Jeff Zucker spent years running one of television’s biggest news divisions. This weekend, he stood on the Venice red carpet as an actor, playing himself in A24’s “Primetime.”
The former NBCUniversal Television Group CEO appears in the film, which stars Robert Pattinson as “To Catch a Predator” host Chris Hansen, delivering a line that also gives the movie its title. “I don’t really like your show,” Zucker tells Hansen in the scene. “But America loves it. So I need to move you, ‘To Catch a Predator’ — 9 p.m. Primetime!” Director Lance Oppenheim built the moment as a straight-faced pitch meeting, with Zucker offering Hansen a coveted programming slot opposite ABC’s “Lost.”
Zucker told Variety he agreed to the cameo mostly because no one had asked him to act before. “Because I hadn’t done anything like this and somebody asked so I said yes,” he said, adding that he’s since been renamed “Primetime” by friends amused by the trailer’s reach. Oppenheim said Zucker’s presence was meant to sharpen one of the film’s core arguments about the blurred line between journalism and entertainment in early-2000s network television. “I’m very honored that he did it, in playing a version of himself that was the driver of tasking Chris Hansen and his team to think of the show as a commercial object,” the director said.
The film premiered Saturday at Sala Grande to a nearly eight-minute standing ovation, one of the most sought-after tickets of the festival’s opening weekend. Zucker attended in person, telling reporters on the red carpet that the experience felt surreal. Festival artistic director Alberto Barbera reportedly approached him to congratulate him on his feature film debut.
Zucker’s appearance lands amid a broader dispute over the film’s portrayal of Hansen, who has declined to sign on to promote it and has publicly criticized A24’s handling of his life rights. Zucker, notably, has taken the opposite approach, watching and approving of the finished film. Oppenheim said Zucker’s real cooperation gave the production texture that shaped how the era, and NBC’s programming calculus at the time, appears on screen. “Primetime” opens in theaters nationwide Sept. 25.
