George Clooney makes Broadway debut, telling the story of pioneering journalist Edward R. Murrow
Yes, in film, but even more so in theater, a sense of timing is essential. At age 63, George Clooney makes his Broadway debut this month, starring in an adaptation of the 2005 Oscar-nominated movie, "Good Night, and Good Luck." Clooney co-wrote both the original screenplay and this play, telling the story of pioneering journalist Edward R. Murrow, who took on strong-arming Sen. Joseph McCarthy, all while withstanding pressure not to make waves at his own news network—this network—CBS. The plot revolves around themes of truth, intimidation, and courage in the face of corporate media. It is set in the 1950s. Clooney always meant for the story to echo today. He just didn't realize how loudly it would.
Deep February, Winter Garden Theater in the heart of Broadway, the set still under construction — George Clooney arrives in character.
Ever the everyman, he doesn't stand on ceremony; he hurdles over it. But now it can be told: Hollywood's famously cool leading man has the jitters.
George Clooney: I mean, look at this place. This is proper old Broadway. And it's exciting to be here, you know? Um --look-- let's not kid ourselves. It's nerve-wracking and there's a million reasons why it's dumb to do.
Jon Wertheim: What do you mean?
George Clooney: Well, it's dumb to do because you're coming out and saying, "Well, let's try to-- get an audience to take this ride with you back to 1954.
The play brings to life the humming CBS newsroom of the 1950s—all typewriters and smoldering cigarettes. Having dyed his hair—upsetting that familiar salt-and-pepper ratio—Clooney plays the protagonist Edward R. Murrow, host of the weekly television news program "See It Now."
Jon Wertheim: You wrote the script to the film more than 20 years ago. You played Fred Friendly.
George Clooney: Yeah.
Jon Wertheim: Murrow's producer. You didn't play Murrow.
George Clooney: No.
Jon Wertheim: Why did you not want to play him?
George Clooney: Murrow had a gravitas to him that at 42 years old I didn't-- I wasn't able to pull off.
Murrow earned his gravitas during World War II, with eyewitness radio dispatches from London amid the Blitz. His trademark signoff doubles as the play's title.
Clooney wrote the story with his longtime friend and creative partner, Grant Heslov.
Jon Wertheim: How does this partnership work? Who's at the keyboard?
George Clooney: Oh, you're at the keyboard. (laugh)
Grant Heslov: He doesn't know how to use a computer. He can barely--
George Clooney: No, I'm like this. I'm the luddite.
They met in LA in the early 80s, when both were struggling actors. Now they run a production company together. (Full disclosure: the three of us collaborated on an unrelated sports documentary out later this year.) Clooney and Heslov conceived of the story of "Good Night, and Good Luck" in the early 2000s, when the U.S. went to war in Iraq.
George Clooney: You know, I just thought it was a good time to talk about when the press held government to account.
A show within a show, the play recreates the historic television face-off between Murrow and Joseph McCarthy, with McCarthy essentially playing himself through archival footage.
At the height of the Red Scare, the Wisconsin senator led a crusade to weed out supposed communist infiltration of the U.S. government.
Murrow and his team overcame the climate of fear and intimidation to expose and help take down McCarthy with measured, fact-based editorials.
Jon Wertheim: Are you guys using McCarthyism as a parable for today?
Grant Heslov: Originally it wasn't for today, today. But it's–this is a story that stands the test of time. I think it's a story that you can keep telling over and over. I don't think it will ever-- thematically get old.
At the table read in a downtown Manhattan studio, Clooney met the cast and wasted no time addressing what he sees as the parallels to today.
George Clooney: When the other three estates fail, when the judiciary and the executive and the legislative branches fail us, the fourth estate has to succeed. Has to succeed - as 60 Minutes is here right now on our first day. (laugh)
Kidding aside, Clooney made the point: these are chilling times for the news media.
George Clooney: ABC has just settled a lawsuit with the Trump administration. And CBS News is in the process …
The process he's talking about: President Trump has lodged a $20 billion lawsuit against CBS, making the unfounded allegation that 60 Minutes engaged in election interference. CBS has since filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit…all this as the network's parent company, Paramount, is trying to close a merger deal, which requires approval from the Trump-appointed chair of the Federal Communications Commission.
George Clooney: We're seeing this idea of using government to scare or fine or use corporations -- to make-- journalists smaller. Governments don't like-- the freedom of the press. They never have. And-- that goes for whether you are a conservative or a liberal or whatever side you're on. They don't like the press.
Jon Wertheim: What does this play tell us about the media's ability or willingness to withstand this kind of pressure?
George Clooney: It's a fight that is for the ages. It will continue. You see it happening at the LA Times. You see it happening at the Washington Post, for god's sake.
George Clooney: Journalism and telling truth to power has to be waged like war is waged. It doesn't just happen accidentally. You know, it takes people saying, we're gonna do these stories and you're gonna have to come after us. And that's the way it is.
When we dropped in on rehearsals, the mood was as light as the material was heavy.
Comedian and producer Ilana Glazer plays CBS news-writer Shirley Wershba.
Jon Wertheim: How is George Clooney doing-- leading a troupe of stage actors?
Ilana Glazer: It's shaky. It's shaky, Jon. It's tough. No, I'm just kidding.
Ilana Glazer: We're all, like, so focused on this material, and it's serious, and we're trying to make it as honest as possible. So George really, like, will-- let the-- the tension release and break the tension with a joke at the right time.
One of Broadway's most in-demand directors, David Cromer, is the man in charge.
Jon Wertheim: Your Murrow character is being portrayed by someone with-- considerable star wattage. What challenge does that present to you?
David Cromer: It doesn't present a challenge. It helps.
Jon Wertheim: Why--
David Cromer: Edward R. Murrow was a star. He was the most-trusted man in America. He had this very serious news show, but he also had this incredibly popular entertainment show, which was on Friday nights. It was called Person to Person…
David Cromer: And he went into Liberace's house. And he went into all these people's houses.
David Cromer: If he were playing Willy Loman, that would be different, you know what I mean--
Jon Wertheim: A smaller figure than Murrow--
David Cromer: If he were playing-- a little man. If he were playing a little man. He's playing a great man. And he's a great man who's playing a great man.
As for the play's setting, Clooney knows his way around a newsroom. His father Nick Clooney was a longtime journalist and anchorman.
George Clooney: When I was 12 years old, my dad was working at WKRC in Cincinnati. I would run the teleprompter. In those days, a teleprompter was-- sheets of paper taped end-to-end with a camera pointed down. And you'd feed them like this, underneath the camera. And my dad would be able to read it on the teleprompter. And then at the commercial they'd say, "Okay, cut three minutes out of that story." And you had at the end of it a paper cutter--
Jon Wertheim: Literally cut--
George Clooney: And you'd just go sh-dunk…
Grant Heslov: You really are old.
George Clooney: I'm old, man.
Clooney says he's running for nothing, but he makes no secret of his politics. A lifelong Democrat, he made news last summer, when he wrote a pointed essay calling on Joe Biden not to seek reelection on account of his age.
Jon Wertheim: Looking back on that, happy you did it?
George Clooney: Yeah. I'll make it kind of easy. I was raised to tell the truth. I had seen-- the president up close for this fundraiser, and I was surprised. And so I feel as if there was-- a lot of profiles in cowardice in my party through all of that. And I was not proud of that. And I also believed I had to tell the truth.
Truth: an increasingly elusive concept…Clooney says that for all the parallels between the play and these convulsive times we live in today, disinformation is one critical distinction….
George Clooney: Here's where I would tell you where we differ from what Murrow was doing. Although McCarthy would try to pose things that-- he'd show up a blank piece of paper and say, "I've got a list of names." Okay, so it was-- that was his version of-- of fake news. We now are at a place where we've found that it's harder and harder and harder to dis-- to discern the truth. Facts are now negotiated.
Jon Wertheim: You and I can agree or disagree, but if we can't reach a consensus that this chair is brown…
George Clooney: Yeah.
Jon Wertheim: We're in trouble.
George Clooney: That's right.
By March, rehearsals had moved into the theater. A big production issue on this day: the prop cigarettes.
George Clooney: The hardest part for me is smoking.
Jon Wertheim: What do you mean?
George Clooney: Well, he smokes a lot. And we smoke a lot in the play. Everybody smokes in the play, so the place is covered in smoke. And smoking in our family's a big, you know, problem. We grew up in Kentucky.
A lotta tobacco farmers. And-- almost all of my family members died of-- of lung cancer. My father's-- sister, Rosemary, died of it. She was a wonderful singer, died of it. And my dad's 91 because he didn't smoke. So smoking has always been-- it's a hard thing to do.
It's easy to forget, George Clooney has been an A-lister for 30 years now.
In 2003, he was a bachelor living with a pet pig when 60 Minutes profiled him.
Jon Wertheim: You were in the Sexiest Man of the Year-- phase.
George Clooney: Sure, that was a big time for me. I was very--
Jon Wertheim: Not-- not that you're not sexy now.
George Clooney: That's okay. I'm not hurt, Jon.
He's married now. His wife and their two kids left the home they keep in Europe to spend this spring run with him in New York. Clooney is also in a different phase of his life professionally.
George Clooney: Look, I'm 63 years old. I'm not trying to compete with 25-year-old leading men. That's not my job. I'm not doing romantic films anymore.
Opening night set for April 3rd, George Clooney's turn on Broadway puts him a few feet from his audience.
Jon Wertheim: They can see you, you-- you can see them too.
George Clooney: I'm not looking at them. I'm putting my wife in the very, very, very back.
Jon Wertheim: You-- you wish you had done this earlier in your career?
George Clooney: I don't know that I could've. I wasn't-- I didn't do the work required to get there.
Jon Wertheim: But I saw the smile when you came out here…
George Clooney: Oh, yeah. It's cool.
Jon Wertheim: and-- looked out here.
George Clooney: --Anybody who would deny that would just be a liar. I mean, there isn't a single actor alive that wouldn't have loved to have, you know, been on Broadway. So that's-- that's the fun of it. It's-- it's trickier the older you get. But why not?
Produced by Nathalie Sommer and Kaylee Tully. Broadcast associates, Elizabeth Germino and Mimi Lamarre. Edited by Sean Kelly.
