You Talkin' to Us?

Robert De Niro and his Tribeca Film Festival co-organizer,producer Jane Rosenthal, on16 years of movies, Madoff-and, of course,Trump

- Megan Murphy

Bob, you play Ponzi schemer Bernie Mad off in the docudrama The Wizard of Lies, which premieres next month on HBO. Despite this being the largest financial fraud in the history of the U.S., there’s still so much mystery surrounding how much Madoff’s family knew about the conspiracy and when they knew it. How do you get into a character like that?

De Niro: The one thing I always felt strongly about was that the kids didn’t know anything. And I don’t think his wife did either. He protected them. It’s the classic con. Everybody comes to him, and they want to be part of this club. That whole thing evolved through his personality, his way of manipulating people.

It wasn’t the easiest movie to get made. You optioned the book, by Diana Henriques, six years ago. I read that if you’d done it right away, the film would have focused on the scheme. It became more about the family breaking apart.

Rosenthal: As we got distance from the Ponzi scheme—one son, Andrew, died of cancer; one son, Mark, hung himself—you realized this was a broken family. Bernie hurt a lot of people. He was quite despicable. But he also hurt those he thought he was protecting and left them in a vulnerable position. There’s a moment in the film where Mark says, “How do I trust anything about myself when the father who raised me, who taught me right from wrong, has lied about everything?” It made for magnificent drama.

How did HBO become your partner?

Rosenthal: This is not a movie that major studios are making today. It would be considered a smaller movie, so you would be doing this through the independent film route. And that’s a lot of work.