Robert De Niro claimed his Gotham Awards speech was "edited" to remove critical remarks about former president Donald Trump, but that didn't stop him from reading the uncensored version.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the Oscar-winning actor took to the stage to introduce the Historical Icon and Creator Tribute award for Martin Scorsese's Killers of the Flower Moon (in which he starred alongside Leonardo DiCaprio) when he apparently realized he was reading a cut-down version of his speech.
De Niro decided to reclaim his moment at the live ceremony by sharing the original, unedited script with the audience. The reinstated speech featured several comments about former president Donald Trump, whom he has called out on several other occasions, but this time he branded him a "charlatan."
"History isn't history anymore. Truth isn't truth, and even facts are being replaced by alternative facts and driven by conspiracy theories and ugliness," De Niro said onstage. "In Florida, young students are taught that slaves developed skills that could be applied for their personal benefit. The entertainment industry isn't immune to this festering disease. The Duke, John Wayne, famously said of Native Americans, 'I don't feel we did wrong in taking this great country away from them. There were great numbers of people who needed new land, and the Indians were selfishly trying to keep it for themselves.'"
He continued, "Lying has become just another tool in the charlatan's arsenal. The former president lied to us more than 30,000 times during his four years in office, and he's keeping up the pace with his current campaign of retribution. With all of his lies, he can't hide his soul. He attacks the weak, destroys the gifts of nature and shows his disrespect, for example, using Pocahontas as a slur," referencing Trump's nickname for Senator Elizabeth Warren.
De Niro was seemingly supposed to wrap up his Gotham Awards speech by extending a polite expression of thanks to Apple, the producer and distributor of Flower Moon, but opted against it after he placed blame at the studio's door for his speech allegedly being cut without notice.
"I'm gonna say these things, but to Apple and thank them and all that, Gothams, blah, blah, blah, Apple," De Niro said. "But I don't feel like thanking them at all after what they did. How dare they do that, actually?"
Killers of the Flower Moon was released on Oct. 20 by Apple TV+ under the Apple Original Films label. The film received critical acclaim, with IGN's 9/10 review praising the feature for revisiting "the Osage murders of the 1920s with a masterful hand, and a shockingly frank approach to violence and white supremacy."
Thumbnail credit: Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for The Gotham Film & Media Institute
Adele Ankers-Range is a freelance entertainment writer for IGN. You can follow her on X @AdeleAnkers.
