{"id":121859,"date":"2025-11-04T20:05:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-04T20:05:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/121859\/"},"modified":"2025-11-04T20:05:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-04T20:05:07","slug":"instagram-ai-zendaya-jay-kelly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/121859\/","title":{"rendered":"Instagram, AI, Zendaya, Jay Kelly"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\t\u201cThis never felt like a story about a movie star to me,\u201d George Clooney<\/a> says as we sit down at West Hollywood\u2019s Sunset Tower hotel to record an episode of The Hollywood Reporter\u2019s Awards Chatter podcast \u2014 on which he last guested in 2019<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 ahead of the release of Jay Kelly<\/a>, the new Noah Baumbach dramedy in which Clooney plays the title character, a movie star experiencing an existential crisis. \u201cThis felt like a story about almost every one of us who has had to balance work and life.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tEven so, Jay Kelly \u2014 which has been a hit on the fall film fest circuit en route to its theatrical release on Nov. 14 and Netflix debut on Dec. 5, and for which Clooney could earn the fifth acting Oscar nomination of his distinguished career \u2014\u00a0raises a lot of interesting questions about stardom. And few people alive today are more qualified to discuss the subject than Clooney, who has been an A-lister for more than three decades.<\/p>\n

\n\tLike Jay Kelly, Clooney was born in Kentucky, came to Hollywood, caught a few breaks and became a critical and commercial darling sometimes described as \u201cthe last movie star,\u201d despite a handful of contrarians occasionally accusing him of playing himself. Unlike Kelly, Clooney hasn\u2019t shown a blatant disregard for the people around him \u2014\u00a0he is widely known in the business to be highly considerate to his \u201cteam,\u201d generous to his friends (once gifting 14 of them checks for $1 million), attentive to his parents and, after many years as a bachelor, a loving husband and father.<\/p>\n

\n\tBaumbach says he wrote the role of Kelly for Clooney and would not have made the film if Clooney had declined it \u2014 something that many other movie stars might have done, out of fear that the public might assume that a character that resembled them in so many ways \u2014 right down to the film featuring a montage of Kelly\u2019s past work that consists of clips of Clooney\u2019s past work\u00a0\u2014 was actually a reflection of them in all ways.<\/p>\n

\n\tClooney said that \u201cwasn\u2019t really a consideration\u201d for him, in part because he is comfortable in his own skin and in part because Baumbach only added some of those details after Clooney signed on. \u201cHe added the Kentucky thing and a couple of those things\u00a0as we were shooting. He kept looking at my life and adding things, and I was like, \u2018Take it easy.’\u201d As for the montage featuring clips of his own films? \u201cI was shocked by that,\u201d he admits, but he was not upset. He has learned to take these sorts of things in stride. \u201cWhen I did Up in the Air, there were all these conversations about how [the character] was very similar to me, and it was \u2014\u00a0there were things that I had said like, \u2018I don\u2019t ever want to get married again\u2019 and all those kind of things.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHow did Clooney avoid becoming like Jay Kelly in his own life? He insists it\u2019s all about when and how they each became famous. Of Kelly, Clooney says, \u201cHe was famous too young. He\u2019s been surrounded by a team of people who have said \u2018yes\u2019 to him \u2026 He\u2019s not an evil guy; he\u2019s just oblivious.\u201d Clooney, however, was already 33 by the time he became famous, old enough to have experienced a normal life first \u2014\u00a0something that he says had not been the case for his own late aunt, the singer Rosemary Clooney, whose resulting troubles he observed up close.<\/p>\n

\n\tAlso, Marshall McLuhan famously said, \u201cThe medium is the message.\u201d And Clooney agrees. \u201cI got famous from television, not from movies,\u201d he emphasizes. \u201cYou watched me at home, and you could make me talk or not talk with the remote, and you\u2019d watch me in your underwear, and you knew me personally, so I was very much accessible in that way.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn those days, the worlds of film and TV were much more segregated, and it was virtually unheard of for someone who had first become famous as a TV star to subsequently become a movie star. Clooney was no exception, at first: \u201cI\u2019d done five or six films while I was doing ER, some very good ones, that didn\u2019t succeed \u2014\u00a0Out of Sight didn\u2019t succeed, Three Kings didn\u2019t succeed \u2014\u00a0and so the big question was, \u2018Am I going to make it in the movies?\u2019 And the answer was no \u2014\u00a0until I left ER. The next two movies I had were sort of a perfect combination of The Perfect Storm \u2014\u00a0which was a big hit having nothing to do with me, but listen, I took a lot of shit for Batman & Robin, so I\u2019ll take credit for the big wave \u2014\u00a0and O Brother, Where Art Thou?, which was a critical hit.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter that, he was off to the races, starring in hits like 2001\u2019s Ocean\u2019s Eleven and its 2004 and 2007 sequels but far more often in art house fare, including 2005\u2019s Syriana, for which he won a best supporting actor Oscar; 2007\u2019s Michael Clayton, 2009\u2019s Up in the Air and 2011\u2019s The Descendants, each of which brought him best actor Oscar nominations. He also began writing, directing and producing quality films, some of which he appeared in, others not \u2014\u00a0he received best director and best original screenplay Oscar noms for 2005\u2019s Good Night, and Good Luck, in which he played a supporting part; a best adapted screenplay Oscar nom for 2011\u2019s The Ides of March, in which he also played a supporting part; and he won a best picture Oscar for producing 2012\u2019s Argo, in which he did not appear at all.<\/p>\n

\n\tIncidentally, he says that he did want to play the leads in Good Night, and Good Luck and Argo, but came to realize that he should not. \u201cI wrote Good Night, and Good Luck to play Murrow,\u201d he says, referring to TV newsman Edward R. Murrow, \u201cand we did a table reading and I looked at Grant [Heslov, his best friend and co-writer on that project] and said, \u2018I don\u2019t have the gravitas to play that character yet.\u2019 I was too young, which was really disappointing because I really wanted to play the part. David Strathairn, of course, knocked it out of the park. But I still had to be in the film to keep the financing.\u201d As for Argo? \u201cI was supposed to play the lead in Argo, but when [Ben Affleck] came on to direct it, he said, \u2018Yeah, I\u2019d like to play that part.\u2019 And I was like, \u2018Shit.’\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSince Clooney last was on this podcast \u2014 back when he was promoting 2019\u2019s Catch-22, a Hulu limited series on which he was an executive producer and director, and in which he also played a supporting role \u2014\u00a0he has been working nonstop. He directed three films \u2014\u00a02020\u2019s The Midnight Sky, 2021\u2019s The Tender Bar and 2023\u2019s The Boys in the Boat) \u2014\u00a0the first of which he also starred in. He also starred in a rom-com opposite Julia Roberts (2022\u2019s Ticket to Paradise) and a heist film opposite Brad Pitt (2024\u2019s Wolfs). Thirty nine years after he last acted on stage, he made his Broadway debut playing the aforementioned Murrow in a theatrical adaptation of Good Night, and Good Luck, garnering a best actor in a play Tony nom. And he made Jay Kelly, of which he is obviously immensely proud.<\/p>\n

\n\t* * *<\/p>\n

\n\tGeorge Clooney\u2019s thoughts\u2026<\/p>\n

\n\tOn social media<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI talk to kids all the time. I talk to kids at SAG and things, and they\u2019re all on Instagram and everything. And when I was directing and I was casting, and it was between two actors, the casting director and the studio would come to me and go, \u2018Well, she\u2019s got 175,000 followers on Instagram, and the other girl\u2019s got 30,000.\u2019 Those were literally the discussions we had. And I said to all these actors, \u2018Get the fuck off of it. Get off of all of it. Because if you\u2019re not on it, you have nothing to be compared to.\u2019 And that access, I get it \u2014\u00a0you can monetize it, you can drink a certain kind of water and they\u2019ll pay you 10 grand, and fair enough, I get it, I understand it. But trying to maintain a career and answer all of the questions that every individual has for you, it\u2019s diminishing your ability to be bigger than life. It\u2019s inevitable, and I\u2019m sort of swimming upstream, and I don\u2019t think that there\u2019s much you can do about it, but I do think it\u2019s better to not be as available.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOn AI<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s very disturbing, some of the stuff you\u2019re seeing. \u2026 I\u2019ve seen stuff with me in it that\u2019s pretty disturbing, stuff that I \u2018said\u2019 that I never said, telling, you know, great stories about Hitler and stuff like that, where you just go, \u2018Jesus Christ.\u2019 But I will say that AI is gonna have the same problem that Hollywood has always had, which is it\u2019s still hard to find a movie star.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOn younger stars who impress him<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI think Zendaya \u2026 can do television, she can do commercials, she can do movies, she seems to have that ability to rise above it. I think Glen Powell is doing interesting stuff as a young actor; he\u2019s kind of hitting around the time I hit, and he seems to want to direct and produce and write and do all of those things with a little bit of humor about himself, which I think is an element that\u2019s important if you look back. I\u2019m not ready to call it all dead yet.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOn failure versus regret<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cYou can live with failure. What you cannot live with is regret. You can\u2019t live with that road that you didn\u2019t try when you think \u2018that could have been something special,\u2019 because you can\u2019t go back, and that is toxic. And that, to me, is something that I happily don\u2019t have in my life. If I get hit by a bus when I walk outside after this interview, there\u2019s not one person who knows me or who\u2019s been around me that wouldn\u2019t think, \u2018Well, he pretty much got everything you could get out of it.\u2019 I\u2019m the most successful version of where I started, cutting tobacco for $3 an hour, that I ever thought I\u2019d be, and not just in work as an actor, but also in life. I have a beautiful wife and wonderful children and great friends and a great family. And I\u2019ve worked at those things. But I also had made sure that wherever there was a fork in the road, I took the one that I thought was the riskiest and not the safest. And it worked out. It could have not. I could live with that. What I couldn\u2019t live with is having not taken that road.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cThis never felt like a story about a movie star to me,\u201d George Clooney says as we sit…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":121860,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[72582,72583,321,93,11196,61,60,37415],"class_list":{"0":"post-121859","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-thrpodcasts","9":"tag-awards-chatter-podcast","10":"tag-celebrities","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-george-clooney","13":"tag-ie","14":"tag-ireland","15":"tag-jay-kelly"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121859","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121859"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121859\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/121860"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}