Think about who your emergency contact is? The person who, if something happens to you, will be the first to appear on your phone and be notified? Of course, someone who is close to you and important. In the case of Robert de Niro, it is not one of his seven children (five of whom are of age), his girlfriend or a member of his family. The 80-year-old New York star’s emergency contact for a long decade has been his personal assistant and then vice president of his company, Graham Chase Robinson, now 41. The same person with whom he has been in conflict for four years, against whom his trial yesterday Monday began in Manhattan Supreme Court and continues this Tuesday. Mutual accusations with separate complaints from both parties intersecting jealousy, discrimination, harassment, machismo and emotional harm, punctuated by a lawsuit from Robinson seeking $12 million. A mix of ingredients that had De Niro screaming in court on Monday and Tuesday.
The history between Robinson and De Niro dates back to 2008. She was 25 at the time and he hired her as his personal assistant. She was responsible for everything: answering calls, organizing his schedule, putting up the Christmas tree at home and even taking him to the hospital. In 2017, the woman was promoted to vice president of production and finance at Canal Productions, the actor’s company, but continued to perform essentially the same duties. His annual salary was $300,000 (approx. 285,000 euros).
More information
Everything started going wrong in 2018 until it finally failed in 2019 when De Niro sued Robinson and she filed another complaint in return. It was in 2018 when the actor bought a house on the Upper East Side of New York and asked his assistant (at that time she was already his vice president) to help his partner since 2015 – and mother of his seventh child, born in the spring was –, martial arts instructor Tiffany Chen to decorate and prepare it. “I wanted everything to work, for everyone to be happy and for everything to work,” the interpreter told the court on Monday, the highest judicial authority for civil cases in New York State.
It was not like that. As lawyers explained at trial, Chen began talking to De Niro, telling him that he noticed his assistant had “romantic interests” in him, that he thought he had “an imaginary intimacy” with his boss, and then everything started to get tense. “She noticed that there was something there and she was probably right,” the interpreter explained in court in defense of his partner. Robinson’s attorney strenuously denied that his client ever had a romantic interest in her employer and said retaliation against her had since begun. Meanwhile, the star’s lawyer said Robinson was always treated very well by De Niro, “but always thought she deserved better.”
Graham Chase Robinson arrives at the federal courthouse in New York in his trial against actor Robert De Niro on October 30, 2023. David Dee Delgado (Getty Images)
Then the contractual relationship ended and in 2019 De Niro decided to sue Robinson. He accused her of taking advantage of the circumstances in which she worked and using the company’s and the actor’s resources for her own benefit. For example, he claims he falsely transferred airline points from flights worth more than $450,000 purchased for the company and the actor to his personal airline miles account, which provides benefits for traveling on planes. He also claimed that he wasted thousands upon thousands of company dollars on “extraordinary” charges on the company credit card, such as travel, meals, hotels and expenses of all kinds; For example, he accuses her of using false pretenses to charge her for a private trip to Los Angeles, California, when she was attending a friend’s birthday party. The bill for the luxury hotel was $2,608.66 (approx. 2,500 euros). In addition, De Niro’s lawyers claim that he didn’t do his job and watched hours of series on Netflix; have submitted reports alleging that he watched 55 episodes of Friends, 20 of Arrested Development and 10 of Schitt’s Creek over four days in January 2019 during his work hours. Canal Productions’ allegations against Graham Chase Robinson include breach of fiduciary duty, breach of fiduciary duty and substitution (relating to the airline miles he allegedly took advantage of).
Screams of the “spoiled brat whore”
Robinson obviously has a very different opinion on this matter. So much so that after De Niro’s lawsuit, she filed another lawsuit in October 2019, demanding $12 million from the actor’s company. He assures that he has not found another job since leaving the company and that it is difficult for him to leave home.
Specifically, the star’s former employee is demanding compensation for severe emotional distress and damage to her reputation. She argues that she was subjected to “gender-based harassment” and that De Niro yelled at her, called her “unpleasant names” and had “unwanted and unnecessary physical contact” with her. In fact, he claims that he has made sexist comments about many women. During the trial, the assistant referred to Harvey Weinstein, who was sentenced to prison, and suggested that both were regular collaborators. She has submitted a harsh audio recording in which she allegedly hears De Niro screaming at her after he found out she was spending time in Spain while he was in the United States. He angrily shouts “Fuck you!” several times and calls her “You spoiled the little brat” and accuses her: “You don’t give me any fucking respect!” “No matter what you do, you always want a different damn position!”
In 2017, Robinson was named vice president of Canal, but that didn’t change her routines. She felt that she was, she says, treated like an “office lady” who did everything De Niro asked, from scratching his back to washing his sheets, mending his clothes and vacuuming Answering his calls at 4am when he fell and had to go to hospital – he denies he suffered the accident at midnight and waited until a better time to call her – as he was the necessary emergency contact. According to her version, she was “assigned stereotypically feminine tasks that were incompatible with the position.” On Tuesday, De Niro exploded against this back-scratching accusation: “All the things he throws at me are nonsense!” “Shame on you, Chase Robinson.” According to People, he later asked the court for forgiveness.
Robinson also speaks of gender discrimination in her salary, claiming she earns less than a male employee who has fewer responsibilities than her. De Niro’s lawyers, speaking at the trial on Monday, said the man he was referring to was the actor’s personal trainer, who has worked with him for four decades (“What’s wrong with Dan Harvey to do with her?”) Stern blurted out on the second day of the trial: “Is she jealous?” She called her harsh names and declared that she was a “condescending, demeaning, controlling and insulting” person. For her part, she claims that she was subjected to harassment because she was a woman, that she was exposed to sexist and unpleasant jokes, such as when he talked about his Viagra, and that the work environment became increasingly discriminatory and hostile and therefore unbearable.
“I never asked him to scrub or mop the floor, that’s nonsense!” De Niro shouted at Monday’s court hearing. He raised his tone twice, so much so that the judge had to remind him of the rules of conduct and boundaries during the hour and a half he spent on the witness stand. This Tuesday, in a new session, De Niro admitted that she sometimes “raised her voice and didn’t shout,” calling out her assistant, who called her “petulant,” “brutal” and “a spoiled whore.” There are still two weeks left to hear more insults and counter-versions in this high-profile trial.