Getty/David Dee Delgado
"Raging Bull" star Robert De Niro may play tough on the big screen, but in real life, employees of his business portrayed him as aloof and out of touch with his finances — and, they claim, his executive assistant Graham Chase Robinson was really the bare-knuckle brawler in the office.
De Niro and Robinson are currently going 12 rounds in front of Judge Lewis Liman in Manhattan Federal court in a dueling lawsuit and counterclaim.
She claims that he's an old-school sexist who overworked and underpaid her, all the while demeaning her with menial tasks and referring to her as his "office wife." Robinson, 41, was paid $300,000 a year when she left DeNiro's Canal Productions, Inc. She's suing her former boss for $41 million.
The "Goodfellas" actor, on the other hand, says that Robinson ran his company like a prima donna, racking up thousands of dollars in taxi and Uber charges, using his credit card for groceries, hotels and expensive meals and then stealing five million frequent flier miles when she quit in 2019.
It was the Canal Production support staff caught between these two scenery chewers who aired the company's dirty laundry on Wednesday.
DeNiro's company appeared to be little more than a personal concierge service for the actor, with no written policies for everything from workplace harassment to unused vacation days and expensing meals and taxis, the court heard yesterday.
Robinson locked horns with other workers at DeNiro's company, from the accountant to the handyman, insisting on being involved in every aspect of the actor's life, the employees said.
"Chase was a better enforcer," Canal handyman Michael Kaplan testified on Wednesday. "She didn't mind being the bad cop to get him what he wanted."
Robinson — who started with the company in 2008 when she was 25, making $175,000 a year — eventually became the vice president, insisting on overseeing everything from the employee health plan to the actor's Upper East Side townhouse renovation, according to testimony.
"I observed her yell at all Canal employees while I worked there," Kaplan told the court. He said that everyone eventually faced her ire, but she was especially hard on the assistants.
"She would yell at them, go nuts, slam doors, make their lives a living hell," he said. "She was not very politically correct." The entire staff was happy to see her go, he said.
"It was very stressful because of her micromanagement. She became a terrorist. I became the armchair therapist for whoever she was after," he said.
Assistant Sabrina Weeks-Brittan, who started out making $65,000 a year, testified that Robinson forced her to return to New York from Thanksgiving in Chicago with her family during a snowstorm. Weeks-Brittan said she could only find a flight to Washington, D.C., so she took a $350 Uber ride to the city to open the office at 9:30 a.m. the next day, although no one else came in.
When she asked to be reimbursed for her Uber ride from D.C., Robinson agreed to let her expense half of it, she said.
Meanwhile, Robinson took Ubers and taxis everywhere, three Canal employees testified.
"She laughed at the idea of taking the subway," Kaplan said.
Weeks-Brittan also testified that Robinson referred to her and another female employee as "the girls," a moniker that DeNiro parrotted when he heard her say it.
"Chase was extremely difficult to work with and I was glad that she was no longer with the company," Weeks-Brittan said.
Robinson's time at the center of the "Taxi Driver" star's orbit came to an abrupt end in April 2019 after it became clear that his new girlfriend Tiffany Chen did not care for her.
"She thought she was your wife," Chen wrote to DeNiro in an email submitted in court testimony. "I saw it from the beginning. I told you."
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When Chen suspected a mold issue at their newly renovated Upper East Side townhouse was making her sick, she took Robinson to task for not taking the issue seriously, the court heard.
Robinson quit soon after and walked away with expensive electronics, goods and five million sky miles, according to DeNiro's lawyer Tom Harvey.
An ad hoc audit of Robinson's spending by Canal employees after she was gone found that over two years – from May 2017 to June 2019 – she racked up about $32,000 on Ubers, taxis and car services. She spent nearly $9,000 on personal groceries, according to their forensic accounting. And $12,696 on dinners at the fancy Madison Ave. eatery Paola's, according to DeNiro's staff.
Robinson's lawyers pointed out that none of this alleged malfeasance was noticed during the 11 years that she worked there.
The trial continues today, with Chen expected to take the stand. Robinson is also expected to testify this week.
