When George Clooney was preparing to make his Broadway debut as CBS correspondent Edward R. Murrow in Good Night and Good Luck, he invited him to join him in rehearsals for 60 Minutes. When the cast gathered for the first reading, Clooney spoke about the visionary nature of the story. Although the story is set during the McCarthyism era of the 1950s, it finds parallels with the political pressures news organizations are facing in the second Trump administration.
“When the other three estates fail – the judiciary, the executive branch, the legislative branch – the fourth estate has to succeed,” Clooney said. With that, he pointed his finger directly at the camera of “60 Minutes,” which is owned by the same network that hired Murrow.
But Clooney feels CBS is not up to the task. In a new Variety cover story published in conjunction with the release of his new film Jay Kelly, Clooney criticizes top law firms like Paul and Weiss, universities like Columbia, and news networks like CBS and ABC for settling lawsuits filed by Trump and his lieutenants.
“If CBS and ABC had challenged these lawsuits and said, ‘Fuck you, we wouldn’t be in this country anymore,'” Clooney says. “That’s just the truth.”
In the case of CBS, suspicions arose that Shari Redstone chose to drop Trump’s lawsuit over “60 Minutes” in order to approve the sale of Paramount to Skydance. The deal went through, and Paramount acquired a new owner in August. Clooney is horrified that Skydance founder and Paramount chairman David Ellison has moved to reorganize reporting by installing conservative commentator Bari Weiss as editor-in-chief of CBS News.
“Bari Weiss is trying to tear down CBS News as we speak,” Clooney says. “Do I worry about the movie studios? Absolutely. That’s my job, but my primary loyalty is to my country. I’m much more worried about how we’re going to inform ourselves and how we’re going to determine reality without a functioning press.”
Now that Trump is back in office, Clooney continues to denounce the threat he poses to civil liberties and America’s standing in the world.
“These are very difficult times,” Clooney says. “It can make you depressed or very angry. But you have to find the most positive way to get through it. Quitting is not an option, so you have to keep your head down and keep moving forward.”
At one point, before President Trump stepped off that golden escalator and put the nation on the MAGA course, Clooney and the reality TV star were friends.
“I knew him very well,” Clooney says. “He used to call me a lot. He even helped me go to the hospital to see a hip surgeon once. I went to clubs, we went to restaurants. He’s a very self-paced person. Well, he was. Everything changed.”
Clooney believes Democrats will retake the House of Representatives in 2026, and is optimistic that the pendulum will swing back toward liberalism once America becomes all about Trump.
“Simply put, economics is stupid,” Clooney says. “It’s more expensive now than it was when Joe Biden left office. And those in power tend to overreach. Cruelty, like separating children from their parents, is popular with a few but I don’t think it’s acceptable to most Americans.”
He does not share many Democrats’ fears that President Trump will refuse to relinquish the White House and run for a third term.
“He’s very unpopular, and I don’t think he’ll ever be popular again,” Clooney said. “While we certainly follow the Constitution and were disappointed in many of the Supreme Court’s decisions, they are strict constitutionalists.”
Clooney isn’t just worried about the direction of the country, he’s also concerned about the changes that are disrupting the film industry. He’s not afraid of streaming services. He’s worked for them before, and though “Jay Kelly” is a film extravaganza, it’s being financed by Netflix and shows how endangered adult films are as a theatrical proposition. When we spoke in November, Netflix had not yet signed a deal to buy Warner Bros., but Clooney was already concerned that selling the studio that produced so many great films would be a sign of the health of the industry.
“I liked having separate studios and each one doing what they were good at, but that specialization is gone,” he laments. “I’m worried that everything will be rolled into one giant company. That’s very sad. Sometimes a big company buys all these small players and they all lose their identity.”
But Clooney believes the direction of America and its major news organizations is more important than the future of cinema.
“If you ask me, do I worry about the movie studios? Yes, I do,” he says. “That’s my job. But my loyalty is to my country, and I’m much more concerned about how we inform ourselves.”
Clooney is particularly interested in the development of AI. He saw how easy it has become to create fake videos that can distort and deceive.
“You can now wash the watermark off of TikTok, and the only way you can tell if it was generated by AI is through the aspect ratio,” he says. “What would happen if we received an AI-generated video of President Putin saying he was launching a pre-emptive strike? And are there enough responsible people at the trigger of it all to look at this and tell what’s real and what’s fake? We used to say don’t believe everything you read, but we always believed what we saw. Now we can’t do that.”
AI is also changing the movie business. Shortly before Clooney’s interview with Variety, news broke that AI-created actress Tilly Norwood was receiving interest from agencies looking to represent her. Clooney doesn’t think he or his fellow A-listers will lose their jobs to Tilly.
“As a day player, I’m sure she might be successful, but are we going to build an entire story around her?” he says. “You can create an AI character, but will it actually destroy you like Emma Stone? AI can combine all the characters Emma Stone has played, but it can’t capture her magic. It’s like that Supreme Court justice who said, ‘You can’t explain porn, but you’ll know it when you see it.'” The same goes for movie stars. You don’t know why they are the way they are, but you can’t take your eyes off them on the screen. It is very rare that it exists. ”
