Drena De Niro believes in a mother’s intuition.
The actress remembers the morning of July 2, 2023, and how she felt “completely distressed, and I had no idea why.
“I woke up, and I was just physically a mess. I couldn’t concentrate … I was so worked up,” she told Page Six in an exclusive interview from her Tribeca home.
Drena, whose dad is actor Robert De Niro, felt so high-strung that she decided to lie back down while calming music played. “And that’s when the doorbell rang.”
It was an NYPD detective who came to tell her that her only child, Leandro DeNiro Rodriguez, had died of a drug overdose, just shy of his 20th birthday.
“This detective stood there, and the whole world as I knew it collapsed,” Drena said.
As for the officers who had to tell her she’d lost her only child, she added, “There’s no salary I can imagine that could make that…you have to do that because you care.”
Leandro’s lifeless body had been discovered sitting in a chair in a Financial District apartment that afternoon, with a white powdery substance and drug paraphernalia nearby.
It was later confirmed that he had died of an accidental fentanyl overdose.
Last month, five alleged drug dealers were arrested on federal charges for allegedly selling fentanyl-laced opioid pills that killed three people — including Leandro and 19-year-old Akira Stein, the daughter of Blondie guitarist Chris Stein.
Sophia Haley Marks, 20, an alleged drug dealer known as the “Percocet Princess,” was separately charged with being the person who sold Leandro the pills he overdosed on.
Drena said that the arrests were “really strange. It’s so bittersweet because you don’t feel any happier.
“I’m hoping they do get some justice. If you’re going to sell drugs to young people, it doesn’t matter whether you made it, whether you know or didn’t know, you’re taking a chance.”
After a moment’s pause, she added, “I’m not interested in ruining some 24-year-old’s life.”
She was not unaware of her son’s drug use — and says that TikTok, the pandemic and fentanyl were a terrible trio that morphed into a deadly tsunami that trapped Leandro.
“There was a change in him that was so fast,” Drena said. Before getting hooked on opioids, he “liked to smoke weed, he liked to party and have a good time, but he got messed up so fast that I knew something wasn’t right here, and I knew it had something to do with what he was doing on the internet.”
Before his death, the had been “talking about rehab.” In fact, Leandro had briefly been in one before, but “it did a terrible disservice to him.
“That was very sad to me because he wanted help,” Drena said. “He knew he was over his head. I don’t think he even knew why. I think he had been exposed to much harder drugs that he didn’t know about.”
Leandro’s death happened just two months after Stein passed away at her family’s downtown apartment, having taken fentanyl-laced pills allegedly bought from men who had sold her drugs multiple times in the previous six months — leading to at least one non-fatal overdose.
Drena, who shared Leandro with her former partner Carlos Mare Rodriguez, an artist known for the graffiti tag Mare139, confirmed their son’s death in a heartbreaking Instagram post.
“My beautiful sweet angel . I have loved you beyond words or description from the moment I felt you in my belly .You have been my joy my heart and all that was ever pure and real in my life,” she wrote.
Drena went on to say that Leandro was “so deeply loved and appreciated” and wished “that love alone could have saved you.”
At the time, her famous father released a statement through his rep.
“I’m deeply distressed by the passing of my beloved grandson Leo,” Robert De Niro said. “We’re greatly appreciative of the condolences from everyone. We ask that we please be given privacy to grieve our loss of Leo.”
The Oscar winner adopted Drena in 1976 after marrying her mom, actress Diahnne Abbott. The couple went on to have a son, Raphael, before divorcing in 1988.
With Leandro, Drena said, “My dad got to have the … experience of just being a grandfather with him. He was just this pure soul.”
She lights up when asked to describe her late son.
“He was just an amazing kid, he was so smart,” she told Page Six. “We were extremely close because really it was the first time in my life that I got to have an identity that had nothing to do with my father, or ‘I’m the this’ of someone else — all of a sudden, you have this relationship in your life with someone who knows the best of you, the worst of you.”
After Leandro died, she said, “I didn’t think I would survive.” She remembers going to his funeral and “feeling like I didn’t want to live. And then before I knew it, it was all over the press.”
The death of Robert De Niro’s grandson was big news.
“It was really painful and shocking and violating for his story to go so viral,” Drena confessed, “to hear people’s horrible thoughts.
“But a part of me was like, ‘He’s not going to be some horrible sound bite. I’m going to make sure you know who this kid is and you’re going to know about all these other parents who are losing their kids.’”
So she established the Leandro De Niro Rodriguez Foundation “to raise awareness” — fentanyl is the leading cause of drug fatalities — and “offer love and empathy to young people struggling with addiction and mental health.”
And, Drena added, she wants “help prevent other families from ever having to know this pain.”
She laughs when she says she had no idea how to start a foundation — and admits that “it was hard in this political climate. People didn’t want me in the space because of my father’s views.”
The “Goodfellas” star is a staunch opponent of President Trump. However, Drena said, she works with parents with all political views and from all over the socio-economic strata.
Her goal: To “get people off this view of ‘If you’re this, you’re anti-that,’ and get us back to critical thinking.”
A year and a half after her son’s death, Drena passionately believes that Leandro is watching over their family and guiding them.
A recent visit to Rome to meet Pope Leo XIV with her father convinced her that Leandro is by her side.
“It was so amazing,” she recalled. “Every time [the pope] came in the room, the thing that we’re told to wear on our heads [a mantilla] kept falling off.” She is sure that Leandro had something to do with it, “because he had a big sense of humor, very free, he was a fun kid, he was always messing around.
“And also, of all the popes we’re going to meet — Pope Leo!”
That’s not to say Drena isn’t racked by feelings of guilt and regret, but she chooses to forge ahead and find something to live for following her son’s death.
“You have to find something that gives your purpose. I really do believe that our kids up there have a huge hand in it.”
If you are or someone you care about is affected by substance abuse, call SAMHSA’s National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).
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