The unlikely musical act that found an even more unlikely fan in Robert De Niro: “I was amazed”
It’s often comforting to know that celebrities aren’t always as far removed from us normal people as we might think. Robert De Niro might be an Oscar-winning Hollywood icon, but he has spent the past two years refreshing his memory on how to be the father of a newborn again, welcoming his daughter, Gia, in 2023.
So, while he has been busy appearing in and promoting movies like Killers of the Flower Moon, About My Father, and The Alto Knights, he has also been on daddy duty, resulting in him watching a lot of a certain musical group that it’s hard to imagine the Taxi Driver star consuming – The Wiggles.
The Australian musical group has been a stalwart part of children’s television since the early 1990s, although the members of the band have shifted since then. They’re actually one of the most successful Australian groups of all time, having sold countless copies of their albums over the years and winning various prestigious awards.
The band released their first television show, aptly titled The Wiggles, in 1998, although since the new iteration of the band emerged in 2013, other spin-offs like Ready, Steady, Wiggle! and Wiggle, Wiggle, Wiggle! have been made, too, much to the delight of children worldwide. You really can’t picture De Niro, known for playing gangsters, criminals, and boxers, sitting down with his child to watch The Wiggles, but he admitted to watching a lot of the show, as well as other educational programmes like Ms Rachel and Blippi, on The Today Show.
He explained that “The Wiggles are sort of cheap”, although that doesn’t stop him from watching it with his daughter. In fact, he has been watching the show for many years, even seeing the band perform live.
Anthony Field, who played Blue Wiggle, revealed to Entertainment Weekly, “I was amazed. We all love Robert De Niro’s movies and I grew up loving [The] Godfather, Taxi Driver, plus all those incredible Meet the Fockers. He’s a great actor. And years and years ago, the original Wiggles played in New York City and we met Robert backstage with his son. I’m so happy to see that he’s still watching the Wiggles with his new family.”
Field even revealed what it was like to meet De Niro backstage, which was certainly a surreal experience. “We were all on stage and trying to pretend that we weren’t noticing him in the audience and he was looking like, you know the character in Cape Fear? Well, he was sort of staring at us like that character, and we’re going, ‘My goodness, he’s intimidating!’ But he was lovely.”
The band joked about getting De Niro involved in a future Wiggles project, suggesting that he could drive the group’s Big Red Car as a nod to Martin Scorsese’s Palme d’Or-winning Taxi Driver. “Well, we’ve got eight Wiggles now, not four, so we’re going to need a taxi! So he could reprise Taxi Driver — get the mohawk back, and he could be the taxi driver,” Field joked.
