Shame on you!” shouts the grizzly, bespectacled man from the witness box. His voice is gruff with age and hoarse with indignation. Perhaps he rises out of his seat in passion, or maybe he shakes a fist in the air. Sitting across from him in that Manhattan courthouse is a woman, the subject of his ire. Millions of dollars are at stake. Reputations are on the line. It’s a scene worthy of a Netflix courtroom drama – even more so thanks to the A-list celebrity in the lead role. Only this time, he isn’t in character.
Robert De Niro, the aforementioned grizzly man in the witness box, really did shout “shame on you” across a New York courtroom yesterday afternoon, swiftly followed by a muttered apology to the judge presiding over his highly publicised civil trial. The two-time Oscar winner, 80, is being sued by his former executive assistant and vice president of his production company, Graham Chase Robinson, for $12m (£9.8m) in damages for severe emotional distress and reputational harm. Robinson claims he was an abusive boss. De Niro denies the allegations (“nonsense”) and is suing Graham for $6m (£4.9m), accusing her of spending vast sums of company money on her own travel and food. Graham also stands accused of “loafing during work hours, and binge-watching astounding hours of TV shows on Netflix”.
