Kerry Parnell: De Niro’s dirty laundry aired in bad boss battle

The Godfather actor has been in the dock in New York, fighting his former assistant Graham Chase Robinson who is suing De Niro for $12m for gender discrimination.

“Robert De Niro’s waiting … talking about bus tickets”, weren’t the lyrics I remember from Bananarama’s ’80s hit, but it’s the refrain that played out in court this week.

The Godfather actor has been in the dock in New York, fighting his former assistant Graham Chase Robinson. She is suing the 80-year-old actor for $12m for gender discrimination, while he’s alleging improper spending, including transferring $450,000 worth of airmiles to her personal account.

According to Robinson, 41, who began as his assistant and rose to vice-president of his production company, De Niro’s misdemeanours included making her “his work wife” and asking her to do things like scratch his back and wash his sheets.

She alleged he would call early morning and late at night, including twice when she was at her grandmother’s funeral, to ask her to buy his son a bus ticket.

The court heard how he also once made her deliver him a martini from Nobu late at night in an Uber, which he argued was justified. Two takeaways from that – it must be one hell of a martini and Nobu’s marketing team are no doubt high-fiving themselves.

Robert De Niro and Tiffany Chen attends the Cannes Film Festival . Picture: Getty

Rejecting her claim he was abusive, the Raging Bull star somewhat lost his advantage when he shouted, “Shame on you, Chase Robinson!”

Oh, how I love a bad boss story, especially when it’s not happening to me. Who would ever work for a celebrity, anyway? The only time I’ve ever seen it play out positively was in The White Lotus 2 and that’s because Tanya fell off a yacht and Portia could finally go home.

To be fair to De Niro, many of us have endured a phone-happy boss who emails at 6.30am or calls on the weekend, but you’d have to think there was someone else in the De Niro household who could have helped buy a bus ticket while his assistant mourned her grandmother. There’s never any excuse for vacuuming up someone else’s life and expecting them to only exist for you, even if you are an A-lister.

Graham Chase Robinson departs federal court last week. Picture: Getty

Still he’s far from alone – Lady Gaga previously settled an overtime lawsuit by her assistant, Jennifer O’Neill, who revealed she’d have to stay in the same room as the singer on The Monster Ball Tour so she could get up in the night to change DVDs.

Mariah Carey was also sued by former-nanny Simonette DaCosta for overtime pay. She alleged she had to be on-call 24 hours a day, “with no entitlement for breaks, for meals, and even for sleep.”

And then there was Naomi Campbell, who instead of annoying her assistants by calling them too much, hurled the phones at them – after several alleged incidents, she famously did community service in 2007 for throwing a jewel-encrusted BlackBerry at housekeeper Ana Scolavino’s head, causing her to need stitches.

As for De Niro, he obviously forgot the second-half of the saying, “You scratch my back and …” He’d probably have been better off letting Robinson fly far away with those airmiles and getting the next assistant to deal with his dirty linen.

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Originally published as Kerry Parnell: De Niro’s dirty laundry aired in bad boss battle