Zero Day creators Noah Oppenheim and Eric Newman, who created the show with Michael Schmidt, spoke to ComingSoon’s Tyler Treese about the new Netflix miniseries. The duo discussed getting star Robert De Niro to do a TV show, Oppenheim’s journalism background, and the eerie timeliness of the show’s plane crashes. The six-episode series is now streaming on Netflix.
“Zero Day asks the question on everyone’s mind — how do we find truth in a world in crisis, one seemingly being torn apart by forces outside our control? And in an era rife with conspiracy theory and subterfuge, how much of those forces are products of our own doing, perhaps even of our own imagining?” says the synopsis for Netflix’s Zero Day.
Tyler Treese: Noah, obviously, you have a news background, and in the show, we see so much news coverage — it was great seeing Wolf Blitzer there — and it’s done so authentically with how it’s presented. How was it using your own background and implementing that in the show? It fits so well.
Noah Oppenheim: Well, we were really committed from day one to trying to build a show that was grounded in reality as much as possible, that felt as authentic as possible. You know, Eric has created some of the greatest TV series in the last 20 years, many of which are sort of rooted in non-fiction from the very beginning. He kept pushing for how would this actually play out in real life? How do people talk in these rooms? We were fortunate, not just my background in journalism, but Mike Schmidt, our co-creator, as a reporter at the New York Times. So, we were able to draw on a wide circle of experts to make sure that the events that we’re depicting are unfolding in the way that they might actually in the real world.
Eric, a star of Robert De Niro’s stature doesn’t typically do a TV show. Things have obviously changed lately. We’re seeing Harrison Ford, Robert Downey Jr., and people at their peak doing miniseries because they’re like five-hour epic movies now. The quality of it is crazy. Was there ever any hesitation from him, or how was it getting him on board?
Eric Newman: Noah and I had a conversation in late 2021 about our relationship as a country and also, I think, as a civilization because I think it’s bigger than just our country, about our relationship with the truth. Not long after that, I was meeting coincidentally Bob, and I told him about our conversation and about a project that we were coming up with based on that conversation, and he was instantly in it.
I think that what actors have realized in this sort of streaming universe is that the 5, 6, and 10-hour format allows you to take a character into places that you can’t take in a two-hour film. And I think that it was inevitable that that would happen because if you’re an actor, you’re drawn to characters, and the more complex the character is, the more appealing that character can be. What Noah and I were able to do in telling a story over six hours, the path we were able to put this character on made it, I think, irresistible to Bob, and he never once wavered once he committed.
Noah, Netflix’s Zero Day is coming out at a very timely point. We’ve got political tension. We’re seeing airplanes have all kinds of issues, like in the show where they collide after a cyber attack. Do you feel like this is gonna help it connect with the audience?
Oppenheim: I think that we never could have anticipated exactly the context in which the show would be coming out. We started working on it four-plus years ago. I think it was not an accident that the show is gonna now resonate in so many interesting ways, and it’s because we were really committed to tackling what are, I think, pretty timeless themes.
Eric mentioned our relationship as a society with truth, the fractured media landscape, and the relationship between big money, technology, and democracy. The lengths to which powerful people are willing to go if they think they’re acting on behalf of a righteous cause. The rights and liberties that ordinary people are willing to give up if they’re scared and afraid. These are things that are always interesting, and watching the way that it is gonna be perceived in the world right now, it’s exciting. I think it’s a really interesting time for the show to get out there.
Newman: I hadn’t even thought of the airplane thing. I mean…
Oppenheim: I dunno if there’s a cyber element to these particular instances, but you never know. You never know.
Newman: Yeah, God…
Thanks to Eric Newman and Noah Oppenheim for taking the time to talk about Netflix’s Zero Day.
