Robert De Niro’s speech was edited before his speech at the Gotham Awards. The reference to former US President Donald Trump was removed. According to Variety, this was done at the behest of Apple.
The situation was unexpected for the actor. He took the stage to present an award for the movie Killers Of The Flower Moon, in which he starred and which was produced by Apple.
The actor started to speak to the audience, but stopped and said that the beginning of his speech had been changed. However, Robert De Niro was not confused – he took out his smartphone and read out the excerpt that had been deleted. In it, the actor defeated former US President Donald Trump.
“Lying has become just another tool in the charlatan’s arsenal,” De Niro said. “The former president lied to us more than 30,000 times during his four years in office. And he’s keeping up the pace in his current campaign of retribution. But with all his lies, he can’t hide his soul. He attacks the weak, destroys the gifts of nature and shows disrespect, for example, by using ‘Pocahontas’ as a slur.”
According to sources, the speech was edited so that the actor would seem to focus on the film during his speech. The new text was uploaded to the teleprompter literally 10 minutes before the ceremony. The woman who did this introduced herself as an Apple employee.
Robert De Niro criticized the award ceremony and Apple.
“I don’t feel like thanking them at all for what they did,” he said. “How dare they do that, actually.”
Meanwhile, a source close to the film denied any censorship and said the incident was a misunderstanding.
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