How Jesse Plemons almost made an enemy of Robert De Niro: “Bob was not pleased”
Imagine, if you will, that you are busy at your place of work, maybe you’re an accountant or a mechanic or perhaps a baker, and then in comes the person who is literally the best in the world at whatever your trade might be and does it next to you for the rest of the afternoon.
Can you imagine what that might be like? Well, Bugonia’s Jesse Plemons absolutely can.
These days, Plemons is one of the most in-demand actors in Hollywood, having steadily worked his way from doing sports dramas on TV to being an Oscar and Golden Globe-nominated actor who is showing all the signs of moving into the realms of the greats of yesteryear if the trajectory continues.
Almost everything he has put his name to over the last ten years has resulted in a performance that has attracted award recognition, from Emmy award nominations for his roles in Fargo and Charlie Brooker’s brilliant Black Mirror episodes focused on the USS Callister, to his Academy award nod for Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog (which in my humble opinion was horrendously dull, but hey that’s just me).
Thanks to his partnership with Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos, firstly with Kinds of Kindness (not as good as Poor Things) and then last year’s Bugonia, Plemons has cemented his place as the critics’ favourite for a fair while yet, and now if it’s more awards attention he wants, then he has picked the right director. His main 2026 effort is the Tom Cruise black comedy Digger, helmed by Academy fave Alejandro González Iñárritu, which has got Oscars written all over it.
But all oak trees have to start from acorns, and Plemons, while achieving considerable success, had only really had supporting roles back in 2019 when he landed his first Martin Scorsese film, the Netflix-funded three-hour gangster epic The Irishman, which featured several of the finest actors in film history.
Plemons’ character in the film was Chuckie, the son of Al Pacino’s fearsome Jimmy Hoffa, and indeed his very first scene was opposite the great man himself. But it got even more intimidating for Plemons when he had to sit in the back seat of a car not just with Pacino, but also Robert De Niro, joining the pair that so famously duked it out in Michael Mann’s Heat.
Plemons recounted the “terrifying” experience to Backstage, saying: “I think I made a terrible joke at one point, asking, ‘Do you trust me?’ in a smart-aleck way, and Bob (De Niro) was not pleased.”
Fortunately for Plemons, amidst a cast including Joe Pesci and Harvey Keitel, the rest of filming the movie proved an enjoyable learning curve, with Plemons adding: “The weight of what a crazy opportunity this was started sinking in, and the main objective became just trying to get as comfortable and relaxed as possible in that environment…It’s something I’ll never forget. I could retire and be OK with that.”
It was a sign of Plemons’ talent that he was in no way shown up by these giants of their craft, and the film went on to earn ten Oscar nominations and four Golden Globe nominations, albeit without any wins. The same year, Plemons appeared in the Breaking Bad movie El Camino, and four years later, Scorsese cast him again in another Robert De Niro film, this time Killers of the Flower Moon, which again picked up ten Oscar nominations without a win.
