Editor’s Note: Spoilers ahead for Zero Day
Summary
- Matthew Modine and Lesli Linka Glatter star in the political thriller Zero Day featuring conspiracies and a national cyberattack.
- Glatter and Modine talk to Collider about working together on Zero Day and break down the most visceral scene in the limited series.
- Modine also talks about his character Dr. Brenner in Stranger Things ahead of the Season 5 finale.
As an actor and director, respectively, both Matthew Modine and Lesli Linka Glatter are absolute stalwarts in the industry. Modine made film history bringing a new vision of Vietnam to the big screen in Stanley Kubrick’s iconic anti-war masterpiece Full Metal Jacket — as well as working with other Hollywood legends like Robert Altman, Jonathan Demme, and Christopher Nolan. Glatter was nominated for an Academy Award in 1985 and has been steadily directing every single one of your favorite television programs — from Twin Peaks and ER, all the way to Mad Men and The Morning Show. Now both Modine and Glatter are working together on Netflix’s limited series Zero Day.
Zero Day is a political thriller surrounding a devastating national cyberattack. Politicians and a major tech CEO introduced an app that glitched enough phones to cause the death of over 3,400 people — a day of infamy now known as “Zero Day.” After a series of conspiracies arise, President Evelyn Mitchell (Angela Bassett) assigns popular former U.S. president George Mullen (Robert DeNiro) to lead an investigation into the nationwide computer outage. Modine plays the Speaker of the House, Richard Dreyer, a figure who is instrumental in the execution of “Zero Day.” The series also stars Lizzy Caplan (Fatal Attraction), Jesse Plemons (Kinds of Kindness), and Joan Allen (The Bourne Supremacy)
Collider’s own Tania Hussain had the pleasure of sitting down with Glatter and Modine to talk about their work in Zero Day. Together they discussed choreographing a massive, “terrifying” scene, jousting performances with Robert De Niro and if Modine has any teasers for the highly anticipated final season of Stranger Things.
Lesli Linka Glatter Talks About That Harrowing Car Scene
“Blocking that out and seeing it come to life at night was chilling.”
COLLIDER: Lesli, I do want to talk about the most visceral scene that I think viewers are going to really talk about this weekend when they watch the show—the scene where George and his wife Sheila are leaving the compound. I’m wondering what went into that because it was so intense and super claustrophobic. I’m sure there were a lot of intricate details that really came to be for that.
LESLI LINKA GLATTER: Oh, God, thank you for bringing that up. This story, to me, is so pertinent. Obviously, it’s a thriller, a conspiracy thriller, but that particular scene was chilling to block out and to shoot. We shot it over three days. We did shoot it on the estate. That was the Mullen estate, and we shot all of the things within the car. Of course, the crowd is all there because it needed to be there for Joan [Allan] and Bob [De Niro] to be able to respond to it, but blocking that out and seeing it come to life at night was chilling.
Even though we were planning it and shooting it, it was very controlled and storyboarded within an inch of its life so no one would get hurt, and everyone knew the plan, it was chilling to watch. Having the camera in the car, being in there with them, and having the background players embrace the story and be beating on the car was terrifying.
It was really scary. I was watching this with my sister and my dad, and it felt like something that would happen, sadly, in the news, and you’d see it because there’s been so many horrible things happening. That’s why I feel like the messaging in this show is just so important. It’s a really, really important series for everybody to watch.
GLATTER: Thank you so much. Hopefully, it creates conversation. But you actually hit on the scene that was the most intense to shoot. It was a little bit like what maybe it felt like to be inside the Capitol on January 6th. It was terrifying.
For Matthew Modine, Working With Robert DeNiro Is a Dream Come True
“We were Errol Flynn and Basil Rathbone having a sword fight.”
For sure. Matthew, you are such a phenomenal actor, and you’re just somebody that I love watching on screen all the time. You share the same caliber as Robert De Niro, and you are both so magnetic on screen. How did you two navigate that push and pull with the relationship of your characters? There are a lot of intense moments, but they’re so well done.
MATTHEW MODINE: First of all, I’m absolutely humbled by what you just said. That my name and Robert De Niro would be joined together is ridiculous and that I would be in the same caliber as Robert De Niro is absurd. I moved to New York City when I was a teenager because of Robert De Niro, because of Al Pacino, Dustin Hoffman, and Christopher Walken. These are legends. So, to finally have the opportunity to work beside him, with him, my life is complete now. I can move on. I can transition now. He was everything that you hope and more. What I think would be surprising for a lot of people is just how compassionate and loving he is.
He’s a great patriot to the United States of America. He’s a great ambassador for New York City. He literally, in my opinion, created Tribeca. You couldn’t get a taxi when I moved to New York City, to Tribeca. When people started moving to Tribeca, I was like, “Why? How? There’s there’s no taxi. There’s no subway. There’s no bus in Tribeca.” And he literally turned it into some of the most expensive real estate in Manhattan. Then, after 9/11, created the Tribeca Film Festival with Jane Rosenthal to open up New York City again after that tragic day. Now, it’s turned into one of the premier film festivals in the world.
Related
Netflix’s new political thriller ‘Zero Day’ follows a cyber attack on the US.
That’s all separate from acting with him, but acting with him, I sort of felt like we were Errol Flynn and Basil Rathbone having a sword fight. It was just fun. As complicated as what we were saying and as serious as what we were saying, it was just great fun as an actor to be able to work with someone of his caliber.
GLATTER: I have to say, in that particular scene, it’s what I love about our show is that you have two characters with very opposing views, but they’re both right. We don’t identify political party. We don’t hopefully paint one character as the bad guy, and one as the good. It’s much more complicated. It’s much more shades of gray and speaks to how we’re dealing with truth in this very complicated world we’re in.
Matthew Modine Teases the Final Season of ‘Stranger Things’
I love and appreciate how you said that. So well done. I think it’s something that a lot of viewers are going to really connect with when they watch it this weekend. Before we log off, there’s another Netflix series that we all love of yours, Matthew, and it’s Stranger Things, which is wrapping up for Season 5. I know that Brenner was such a defining figure in Eleven’s life, shaping her abilities and also her trauma. Do you believe she’s truly escaped his shadow, or is he still a part of her journey?
MODINE: Well, I don’t think we ever escape the events of our life. Hopefully, things that are traumatic, things that are difficult help to make you a better person. If everything’s easy, what is the lesson? So I think that what she learned, in the end, was how much he loved her, how deeply he felt for her, and hopefully, that will be the lasting memory that she has of Dr. Brenner is that he was a person who cared deeply for her and the other children that were in his laboratory.
Zero Day is available on Netflix now.
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