfortunately that didn’t happen.”
De Niro is scheduled to give testimony on Tuesday, with the trial expected to continue through November 10, according to THR.
26 Comments
This is terrible but I was also weirdly relieved this wasn’t DeNiro going on a anti-vax crusade against a production company that would endanger people. We live in crappy times.
Yeah thank fuck he only stood idly by while she was sexually harassed
Yeah, he only just psychologically and sexually abused at least one woman and maybe more. What a relief.
I don’t find it hard to believe that a man of his generation did a lot of what’s alleged. But, if that happened, one wonders why it took 11 years before she resigned.
Probably because she was getting paid, or underpaid, $300,000 a year. I’d put up with a lot for that kind of annual salary, until it got to be too much. It would be hard to leave that much money behind for me.
One only wonders that if one has never before spent even a few minutes thinking about the topic. People tolerate all sorts of abuse in order to work in showbiz, or even near showbiz. People tolerate abuse for all sorts of other reasons. It doesn’t mean it’s not abuse.
God I hate this shit take so much, “well if it’s true, why did she wait so long??”There’s a billion reasons, none of which she is required to divulge to random internet weirdos, that she would be compelled to build her case against him. She was probably trying to solidify her evidence as her lawyers did their jobs, which doesn’t take two days. In the cases of sexual harassment or sexual assault, people don’t want to come forward for fear of retribution (which it sounds like there were hints of in this trial) or because they know they won’t be taken seriously.If she was being paid to babysit an old man while his friends slapped her ass, she has a case and deserves compensation from him.
Robert has to pay for other people slapping her ass?
If it happened while she was on his clock then yes.
That’s a bit of a stretch. If it’s a friend of Robert’s doing the slapping, you’re saying he’s responsible… but what if it’s an acquaintance? What if it’s a stranger? There’s no definitive line there.
I can’t speak to her but I have friends who work in the entertainment industry and a lot of promises about promotions are made to assistants and the assistants hope their bosses will make good on those promises. Aspects of the entertainment industry often require working as an assistant before you can get into other jobs (unless maybe if your parents have contacts) and someone who still wields a lot of influence, like DeNiro, could probably ruin her career just saying something casually. He wouldn’t have work very hard to ice her out.
Because jobs for female executives in Hollywood are probably pretty rare and “reputations” follow you more than for men, and she knew all it would have taken was one bad word from de Niro and she never would have worked in a comparable role again?
“when she was just 25 years old” -that’s a weird use of “just”. I mean is 25 considered young for any employment opportunity. I mean she’s old enough to rent a car.
25 is considered young for a handful of jobs. House Representative, for example. I don’t know that 25 seems especially young for personal assistant to a Hollywood star, though I don’t think I’d personally want to hire someone any younger than that if it were me. It seems like someone with at least ten years work experience would be a better bet, but that’s assuming competence was his primary qualifier.
You don’t need experience to iron shirts and pick up coffee.From what I understand, these jobs are generally seen to be entry level temporary phases on the way up the studio ladder. You spend some time as an assistant, make connections, then get promoted and replaced with the next fresh graduate.
That’s my read on production assistants, but I imagine some personal assistants are meant to be more wingmen than proteges. Like Karl was for Homer Simpson, some are actual right hands that take care of almost everything. You don’t need experience to do menial tasks, but you do need some life experience to run someone’s life for them. Like the buttoning shirts and fixing collars and ties are individually small tasks, but they suggest a level of detail to attention that exceeds basic entry level work
In the early goings she may have been little more than a gofer, in which case the main required skill would be energy.
That’s possible, and maybe the job grew over time to include more responsibilities (thus perhaps even earning her a vanity title, if that is what happened). But De Niro was also already in his 60s when she was hired, and not that people that age are incapable of caring for themselves, but he might have been looking to offload a lot more responsibility upfront than an actor half his age, who might really only need dry cleaning and coffee.
i guess we could say he was not being a good fella to her
Look, she wanted to just be a PA not a Killer of the Flower Moon or something.
Never work with 70+ year olds, unless you LIVE FOR DRAMA!
I hope this isn’t true because that would mean losing respect for an actor who was great for decades, all the way from the early 1970s to the late 90s.
You do know it’s probably true, right?
“Each night, when I return the cab to the garage, I have to clean the cum off the back seat. Some nights, I clean off the blood.”-Graham Chase Robinson
What happened to “believe the women”? Only when it suits the feminist scum.
He was just method acting to prep for Dirty Grandpa