Welcome back.
You look great.
It's always good to see you.
I appreciate you coming on.
I have a lot to talk to you about.
First off, you met the Pope.
Yes.
Let's talk about this.
You met Pope Leo.
What's it like when you meet the Pope?
Are you nervous meeting the Pope?
What do you talk about?
Well, I liked him a lot.
Just personally, he was from Chicago.
He's an American.
He's a city guy.
And I liked him.
And we had a nice talk about the situation today in the world, the country.
So he was great.
And you went over there with Nobu.
Yes, with Chef Nobu and my other partner, the mayor.
Nobu Matsuhisa right there.
Chef Nobu, one of the greatest chefs in sushi in the world.
But you got involved with Nobu and created all those restaurants how many years ago?
31 years, I think.
Jeez, oh, my God.
How did you, uh...
How did you end up hooking up with Nobu and working with him?
I just went to Matsuhisa in L.A.
Roland Jaffe, the British director, took me to this place with me.
And I went and after I had a few things to eat, I said if you ever want to open a restaurant in New York, let me know.
And we had opened the Tribeca Grill by that point.
So it took a couple of years, but we opened one in New York, in Tribeca, and that was it.
Yeah, so you opened one in Tribeca, but now there's 50 restaurants around the world.
Yes.
Wow.
And hotels.
Yes.
Not 50 hotels, but it's growing, yeah.
Yes, it's growing.
But how do you get into this?
You don't know anything about this.
No, I just reopened it, the restaurant in the grill, and I thought well look, there's not a Japanese restaurant that I know of like this at all anywhere that I've been.
Definitely New York, so I said, I know it'll work in New York.
It was that simple.
I think you're brilliant.
I think it's genius that you're doing this stuff.
There's a new place you're opening in Barbuda.
Is that happening?
Yes, that's a Nobu Beach Inn.
And we have a Nobu restaurant.
It's paradise.
It's like Fantasy Island.
I don't even know.
There's these humans there.
It's just the most beautiful place.
I saw that.
I go, of course, Robert De Niro is doing this.
You're the best.
And Chef Nobu.
I brought my kids.
They're like 11 years old.
And they wanted to go to Nobu.
It was a big deal.
And I go, okay, we're gonna go to Nobu.
They love sushi.
And I go, but do you know Nobu's last name?
And my daughter looks at me, she's thinking about it, and she goes, Robert De Niro?
I go, yeah.
Chef Nobu Roberts.
She must have heard us talking about you or something.
Yeah.
A few weeks ago, your trailer for, uh, Fokker In Law came out.
Congratulations.
This is what I'm talking about.
This is your fourth.
This is the fourth movie in the Meet the Parents franchise.
It comes out Thanksgiving.
It's you, Ben Stiller, Ariana Grande.
What can we say about this one?
Well, it was a terrific script.
John Hamburg, who wrote it and was involved and wrote the other movies Meet the Parents.
He directed.
It did a great job and it's very funny.
Ariana's funny.
She's great.
Did you ever think you were gonna do comedy when you acted in your career?
No, I didn't know.
You didn't have a plan?
No.
No.
By the way, I watched the documentary Mr. Scorsese.
It was on Apple TV.
Watch this documentary if you could see it.
It's unbelievable.
It's four parts.
It's great.
I love Martin Scorsese more than I ever loved him, but I love you more than I ever loved you because you are so good and so cool in this documentary.
You probably didn't watch it because you're in it.
No, I did.
I went through it.
Lincoln Center, I went to.
Oh, you saw it?
Yeah.
No, it was good.
It was terrific.
You're the best.
You're really great in it.
Yeah.
But one of the things is, like, there's one part where Scorsese is, I think, in the hospital.
And you go in and you go, we got to do this movie, Raging Bull.
And it's one of the greatest movies ever.
But then the thing that I thought was genius about you but I don't even know if this is what I took away from it or if it's real or fake but there's one scene where you're talking with Joe Pesci and you're trying to get him to react to you and you're fixing the TV or something and you go.
Yeah, you know my wife or something?
And he goes, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And you go, yeah, I heard some things.
And he goes, yeah, yeah, yeah, you heard some things?
What do you mean?
And you go, I heard things.
And you go, yeah, what do you mean you heard things?
He goes, I heard some things.
Yeah, things like?
And you go, I heard things.
He goes, yeah, things, what are you talking about?
And you get him so pumped up.
Was that an acting, was that a choice?
Yeah, I mean, we worked on it.
You had the scene, you had the structure of the scene, the dialogue pretty much set.
But then you'd go off or add lib here and there, of course.
It's the greatest, I love it.
By the way, are you excited about the Knicks are in the playoffs?
You're a New Yorker, you're not?
I'm a New Yorker.
You are a New Yorker all the way.
Look, if I have to stand behind the Knicks, I will, but I'm not into sports that much.
No.
Not into sports that much.
But I heard it was a great game.
It was the best.
And I am sorry I missed it.
I love seeing a great game, even if I'm not that interested in the sport.
Yeah, it actually was.
I played basketball as a kid.
Yeah, you also played basketball as an adult.
Here's you playing with Al Pacino, bud.
What's going on there?
You're not even covering him.
He's just kind of left it wide open.
How would you describe Al as a player?
I thought he was pretty good.
I can't remember about that.
Yeah.
When you guys were... Did you guys talk to each other for movie roles when you were together?
Because you did four movies together.
Were you like, hey, Al, I would do this?
Well, we did.
We talked about movies over the years. give each other advice about things.
And I remember talking to him about doing Scarface because I said, if you don't do it, I'm gonna do it.
They offered it to me.
And, you know, I told them to work with the director and the department and so on.
Yeah.
When you did Taxi Driver, when you were doing that, did that change your career?
Was it a hit when it came out?
I don't really know if it was.
It was...
I caught onto it late in life.
And because I was a fan of yours, I think I mean I watched every single one of your movies that I could watch, but I think it was like, I think, Goodfellas time where I got into that and This Boy's Life and Bang the Drum Slowly.
Anything I could watch with you Awakenings I would watch and study with my friends and think you're the coolest actor.
And then my friends are like, you ever seen Taxi Driver?
I don't think I have."
And he goes, you know, you talking to me?
I go, I know that, but I don't know why I know that.
And then I watched it.
It's unbelievable.
Well, you know, when you do a movie, you don't know what kind of impact it'll have on people.
And it apparently did.
We're just doing the movie.
Not that we didn't love the script.
Marty and I and Schrader wrote a terrific script, but you just don't know these things.
And you and Martin Scorsese are going to get together and celebrate the 50th anniversary of the movie at this year's Tribeca Festival.
50 years.
Did you ever think you would work with Martin Scorsese that many times?
How many movies have you probably done?
We've done 10 together.
Jeez.
That's amazing.
It is, yeah.
And you'll be together at the Tribeca Festival?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
We want to talk about the Tribeca Festival.
More with Robert De Niro when we come back, everybody.
More time to come on back.
