You might think stepping onto set with a legendary talent like Robert De Niro would be intimidating for any actor, much less a pre-teen kid taking on the very first role of their career. Even Bobby Cannavale cowed slightly when asked about working with his famous co-star at a recent panel for their film Ezra, hosted by the Tribeca Film Festival and producing studio Bleecker Street. “I’m embarrassed and I don’t want to embarrass him, but it’s incredible,” the veteran actor said during the Q&A, which was attended by The A.V. Club.
But breakout star William A. Fitzgerald, who plays the film’s titular, autistic 11-year-old, had no such qualms. “This is your first acting role. How did you prepare?” the moderator asked, to which Fitzgerald responded: “Well obviously I read the script.” When the crowd laughed, he added without missing a beat, “If you think that’s funny, you should see De Niro getting roasted at the Oscars!” De Niro, sitting beside his young co-star, seemed incredibly amused to be the butt of the joke, but Fitzgerald still added, “My parents are gonna kill me for saying that.”
The film, which premieres May 31, is a sensitive tale of two divorced parents’ (Cannavale and Rose Byrne) different approaches to raising their neurodivergent son. It’s also the story of Cannavale’s character, Max, struggling to reconcile his relationship with his own complicated father, played with typical unhinged flair by De Niro.
“Whether someone’s neurodivergent or not, that’s really a metaphor for what everyone feels in life—wanting to conform, wanting to fit certain societal norms,” director Tony Goldwyn, who also appears in the movie, said at the panel. “If people can watch this movie and say whether I’m a member of the autistic community, whether I have a child who is, it really doesn’t matter because we can all relate... It’s all of our superpower when we accept, ‘oh, we’re not supposed to be like everyone else.’”
De Niro and Cannavale were drawn to the script for similar reasons to the ones Goldwyn laid out, and cited their respective experiences with fatherhood as an inspiration as well. Not so much for Fitzgerald. “This might be a little embarrassing, but I was trying to start a YouTube channel and I thought this would be a good way to start,” he said. Watch out for this one, folks. He’s going to be a star.