George Clooney got everything he could have wanted in the teaser trailer for Noah Baumbach‘s Jay Kelly. The actor fittingly plays an actor in the titular role — but one who doesn’t know what comes after fame and fortune. “Are you running to something, or from something?” his manager Ron (Adam Sandler) asks, to which Jay Kelly responds, “Yes.”
Throughout the preview, Jay Kelly feels disconnected, wondering, “How can I play people when I don’t see people?” He barely sees himself, he admits. “I think I’m always alone,” he tells someone who insists he’s never alone. Being “just an actor that got famous” is a less complicated way of interrogating his reality than actually coming to terms with it. “You know how difficult it is to be yourself?” he asks.
Jay Kelly follows the fictional movie star and his manager as they traverse through Europe. “Along the way, both men are forced to confront the choices they’ve made, the relationships with their loved ones, and the legacies they’ll leave behind,” a synopsis of the film reads.
The film arrives in select theaters on Nov. 14 and begins streaming on Netflix on Dec. 5. Written by Noah Baumbach and Emily Mortimer, Jay Kelly is the first directorial release from Baumbach since 2022’s White Noise and his first as a writer since the 2023 blockbuster Barbie.
Jay Kelly also stars Laura Dern, Billy Crudup, Riley Keough, Grace Edwards, Stacy Keach, Jim Broadbent, Patrick Wilson, Eve Hewson, Greta Gerwig, Alba Rohrwacher, Josh Hamilton, Lenny Henry, Emily Mortimer, Nicôle Lecky, Thaddea Graham, Isla Fisher, Louis Partridge, and Charlie Rowe.
“Movie stars are our avatars. They are people that we invest in and project onto and live through,” Baumbach told Vanity Fair. “And a movie star needed to play the movie star. That was in the DNA of what this thing should be: What if a movie star was essentially playing one, and reflecting back our own vulnerabilities and our own questions about life? What would that mean? I don’t know that I knew exactly, but it seemed interesting.”
“It’s all the things that Noah has loved his whole life and have meant so much to him,” Mortimer added. “He can embody that character in a way, I do think. And once he started to do that, then I could join in.”
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