Robert De Niro on Watching ‘The Wiggles’ as Daughter Is About to Turn 1! (Exclusive)

“Extra’s” Mona Kosar Abdi caught up with Robert De Niro and Debra Messing to chat about their new movie “The Alto Knights.” 

De Niro also spoke about dad life as he and girlfriend Tiffany Chen get ready to celebrate their daughter Gia turning 1! 

How is he handling the toddler phase? Robert shared, “I’m okay. I watch these children’s shows, toddler shows… ‘The Wiggles,’ ‘Ms. Rachel,’ ‘Blippy,’ and there are others… especially ‘The Wiggles’ at this point.”

Debra added, “My son is turning 21 in a month and he was obsessed with ‘Wiggles’ when he was a little one… They are legends.”

De Niro went on to talk about playing two roles, as dueling 1950s mob bosses Vito Genovese and Frank Costello, in “The Alto Knights."

He noted, "It also would justify doing another gangster movie again... This helped reinforce it for me even more to do it... After 'The Irishman,' I figured, if it's good, if it's really good. And this was potentially good. I thought of it carefully. But the idea of playing the two parts was even more interesting an idea.”

Debra talked about her character Bobbie, who is married to Frank, and how they had an unusual marriage for the era in more than one way. 

“I fell in love with Bobbie,” she said. “They were real people and this was a real couple and I was so intrigued that, first of all, at the turn of the century… she was the only mob boss's wife that was Jewish — that was verboten back then, and it just sort of told me how deep their love must have been for them to go against the tide like that.”

Debra continued, “She wasn't able to have children, which was a very sad thing, and the mob wife usually stays at home and focuses on the kids and knows nothing about what's happening on the other side, and that was not the case with Bobbie. It was a very progressive marriage because they were true partners and that was thrilling for me to see.”

De Niro’s actual dogs were in the movie as Frank and Bobbie’s pups, and he revealed that his girlfriend Tiffany was the one who helped get them cast!

He joked, “I had a little talk with them, and I said, ‘If you get into this film, you gotta behave.’”