“Zero Day” Cast Reveals How AOC, the Clintons and Other Political Figures Influenced Their Characters (Exclusive)

A modern-day political thriller, Netflix's Zero Day tells the story of a beloved and former U.S. president whose reputation is questioned after he's tasked with leading a government-sanctioned investigation into a national cyber attack.

Told over six episodes, the gripping limited series starring Angela Bassett, Connie Britton, Jesse Plemons and Robert De Niro meshes fact with fiction to tell this captivating and frightening life-like story about terrorism, truth, control and oversight. According to Netflix, it was, in fact, inspired by stories co-creator Eric Newman heard from journalists reporting on the country's relationship with what's real or fake.

While the inciting incident for the series is not real, Newman tells PEOPLE that took inspiration from "this crisis of truth that has gone on, not just in America, but elsewhere." Although he says that "we never identify who's who in this story," the cast shares how they drew inspiration from various real-life political figures in their portrayals of their characters, with De Niro, who plays former President George Mullen, explaining that they drew from "compilation of leaders and people."    

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As described by Netflix, Mullen is a popular one-term president who is pulled out of retirement by current President Evelyn Mitchell (Bassett, 66) to lead the Zero Day commission following the devastating cyber attack.

Newman tells PEOPLE he "read quite a bit about Lyndon B. Johnson and some of the more recorded post presidencies" when writing the series, while De Niro, 81, says drew from real-life "interviews, speeches, press conferences where [these leaders] were put on the spot by certain questions." He says he watched to see how "they'd deal with them, how they sidestepped them."

"That helped immensely for me," the actor continues, adding that he pulled from his experiences "just meeting people over the years." 

As for Mullen's dynamic with his wife, Sheila Mullen (Joan Allen), a former first lady and nominee to the federal bench, Bill and Hillary Clinton served as a reference point. Director Lesli Linka Glatter "talked to me about this as a partnership: It’s Bill and Hillary," Allen, 68, told Vanity Fair before explaining to PEOPLE that the two married politicians served as "a benchmark, or just kind of an indicator of this kind of relationship."

"It's a partnership," she tells PEOPLE. "That was what was most important to Lesli and to me that the relationships between Sheila and George feel equal. That they are each other's best advisors and that they trust each other that much. And so that was kind of the standard that Lesli wanted to emphasize." 

Played by Lizzy Caplan, George and Sheila's daughter, Alexandra Mullen, is a congresswoman from New York who is having to navigate her own politics with her father's legacy in The White House.

While "pretty deliberate in not making any of these characters easily traceable to one specific real-life person," Caplan, 42, says, she pulled from a "grab bag" of inspiration. "There are vague shades of A.O.C. [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez], but there's also shades of Chelsea Clinton and the Bush daughters," she explains.

Matthew Modine, meanwhile, says he "wouldn't wanna [call out] any of them by name," but in order to portray the antagonistic and outspoken House Speaker Richard Dreyer the actor, 65, treated it like "I was a witch making a brew." He continues, saying, "I threw a little bit of this one, a little bit of that one, stirred it up and then put the mask on."

Related: Angela Bassett Says the Door Is 'Open' For Connie Britton to Return to 9-1-1 (Exclusive)

Dan Stevens plays one of the more divisive characters, Evan Green, the calculating host of a popular political TV show who is often critical of George's time in The White House as well as the investigation. The 42-year-old actor tells PEOPLE that he was inspired by "so many of these podcasters, vodcasters. You know, guys who preach from their studios to their particular choirs."

"They exist in all countries now and on all sides of the political spectrum. There were a couple of probably recognizable ones in there," he continues, teasing potential one-to-one comparisons. "But I looked far and wide at all the different kinds of tropes of these guys and tried to create something that was a little bit original but still just as annoying.

Rounding out the all-star cast for Zero Day is Plemons, 36, as George's former aide and fixer, Roger Carlson; Plemons' former Friday Night Lights costar, Britton, 57, as George's former chief of staff, Valerie Whitesell; Bill Camp as CIA Director Jeremy Lasch; Gaby Hoffmann as the controversial Silicon Valley billionaire Monica Kidder; and Clark Gregg as political provocateur Robert Lyndon — all characters navigating their own agendas in what Newman says is a show about the fight for truth over untruth "based on how we wish it was more than or ever has been."

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Zero Day is now streaming on Netflix.

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