By the time you get to the end of Zero Day’s first episode, you’d be forgiven for assuming the show was written very recently, with a clear intention to model itself on the American political scene’s current main characters. De Niro’s Mullen is tapped to lead a Patriot Act–style commission in response to the terrorist attack, resisting pressure to pin it on Russia given current relations and the nature of the cyberwarfare. His perspective gets muddied as he starts showing signs of cognitive decline, recalling the fierce debate surrounding Joe Biden’s candidacy for reelection before he took himself off the ballot.
From there, more parallels emerge. Mullen’s daughter, Alexandra (Lizzy Caplan), is a relatively progressive member of Congress whose popularity and forthrightness on Instagram signals her as a rising, AOC-esque star. His chief adversary, meanwhile, is Evan Green (Dan Stevens), an inflammatory basement-dwelling commentator clearly inspired by the likes of Tucker Carlson and Ben Shapiro. The sitting US president Mitchell is portrayed by Angela Bassett, notable in the wake of Americans again rejecting the chance to elect the first female president in Kamala Harris.
“We did not expect Biden’s cognitive issues to become a campaign issue. We did not expect a Black woman to become the candidate,” Newman says. “If anything, in my mind, [President Mitchell] was more based on Michelle Obama or something.”
