Robert De Niro continued his testimony in court Tuesday on the charges of gender discrimination and retaliation filed against him by a former employee, exclaiming multiple times that the case was “nonsense.”
“The whole case is nonsense. It’s absurd. But I’m here!” De Niro said while being questioned by the plaintiff’s counsel.
De Niro frequently pushed back against questions and on lines of questioning that included whether he had called his former employee, Graham Chase Robinson, while using the bathroom (“Give me a break with this nonsense. You got us all here for this?”) and whether he had directed his lawyers to first file suit against Robinson, knowing that it would get press attention and potentially damage her reputation.
“Stop it, I didn’t want to ruin anything. I don’t have the time for this,” he said.
Toward the end of questioning — after Robinson’s attorneys asked whether De Niro had mistreated Robinson as an employee, including asking her to scratch his back, among other allegations — De Niro directly addressed Robinson, who was sitting in the room.
“Shame on you, Chase Robinson!” he said.
Robinson, the former vp, production and finance at Canal Productions, De Niro’s loan-out company, alleges that De Niro made “vulgar, inappropriate and gendered comments” to her, underpaid her based on her gender and overworked her. Additionally, she alleges that she was still asked to perform gendered tasks, such as mending clothing and doing laundry, after becoming an executive.
In testimony Tuesday, Robinson’s counsel also claimed that De Niro had called her twice during a family member’s funeral (De Niro denied knowing she was at a funeral at the time) and asked her to deliver him a martini from his restaurant, Nobu, at 11 p.m.
The questioning also spoke to claims that De Niro had filed against Robinson, alleging that she had misappropriated company funds, including taking five million Delta SkyMiles that had been accrued on the company American Express card in the months leading up to her resignation and refusing to return them after she left. De Niro repeatedly said during this testimony, while calling the case “nonsense,” that he wanted those miles back.
“That’s all I’m asking: Return the things, return the air miles,” De Niro said.
De Niro‘s Canal Productions had filed a $6 million lawsuit against Robinson in New York state court in August 2019, alleging that Robinson had abused company credit cards and binged “astounding hours of TV shows” while on the clock.
In July 2021, a federal judge ruled that De Niro would be allowed to re-plead the claims he’d made in state court in response to Robinson.
On cross-examination of De Niro, his counsel reiterated that Robinson’s title as vp, production and finance did not pertain to her actual duties and that she remained an assistant and said that De Niro did not sign a letter of recommendation she drafted for him after her resignation because it was inaccurate.
During the trial, the defense also questioned whether Robinson had violated company policies by expensing Ubers as well as meals while working for De Niro, as he had claimed in his suit. De Niro agreed that he had not fired his accountants, who were charged with tracking spending and bills across his company and that the company did not have a written policy on what could or could not be expensed but rather, as he continually expressed, lived by the honor code. Some of the company SkyMiles were for Robinson’s personal and professional use, he said, but he argued the expenses were excessive.
“Common sense. Do what is proper. What’s right,” De Niro said.
On continued claims that De Niro had retaliated against Robinson after his girlfriend Tiffany Chen had expressed her dislike for her and had struggled to work with her while decorating their townhouse, the defense showed texts between De Niro and Chen in which Chen said: “If you keep her, you and I will eventually have problems.”
Robinson was then removed from projects working on the townhouse, but De Niro denies that Chen issued an ultimatum about continuing to employ her in any capacity.
“No one tells me what to do in my office, period,” he said.
Robinson resigned in April 2019 and later asked De Niro for two years of severance at her current salary ($300,000) as well as covered medical expenses, a letter of recommendation and a meeting with De Niro. De Niro did not respond and his team later sued Robinson.
“Who the fuck does she think she is,” read a text from De Niro about the severance request introduced into evidence Tuesday. “The balls, the nerve, the chutzpah. The sense of entitlement. How dare her.”
The trial is expected to last through Nov. 10.
