Aleksa Palladino is an American actress and singer, perhaps best known for her lead roles in Manny & Lo, The Adventures of Sebastian Cole, Find Me Guilty, Angela Darmody in the HBO crime series Boardwalk Empire (2010–2011), Mara in Wrong Turn 2: Dead End (2007), Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (2007), The Midnight Swim (2014), Mary Sheeran in The Irishman (2019), and No Man of God (2021). She also played a main role in the second season of the AMC period drama Halt and Catch Fire. From 2007 to 2018, she was one half of the dreampop duo Exitmusic with former husband Devon Church, releasing the albums The Decline of the West (2007), Passage (2012), and The Recognitions (2018).

The Irishman is a 2019 American epic gangster film directed and produced by Martin Scorsese from a screenplay by Steven Zaillian, based on the 2004 book I Heard You Paint Houses by Charles Brandt. It stars Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, and Joe Pesci, with Ray Romano, Bobby Cannavale, Anna Paquin, Stephen Graham, Stephanie Kurtzuba, Jesse Plemons, and Harvey Keitel in supporting roles. The film follows Frank Sheeran, a truck driver who becomes a hitman involved with mobster Russell Bufalino (Pesci) and his crime family before later working for the powerful Teamster Jimmy Hoffa (Pacino). The film marked the ninth collaboration between Scorsese and De Niro, in addition to Scorsese's fourth collaboration with Joe Pesci; his first with Al Pacino; the fourth collaboration between Pacino and De Niro; and the first collaboration between Pacino and Pesci altogether.