For their new movie, Jay Kelly, George Clooney had a special rule on set: he didn\u2019t want the cast referring to Adam Sandler by his nickname \u201cSandman,\u201d in an effort to take the comedian more seriously as an actor.<\/p>\n
At the film\u2019<\/a>s AFI Fest premiere on Thursday, Clooney explained that reasoning to The Hollywood Reporter, saying, \u201cYou get treated the way you treat yourself. This was a different kind of role for Adam, and I wanted to make sure that he wasn\u2019t making fun of his incredible talent. He likes to just deflect and I was like, \u2018You know what, dude, you\u2019re really good in this film and you\u2019re a really good actor and let\u2019s not just make jokes.’\u201d<\/p>\n More from The Hollywood Reporter<\/p>\n In the Netflix movie, Clooney plays movie star Jay Kelly<\/a>, who has a sudden wake-up call about his life and goes on a trip through Europe with his devoted manager Ron (Sandler).<\/p>\n Sandler joked in response to Clooney\u2019s rule, \u201cI still call myself the Sandman; he can\u2019t stop me,\u201d but he did appreciate the gesture. \u201cHe just is very protective over me. He\u2019s a really nice guy,\u201d he continued of Clooney. \u201cWe would do all these scenes together and we\u2019d get deep together and he\u2019d say, \u2018I just want people to recognize that\u2019 and I\u2019d say, \u2018I\u2019m OK, I like just working hard,\u2019 and he\u2019d say, \u2018No.\u2019 He\u2019s very nice, he\u2019s trying to look out for me.\u201d<\/p>\n Noah Baumbach, along with co-writer Emily Mortimer, wrote the role specifically for Sandler, as the actor explained the film as less a Hollywood-set story but for \u201ceverybody who works and tries to do the best they can at work and the sacrifice that takes on your family and on yourself; things you miss out on when you jump into something and you\u2019re deep into something and that stuff\u2019s going on over there \u2014 you tend to go what\u2019s more important, this or that? And it\u2019s a struggle.\u201d<\/p>\n Greta Gerwig plays Sandler\u2019s wife in the film, and along with \u201cGreta\u2019s son and my daughter, we were one nice family together,\u201d Sandler added of their characters. \u201cGreta was fantastic; Greta was so nice to my daughter Sadie \u2014 they did a lot of scenes together and they got very close.\u201d<\/p>\n Baumbach<\/a>, who is married to Gerwig in real life, said he identified \u201cfairly early\u201d that she would play the role: \u201cI basically said to Greta, \u2018Who are you going to play?’\u201d He confirmed that she has early dibs on parts, joking, \u201cI mean, she couldn\u2019t play Jay Kelly or Ron, but she could play pretty much anyone else.\u201d<\/p>\n Jay Kelly hits select theaters on Nov. 14 and starts streaming on Netflix Dec. 5.<\/p>\n Best of The Hollywood Reporter<\/p>\n Sign up for THR’s Newsletter<\/a>. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For their new movie, Jay Kelly, George Clooney had a special rule on set: he didn\u2019t want the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":252481,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[16763,236,88,24194,120608,44084,217,2816],"class_list":["post-252480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-adam-sandler","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-george-clooney","tag-greta-gerwig","tag-jay-kelly","tag-netflix","tag-the-hollywood-reporter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=252480"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252480\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/252481"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=252480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=252480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=252480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}