Robert de Niro is Seth Meyers' hang-up, he admits
When Seth Meyers is with Robert De Niro, there’s one hard no — and it all hinges on a nickname.
On a new episode of Good Hang with Amy Poehler, Seth Meyers admitted that even after years of run-ins with Robert De Niro, he still can’t bring himself to use the nickname everyone else does. By his own count, he’s spoken with De Niro “roughly twenty” times over the years, most of them around Studio 8H, and the awe never wore off.
“I’ve never been able to pull the trigger and call him Bob,” Meyers said. “It just feels too familiar for a legend.”
Meyers said the nerves have led to at least one real flub: in the middle of a rushed backstage moment, he blurted out “Danny DeVito” instead of De Niro’s name — a mistake he joked no one should try at Saturday Night Live. The reverence, he stressed, comes from a lifetime of watching De Niro’s work, not a lack of familiarity.
De Niro on being a dad
In a separate sit-down with People, De Niro reflected on fatherhood while promoting his Netflix thriller The Whisper Man. He said decades in the business never produced a neat formula for balancing work and parenting, and admitted the missed moments still weigh on him.
De Niro has seven children whose ages span decades — from Drena De Niro, 54, to 3-year-old Gia Virginia Chen De Niro — a range that mirrors the different chapters of his life and career. He shared those thoughts, he noted, as he was out talking up a story with heavy fatherhood themes of its own.