Robert De Niro might’ve been caught off guard when the anti-Trump material he’d included in his Gotham Awards speech didn’t make it to the teleprompter, but Martin Scorsese knows why it happened. According to the director and the filmmaking team behind Killers of the Flower Moon, the edits had nothing to do with censorship.
Last month, De Niro called out Apple and its awards team from the stage of the Gotham Awards, where he’d been called to introduce Killers of the Flower Moon—in which he starred as the villainous William Hale. De Niro’s draft had included anti-Trump remarks that, unbeknownst to him, apparently didn’t make it through the final edit.
In footage from the event posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, De Niro appeared to struggle with the teleprompter before later saying, “I just want to say one thing. The beginning of my speech was edited, cut out. I didn’t know about it. And I want to read it.”
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Although he’d meant to issue thank you’s to Apple and the Gothams, De Niro went on to say, “I don’t feel like thanking them at all for what they did. How dare they do that, actually?”
In a Rolling Stone interview published Wednesday, De Niro explained how things unfolded from his side: “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,” the actor said. “And then I didn’t hear anything. They gave me the script, and I looked at the prompter, and I asked after, ‘What happened?’”
De Niro continued: “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.’”
While De Niro didn’t “want” to blame anyone, he added, “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.’”
In a statement first made to IndieWire, which The Daily Beast has also obtained, Scorsese and the filmmaking team behind Killers of the Flower Moon said, “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.”
The statement adds, “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.”
A representative for De Niro did not immediately respond to The Daily Beast’s request for comment.
