Robert De Niro in talks to play Reese Witherspoon's intern

By Mike Vago | November 11, 2013 | 8:05pm

Aux Features Film

Nancy Meyers—who directed Jack Nicholson and Diane Keaton in Something's Gotta Give, Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin in It's Complicated, and wrote Martin's Father Of The Bride movies—is aiming her Aging Star Rehabilitation Program towards Robert De Niro. DeNiro, well inured to humiliating himself for money on a routine basis, is in talks to star as the title character in The Intern, a comedy about a retirement-age man who takes an internship at a successful fashion web site. Because if there's one segment of the population that understands today's fashion, it's retirement-age men.

Anyway, De Niro's intern eventually bonds with the owner of the website, in a role that was originally tipped for Tina Fey back when The Intern was first announced (right alongside the similar The Internship), but which is now attached to Reese Witherspoon. For fun, you can pretend Witherspoon is playing her Legally Blonde character embarking on a second career, and De Niro is a very mellowed-out Travis Bickle.