Residents of a Brooklyn apartment building got an interesting email Thursday from Warner Bros. It included the following sentences:
"Our lead actor, Robert De Niro, would very much like to watch the World Cup game, today at 12p. Would it be possible to place a small portable satellite on the building rooftop ASAP and run a cable to the street to help facilitate this request?"
The 70-year-old De Niro is filming a new movie, The Intern, in the Cobble Hill neighborhood of Brooklyn. And he, like millions of other Americans, was intent on watching the country's soccer team take on Germany in the final game of the group stage at the World Cup. Desperate times call for desperate measures, and a resident of the building passed along the email request to Business Insider.
As it turns out, De Niro was invited to a nearby house where people were watching the game.
"We got another email from a neighbor saying he talked to the crew and apparently he found a house of people watching it and joined them," the source told Business Insider.
This brings up several questions, perhaps most notably why De Niro couldn't watch the matchup on set. The game was available on several of ESPN's platforms, so surely someone could have arranged for De Niro to see it from the privacy of his trailer. Maybe he wanted to be in the company of fans, which tends to be a more exciting way to watch soccer (or any sporting event, for that matter).
With the United States squaring off against Belgium in the round of 16 on Tuesday, perhaps De Niro will find another watch party to crash.
De Niro has been known to attend big games in New York, and he was even chastised after he was caught taking a phone call during Game 3 of this year's Stanley Cup Final.
The Intern, which began filming this week, stars Anne Hathaway alongside De Niro. A release date has not been set.
