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ver the course of 30-plus years, director Lesli Linka Glatter has racked up an impressive and diverse list of prestigious film, network, premium cable and streaming television dramas, including Homeland, Love and Death, The Morning Show, The Walking Dead, Masters of Sex, Mad Men, The Good Wife, The West Wing, NYPD Blue and Twin Peaks. In doing so, she's shattered the glass ceiling for women in the industry and became one of the most in-demand television directors/producers working today. Her latest show is Zero Day, a taut political thriller starring Robert De Niro as a former U.S. president, who's tasked with investigating a catastroph- ic 'Zero-Day' cyberattack. It marks De Niro's first leading role in a TV series, and the legendary actor is joined by a large ensemble cast that includes Lizzy Caplan, Jesse Plemons, Angela Bassett and Connie Britton. Behind the scenes, Glatter collaborated with DP John Conroy and editors Ben Lester, Hugo Diaz and Jon Otazua. Here, in an exclusive interview with Post, Glatter, the current DGA president, four-time Emmy nominee and DGA Award winner, talks about making the hit show, working with De Niro and her love of post. You have done so many great shows. What was the appeal of this one? "I was sent the pilot script and imme- diately responded to it. It is a political, paranoid conspiracy thriller, totally based on research, and it felt so real. I was on the edge of my seat as I was reading it, and I thought, 'I must tell the story,' especially because the themes are about what is truth in a post-truth world. It felt just very pertinent to the time we're living in, and the characters were layered and complicated." It was quite a coup getting De Niro. What did he bring to the show? "Incredible commitment, veracity. I have to say I was a bit intimidated at first. You're working with a legend and as I got to know him, he is just a wonderful collaborator, and the added plus, which I didn't know, is he has a wonderful sense of humor. So, he was great to work with. Very prepared." And unlike a lot of shows, you directed every episode. "I did, and I think as it was De Niro's first time doing a lead role for television, doing a show with the usual change of director on each episode would've been a challenge. I think it was much easier to wrap his mind around the single director plan on this huge project. And we had a lot of technical challenges, as we were cross-boarding all six hours. So, often in a single day's shoot, we were jumping around from episode to episode, and to keep track of that on an emotional level and a plot level is really challeng- ing. That was something I had to be on top of all the time. And we had so many locations in New York and D.C., and all the logistics to deal with. It was a huge undertaking." Tell us about collaborating with your DP, John Conroy. "The maestro! I loved every second of collaborating with him. He shot part of HBO's Love and Death for me, and we were supposed to do a huge limited series for Amazon when COVID struck, and we prepped the show and never shot it, so when Zero came around, I immediately picked up the phone and he was like the first call. As a director, I had the dream team of a cast and the dream team of a crew, and we shot for 103 days, so it's like shooting three back-to-back movies. And we had some very complex setups. We were shooting in one set that was four layers of glass and not one thing was on a gimbal. And they came up with a meth- od of how to shoot in that set, so that we could move the camera everywhere. They built these black boards that fit in every window, so there would never be any reflection behind us, so it was just a masterful invention of how to shoot in many glass boxes." How early did you start integrating post and visual effects? "Very early on. I was working with Ben Lester, an editor that I had worked with before on Love and Death, who is just fantastic. We were talking daily, which I think is really important. Our post producer was Tim King, and we did all the sound work and mix at Signature Post, and we were based at Harbor Pictures for the DI with colorist Roman Hankewycz. He's an amazing colorist, and he and John were very connected, and talking all the time. They set the look and feel of the show, so when we were seeing dailies or frame grabs, you've got a really good sense of what the look and feel was going to be." You had three editors in the end. How did that work? "Ben Lester came to the set several times, and we did all the cuts together, and then we were pressed for time, as we had to meet a firm delivery date. It was my first experience with Netflix, LESLI LINKA GLATTER — ZERO DAY ASSEMBLING A TOP-TIER TEAM FOR NETFLIX'S POLITICAL THRILLER O DIRECTOR'S CHAIR www.postmagazine.com 10 POST MAY/JUNE 2025 BY IAIN BLAIR Glatter on-set during the 103-day shoot.