'Waiting For Godot' on Broadway, 2025 (2)

 

[A new production of Samuel Beckett’s (1906-89) Absurdist masterpiece, Waiting for Godot (1953), opened on Broadway on 28 September, after starting previews at the Hudson Theatre on 13 September.  Its limited run, directed by Jamie Lloyd, is scheduled to end on 4 January 2026. 

[The production stars Keanu Reeves as Estragon in his Broadway début, and Alex Winter as Vladimir.  The rest of the cast is made up of Brandon J. Dirden as Pozzo and Michael Patrick Thornton as Lucky, with Zaynn Arora (also making his Broadway début) and Eric Williams alternating as the Boy.

[The scenic and costume design are by Soutra Gilmour, the lighting design is by Jon Clark, and the sound design is by Ben and Max Ringham.

[After my posting of the transcript of a PBS News Hour segment, run last Saturday, 18 October, I’m now posting another transcript of an interview with Reeves and Winter, this one of Steven Colbert’s Late Show from last week.

[A few words about the transcription below: There was only one posted transcript, from the three YouTube videos of the interview.  The dialogue, which was line-by-line—i.e., no paragraphing or other divisions—and in all caps.  The lines were broken by seconds, with the time stamp for each second on a separate line of the transcript.  It was also terribly inaccurate, with lots of mistranscriptions, missing words, misattributions of the speaker, and so on.  (Several renderings of “Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves” came out “ALEX WINTER ENCOUNTER REEVES”!)

[To fix all these and other issues with the transcript, I had to go back and listen to the DVR I’d made of the show in a stop-rewind-and-go method to reconcile them with the recording.  (It’s easier and more convenient to use my computer to type in the corrections while watching and listening to my TV than to try to shift back and forth between my word processor and the YouTube or CBS video on the Internet.)

[So, the result you will read below is a combination of the transcriber, almost certainly a machine with little human monitoring, and my own rendering of the conversation, plus my interpretation of the punctuation, capitalization, paragraphing, and other typographical considerations.  I’ve also added some bracketed explanatory and identifying insertions I thought would be helpful.]

“THE LATE SHOW WITH STEPHEN COLBERT:
KEANU REEVES & ALEX WINTER” 

[This episode of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert (CBS Broadcasting Inc., Paramount Skydance) aired on 13 October 2025 (Season 11, Episode 19).  Reeves and Winter were Colbert’s only guests, aside from a musical performance at the end of the show by rapper J.I.D.]

Stephen Colbert: Hey! Hello, friends. Welcome back, everybody.

Ladies and gentlemen. My fellow Americans. My next guests tonight are currently co-starring in a new Broadway production of “Waiting for Godot.” You know them best as “Bill and Ted,” but please welcome back to “The Late Show,” Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves!

[CHEERS AND APPLAUSE]

There you go. Nice to have you guys here. Thanks for making the trip up from the Hudson Theatre up here to the Ed Sullivan to join on a rare night off. ‘Cause you guys are doing eight shows a week, right?

Keanu Reeves [off-camera]: We are, yeah.

Colbert: For “Waiting for Godot” on Broadway.

[CHEERS AND APPLAUSE]

Never done it, kinda jealous. Love the play. Let’s start with how some might be surprised that it’s pronounced GA-doh, instead of most people in America they think of guh-DOH. So, are you guys being fancy?

[Reeves and Winter LAUGH]

Colbert: Are we being fancy? Are you fancy [pointing to Winter] and are you schmancy [pointing to Reeves]?

Reeves: If that’s fancy and schmancy, what’s the other one?

Colbert: Guh-DOH?

Winter: Down-home? Heartland?

Colbert: Just down-home, American, heartland, existential dread.

Winter: There you go. Right.

Well, the play was written by an Irishman in French.

Colbert: Oh, there you go. There you go.

Winter: It was kind of almost mundane. There’s a lot of rhyming in the play, and GA-doh works better with the other names of the characters that are all Pozzo . . . Gogo [nickname of Estragon, Reeves’s character] . . . Godot. And he’s constantly confusing Godot for Pozzo. ‘I said Pozzo.’ ‘No, you said Godot.’ ‘No, you said Godot.’ It doesn’t work if ‘You said Pozzo.’ ‘No, you said Guh-DOH.’ What?

Colbert: You have been linked, obviously, in the public’s mind since the 1989 release . . . right there [showing photo] of “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure.”

[CHEERS AND APPLAUSE]

First of all, I understand you guys met in the audition process? Tell me about meeting each other for the first time.

Reeves: My recollection was there was a room . . .

Winter: . . . little room.

Reeves: You were sitting down. I walked in. Said “Hey, what’s up?” You said, “Hey, what’s up.”

Winter: Yeah. Motorcycle helmet and motorcycle helmet [pointing].

Reeves: We talked about motorcycles and . . .

Both: . . . bass guitars.

Reeves: We had stuff in common.

Winter: Yeah. And then it expanded into, like, literature and theater. And then it was, “Oh, he’s east coast and I’m east coast. We’d come from theater. There was a lot of similarities to our backgrounds, and we were two fish out of water actors in L.A. So . . . .

[Winter (b. 1965) did some Broadway shows early in his career. He made his Broadway début as a replacement for Louis Leonowens, the son of Anna Leonowens, in a 1977 revival of the musical The King and I, when he was 13, and played John Darling, the middle Darling child in a 1979 revival of the musical version of Peter Pan, when he was 14.  He also appeared at the Manhattan Theatre Club in the American premiere of Simon Gray's (1936-2008) Close of Play in 1981.

[Reeves’s (b. 1964) U.S. stage début is his role in Godot. His previous stage experience has been in Canada, which he claims as his home country (he’s a Canadian citizen, though born in Beirut, Lebanon, and spending some years in Sydney, Australia, before moving to Toronto). Among other roles, he played Hamlet in Shakespeare’s classic masterpiece in a production at a Canadian regional theater in Winnipeg, Manitoba, in 1995. On 12 April 1989, Reeves appeared in his only other U.S. theater role, the part of Kip in a telefilm adaptation of Richard Greenberg’s (1958-2025) 1985 one-act play Life Under Water on the Public Broadcasting Service’s American Playhouse series.]

Reeves: Yeah.

Colbert: Wow.

[CROSSTALK]

Colbert: How long had you each been in L.A. at that point? It can be lonely if you . . . .

Reeves: I was there like five . . . four . . . three . . . four years before.

Winter: Two years . . . a couple years before I come out.

Reeves: And then we got to act together. And that’s where, like, that thing happened [snapping his fingers].

Winter: It’s sort of like being in a band. You know, there’s that rhythm section. The comedy is, being who we are, we were both playing the same instrument, which isn’t how a rhythm section is supposed to work.

Colbert: Four hands on one bass . . . .

Winter: We would literally leave set and go to one of each other’s apartments with our mini amps and jam, both playing bass . . .

[LAUGHTER]

Winter: . . . for hours and hours and hours.

Colbert: How did the neighbors feel about that?

Winter: I mean, they thought we were out of our minds. But, it is kind of nuts in retrospect.

Colbert: Talking about “Waiting for Godot” – Keanu, I understand you first had the idea of doing this?

Reeves: Yeah, about three and a half years ago, I was in London, working. I had jet lag. I was in a fugue state. And, the muses kind of sang down from above and said: “Waiting for Godot” with Alex. And I went, UH! and I Facetimed you . . .

Winter: You did, yeah.

Reeves: . . . and proposed.

Winter: You did, yeah. I opened up the Facetime and this is what you always do because you always Facetime. And I’m not a Facetimer. And I’m like, ‘Oh, God, I’ve got to put on a shirt.’

Colbert: It’s not chest time. It’s just Facetime.

Winter: It’s a camera in your face.

Colbert: Oh, I understand. Yeah.

Winter: So, I open it and there is Reeves, his face jammed into this webcam: “You, me, “Godot.” I don’t know what it says that I knew what he meant by that, but I thought it was a great idea. We’d both been looking for something to do together that wasn’t Bill and Ted. We both love theater. We wanted to go back and do theater. I love Beckett. I knew what it entailed though—it was going to be a monster.

Colbert: It is! It’s a lot to bite off. You could’ve started with “The Odd Couple” [popular Niel Simon comedy, 1965 (Broadway), 1968 (film), 1970-75 (television)] and worked your way up.

Both: Yeah!

Winter: Every time someone suggests an alternative, he’s like, yeah, we shoulda done that.

Reeves: Yeah!

Colbert: We have to take a quick break. We’ll be right back with more Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter, everybody.

[COMMERCIAL BREAK]

Colbert: Everybody, we are back with the stars of “Waiting for Godot” at the Hudson Theatre here in New York, Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves. It’s one of the most famous plays of the 20th century. It’s performed all the time. It’s often misinterpreted. People don’t know that while it’s a tragedy, is a tragicomedy, very funny.

[There are a number of Godot-related posts on Rick On Theater (and a few more on other Beckett plays), but one that applies to Colbert’s remark above is “History of Waiting For Godot” (30 March 2009). I will append a list of all the Godot posts at the bottom of this transcript.]

Reeves: It is, yeah.

Colbert: Take a stab, one of you, and explain to the audience, if you don’t mind, what it’s about.

Reeves: It can’t just be one thing.

Colbert: Okay. We’ve got all the time in the world.

Winter: Settle in.

Reeves: If “Hamlet” is “To be or not to be, that is the question,” Beckett in “Waiting for Godot” says, ‘That is not the question.’ ‘What are we doing here,’ that is the question.

[APPLAUSE]

Reeves: And it starts to, in a broad sense . . . it talks about our relationship to a personal god. And it’s like, ‘Can we be seen?’ ‘Will we be judged?’ Really, ‘Will he save us, punish us, will we be seen?’ In a broad sense.

And then there is friendship, codependence, yearning, waiting. What are we waiting for? What can we do? [nb: The French (i.e., “original”) title of the play is En attendant Godot, which means “While waiting for Godot.”] How do we relate to each other? There’s elements of power dynamics with the character [sic] Pozzo and Lucky.

Winter: Yeah, there’s brutality, characters can become both brutal and loving. You end up playing all of life in the course of two hours, which is . . . it’s kind of a trip to be honest with you, it is so beautifully written.

Reeves: Yeah, and about time, the collapsing of time, the human experience in the blink of an eye. I was born . . . in one day I can be born, one day I will die, one day I will be deaf, one day . . . . The circumstances of our life and how we relate to it.

Winter: We did talk about the fact that we’re both doing it in our . . . we were both going to turn 60 around the time we hit the stage and it is a play about reflection, about life and mortality and where are and what does it mean and what have you done and where are you going. [When the production started previews, Winter was 60 and Reeves had just turned 61.] And to be in that every night, and to say those words but to do that with a very close friend is pretty extraordinary.

Colbert: The design of it, it’s an unusual and very beautiful design. [Shows a photo of the Godot set, a long horn-like tube that creates a sense of forced perspective, sculpted of blonde wood and running from upstage to down, seemingly suspended in the air.]

Reeves: Aah! That’s our set.

Winter: Isn’t that cool?

Colbert: People see a lot of things in the set. You kept a list of the various things.

Winter: He is keeping – present tense – because it’s growing every day.

Colbert: I’m just curious, what . . . .

Reeves: We have the eye, the tunnel, the vortex, the sub-woofer, the habitrail, the lens.

[I’ve never found an explanation for the suggestion of the habitrail as a name for the central structure of the Godot set, so I looked it up to see what variant meanings it might have. The one that seems most fitting to me—and this is only my own view—is from the pinball machine. The wire ramps or tubes that guide the ball back to the player are sometimes called “habitrails.” The ball is sent on a meandering journey, buffeted by the flippers (and sometimes also the jostling of the machine), but always ends up in a tube that brings it back where it started. That sounds to me like the endless journey that Didi and Gogo are on. (If anyone has a better idea, please post it in the Comments section below.)]

Winter: The lens, the sewer, the habitrail.

Reeves: Circuits of time.

Winter: The circuits of time did come up at one point.

Reeves: We have the cross section of a tree. We recently got the shell.

Winter: The conch shell, which I think is a very beautiful one . . . .

Colbert: The sphincter.

Winter: That’s not incorrect. Yeah, yeah.  I like that.

Reeves: The gun barrel from the Bond opening. [That’s what it reminded me of right away – but it doesn’t really fit Godot.]

Colbert: That’s cool. To me, it does look like an eye. Because the iris is little lower, right here, looks like the eye’s looking down so it looks like the universe or God as a providence, that sort of thing. It looms, that’s for sure. It could also be a moon being eclipsed by something small.

Winter: Yeah.

Colbert: Yeah. Your life or something like that.

Winter: Yeah. It does happen. You’ll see there is an actual – not to spoil – but there’s an actual sun that drops . . . or moon that drops down into that back space.

Colbert: So I was right?

Winter: You are correct. You are literally correct.

Colbert: I was pretty sure. I’m usually right.

[LAUGHTER]

Colbert: Alex, you made your Broadway debut at how old?

Winter: 13. “The King and I” with Yul Brynner [1977].

Colbert [to Reeves]: Is this your Broadway debut?

Reeves: Yes, it is.     

[APPLAUSE]

Let’s talk for both of you, that sense of the butterflies before – not just opening night, but walking out on stage every night.

Reeves: Butterflies? Is that like terror butterflies?

Winter: I think it’s a polite way of saying you want to throw up.

Reeves: Right.

Colbert: Do you get that? Do you get that every night?

Reeves: Every night? Yes.

Colbert: What do you do? You have any particular rituals? People have – I slap myself in the face really hard twice before , , , . I do. Once, at the same time. I don’t want to do it right now, but I slap myself twice and I know I’ve done it hard enough if I regret having done it. Because, I’m awake and I’m leaving everything else backstage, and I just come on stage.

Winter: I have prayers that I always do . . .

Colbert: Oh, really . . . .

Winter: . . . before each act. I don’t take the risk of only just praying for the get through the play [sic], it’s a very hard play.

Colbert: Oh, one act at a time . . . .

Winter: So, each act of the play gets a prayer.

[To Reeves] You have a position that you take backstage that’s interesting. You’re sort of seeded for Estragon. Like I come out of my dressing room and I see you there in sort of a state, and I’m like, ‘Oh, he’s like seeding Estragon.’

Reeves: That’s true, yes.

Winter: That’s part of it.

Reeves: I sort of sit in the thing [takes a position in his seat, facing front with his arms folded in his lap].

Winter: That is what he’s doing. That is very Estragon.

Colbert: Totally.

We are going to take another break here but we’ll be right back with more Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves, everybody.

[COMMERCIAL BREAK]

Colbert: Hey, everybody. We are back with the stars of “Waiting for Godot” here in New York at the Hudson Theatre, Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter.

You both have new films. Alex, you have a movie directed, “Adulthood.” What’s “Adulthood”?

Winter: It’s a black comedy with Josh Gad and Kaya Scodelario, Billie Lourd, Anthony Carrigan [released 23 September]. It’s a wonderful cast. It’s an ensemble film about the impossibility of adulthood in our current society.

[APPLAUSE]

Colbert: [Inaudible] . . . social media keeps us . . . .

Winter: It’s hard . . . it’s hard out there for adults.

Colbert: Keanu, you have “Good Fortune” which opens on Friday [17 October].

[APPLAUSE]

Colbert: Is it true that after everything you’ve done, after all the “John Wicks” and all the “Matrices,” that this is the film that got you injured?

Reeves: Yes.

[LAUGHTER]

Colbert: If you don’t mind sharing . . . .

Reeves: I mean, comedy’s hard, right?

[Winter LAUGHS]

Colbert: Sure. Death is easy, comedy’s hard.

[The saying “Dying is easy, comedy is hard”—Colbert is paraphrasing the now-famous line—is attributed to British actor Edmund Gwenn (1877-1959) on his deathbed. The line has since been widely circulated and credited to other actors, but Gwenn is the most commonly cited source.]

Reeves: I fractured my patella.

Colbert: Your kneecap.

Reeves: My kneecap. I had a vertical break like a potato chip.

Colbert: I’m sorry, like a what?

Reeves: Like a potato chip.

Colbert: Did you hear it happen?

Reeves: I did not hear it pop because of the scream.

[Winter LAUGHS; Colbert GROANS]

Colbert: How? What were you doing? Pratfall or something?

Reeves: Okay – uhhh. I was doing a scene . . . we were doing a cold-water plunge with [writer, director, and cast member] Aziz Ansari and [cast member] Seth Rogen. And then, I was going back to the dressing room, they had a carpet – covering the carpet, there was a little thing and I caught my foot. I had a towel and I was cold and I was shuffling in my little ding-ding [sic]. And I caught my foot, and then I was like, whoa! And then I spiked and landed right on my knee.

[GROANS from audience, Winter, and Colbert]

Reeves: And then pain ensued.

Colbert: Potato chip.

Reeves: Yeah. Then it did that, then I couldn’t walk. But then I went to the hospital and they drained the blood.

Winter: And then you being you, you just kept shooting.

Reeves: I kept going.

But yeah, it made a lot of people laugh.

[LAUGHTER]

Colbert: That you potato-chipped your patella?

Reeves: They just said like, “You’re John Wick, and you just . . . .” I can’t swear, right?

Colbert: We can always bleep it.

Reeves: [BLEEP] broke your [BLEEP] [BLEEP].

Colbert: Sadly . . .

Reeves: The director’s like what? Aziz is like what? I can’t film because you broke your [BLEEP] kneecap. Sorry.

Colbert: We sadly lost, as I showed the interview before [in the Late Show’s segment before the Reeves-Winter interview], the great Diane Keaton [1946-2025; she died on 11 October at 79].

Keanu, people loved you two together in 2003, “Something’s Gotta Give.” Do you have a memory you can share of Diane Keaton in shooting this with her before we go?

Reeves: You know [to Colbert], and you know, too [to Winter]. We all know what an extraordinary, unique, special person and artist Diane is, was, and is. It was cool for me. I got to shoot the scene. Nancy Meyers directed. But it was Diane and Jack Nicholson at a table in a restaurant in Paris. And just watching those two legends, not only act, but insult each other.

[LAUGHTER]

You got a taste of it, I saw the clip that you shared. [An “attempted” interview on 30 April 2012 from The Colbert Report on Comedy Central.] She was almost like the same thing that she did to you, which was just like, she would turn to Jack, ‘You’re just a . . . you are a blah, blah, blah.’ And he’d be like, ‘You dirty, rotten . . . .’ They’re just grinning and they are insulting each other with love.

Winter: It sounds like our play.

Reeves: Yeah. The intelligence, the humor. But just watching them just be themselves and with the history and art that they worked.

Colbert: Alex, Keanu, thanks so much for being here. “Waiting for Godot” is currently at the Hudson

Theatre. Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves, everybody.

[The Godot post I cross-references above is a brief development and production history of the play.  Allow me to say a few words here that may reiterate what I wrote in 2009 on that post.  (Then I’ll list all the posts on ROT that pertain to Waiting for Godot.)

[First, let me pick up something Alex Winter mentions above: Samuel Beckett was an Irish writer who wrote often in French.  After studying modern languages at Trinity College Dublin, he took up a teaching position in Paris.  There, he was introduced to the Irish writer James Joyce, with whom he worked for years as a sort of assistant-cum-secretary.

[Beckett remained in Paris until 1930, when he went back to Dublin as a lecturer at Trinity College.  He stayed only until the end of 1931.  He traveled through Europe, writing essays, reviews, and novels, some of which were published and some were not.  As he did all this career, he wrote in both French and Englis—often in French first.

[After another short visit to Ireland in 1937, he returned to France to settle permanently in Paris in 1939, despite the start of World War II.  Though he made trips to England and Ireland, Beckett never lived there again.  When Germany invaded France and occupied the country in 1940, he joined the Résistance, and eventually had to flee Paris for a small town in the south, where he remained for the rest of the war.

[Beckett never stopped writing throughout the war and even his refuge and resistance efforts in the south.  He wrote Godot in French between October 1948 and January 1949.  (As I note above, the French version of the play is entitled En attendant Godot.)  After 1947, he wrote most of his works in French first.

[The point want to stress here is that Beckett didn’t just write Godot and his other works in French and then translate them into English.  He rewrote then in English.  The variation in the titles of En attendant Godot and Waiting for Godot isn’t the only difference between the to versions of the play.  Throughout the texts, there are differences—some small and subtle, some more prominent and significant. 

[The play’s titles can be a hint.  Waiting for Godot is a play about ‘waiting.’  But waiting is a static action.  When most people wait, they sit and read—the waiting rooms of offices everywhere are full of old magazines for people to read!  Maybe the waiters people-watch.  Still not active.  Today, with portable computers and internet-connected cell phones, maybe they work or play.  Not active.

[But En attendant Godot, as I noted above, means “while waiting for Godot.”  It’s about what Didi and Gogo do while they wait.  And remembering that the two characters are clowns—tramp clowns in the mold of Chaplin’s Little Tramp or Emmet Kelley’s Sad Willie—what wild activity would ensue . . . and does!  (Beckett loved music hall and clowns.  He was taken with the Marx Brothers and his 1965 movie Film starred Buster Keaton, the great silent-movie pantomimist.)

[And now, that list:

       •  “History of Waiting For Godot” (30 March 2009)

       •  “Thoughts on Waiting For Godot” (1 April 2009)

       •  “More Thoughts on Waiting For Godot” (3 April 2009)

      •  “Is Waiting For Godot Trash?” (17 April 2009)\

      •  "Beckett by the Madeleine" by Tom F. Driver (25 January 2018)

[And two that might be of less interest, performance reports on two productions:

•  “Waiting for Godot (Gare St. Lazare)” (31 October 2015)

•  “Waiting For Godot (Druid Theatre Company)” (21 November 2018)

[Don’t forget the post on 18 October, the News Hour transcript of the segment with Reeves and Winter of 10 October.]

'Waiting For Godot' on Broadway, 2025 (I)

 

[A new production of Samuel Beckett’s (1906-89) Absurdist masterpiece, Waiting for Godot (1953), opened on Broadway on 28 September, after starting previews at the Hudson Theatre on 13 September.  Its limited run, directed by Jamie Lloyd, is scheduled to end on 4 January 2026. 

[The production stars Keanu Reeves as Estragon in his Broadway début, and Alex Winter as Vladimir.  The rest of the cast is made up of Brandon J. Dirden as Pozzo and Michael Patrick Thornton as Lucky, with Zaynn Arora (also making his Broadway début) and Eric Williams alternating as the Boy.

[The scenic and costume design are by Soutra Gilmour, the lighting design is by Jon Clark, and the sound design is by Ben and Max Ringham.]  

“KEANU REEVES AND ALEX WINTER REUNITE ON STAGE
IN BROADWAY’S ‘WAITING FOR GODOT’”
by Jeffrey Brown and Anne Azzi Davenport

[Below is the transcript of the PBS News Hour segment of 10 October 2025 in which Jeffrey Brown, the program’s arts correspondent, discusses the new production of Godot with its stars.]

It’s a classic of theater that continues to be taken on by top actors and still resonates with audiences. “Waiting for Godot” mixes despair and comedy to raise questions about the meaning of life. Now, Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter, two actors who are great friends, are doing their waiting on Broadway. Senior arts correspondent Jeffrey Brown has the story for our arts and culture series, CANVAS.

Geoff Bennett: It’s a theater classic that continues to be taken on by top actors and resonates with audiences.

“Waiting for Godot” — yes, that’s how it’s pronounced [GOD-oh] — mixes high despair and low comedy to raise big questions about, well, the meaning of life. And now two actors, great friends themselves, are doing their waiting on Broadway.

[GOD-oh is the standard pronunciation in Ireland and the United Kingdom.  In North America, it’s commonly pronounced go-DOH.]

Senior arts correspondent Jeffrey Brown gets a look for our arts and culture series, Canvas.

Keanu Reeves, Actor [in a scene from Godot]: Who am I to tell my private nightmares to if I can’t tell them to you?

Alex Winter, Actor: Let them remain private. You know I can’t bear that.

Keanu Reeves: There are times when I wonder if it wouldn’t be better for us to part.

Alex Winter: You wouldn’t go far.

Jeffrey Brown: Two men, Estragon, called Gogo, and Vladimir, or Didi, fearing, laughing, talking, waiting for someone they don’t know.

The two men playing them, Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter. And why are they here?

Keanu Reeves: Yes, but what did I know? I just had the — I just answered the universe and said you should do “Waiting for Godot” with Alex. And I was like, you’re right. OK, I will ask him.

(Laughter)

Jeffrey Brown: And he said?

Alex Winter: Absolutely. Yes, but it’s a mountain. Let’s go climb the mountain.

Jeffrey Brown: That mountain, “Waiting for Godot,” or Godot [GOD-oh], as they have chosen to pronounce it in this production, by Nobel Prize-winning Irish playwright Samuel Beckett.

Written and first performed in the 1950s, it’s still raising deep issues of human existence through a mix of pain and suffering along with broad comedy.

Actor [Brandon J. Dirden as Pozzo; in a scene from Godot]: Which of you smells so bad?

Keanu Reeves: He has stinking breath and I have stinking feet.

Actor: I must go.

Jeffrey Brown: Keanu Reeves, of course, is a mega-movie star, best known for his roles in “The Matrix” and “John Wick” series. This is his Broadway debut.

Alex Winter, a Broadway and film veteran, is best known in recent years as a director of documentaries, including one on rock star Frank Zappa.

Alex Winter AND Keanu Reeves: Excellent!

Jeffrey Brown: The two are forever linked through their roles starting in their 20s in the “Bill and Ted” sci-fi comedy films that began in 1989 about two rather clueless dudes who get their history lessons through time travel.

They have been close friends ever since, the kind who often finish each other’s sentences on and off stage. And when we met recently at Broadway’s famed Sardi’s Restaurant, Reeves, now 61, and Winter, 60, said taking on “Waiting for Godot” together was a must.

Is that because it made it more fun or because it got you past the fear of doing it or . . .

Keanu Reeves: For me, it just started with the fun.

(Laughter)

Keanu Reeves: This seems like a really good idea. Yes.

Alex Winter: Yes, and also that they’re — it is a play about two old friends who are interested in interrogating the questions of life, which is very much the two of us. So . . .

Jeffrey Brown: It is?

Alex Winter: Oh, yes.

Jeffrey Brown: You mean off stage.

Alex Winter: Oh, yes. Yes, yes, yes, like going back to — look, we’re goofballs and lead normal lives as well, but, like, I remember certain nights even on “Bill and Ted” one, it would be like 2:00 in the morning. We’d be sitting on the hood of my car in like in a strip mall in Phoenix, like, debating existence.

Keanu Reeves: Yes.

(Laughter)

Alex Winter: You know? So, like, in some ways, nothing has changed.

[In a scene from Godot] Look at me. Will you look at me?

Keanu Reeves: What a day.

Alex Winter: Who beat you? Tell me.

Keanu Reeves: Another day done with.

Alex Winter: Not yet.

Keanu Reeves: For me, it’s over and done with no matter what happens.

Jeffrey Brown: Are Gogo and Didi refugees from war or some environmental catastrophe, figures from outside of time? And who is this Godot?

Alex Winter: Beckett was cheeky, but he — I think he liked the fact that people debated these things. I think he was cheeky. He would say, oh, it’s not God necessarily, but maybe it is. You know what I mean? Like, I mean, come on.

(Laughter)

Alex Winter: Come on.

Keanu Reeves: Like, come on. If Samuel was here . . .

Alex Winter: Yes.

Keanu Reeves: I mean, come on.

Alex Winter: Yes.

Jeffrey Brown: You would say, come on, God — it is God.

Alex Winter: Of course God is in Godot, of course, of course, of course.

Steve Martin, Actor [in the 1988 Off-Broadway production at Lincoln Center]: Moron.

Robin Williams, Actor: Vermin.

Steve Martin: Abortion.

(Crosstalk)

Steve Martin: Sewer-rat. Curate. Cretin.

Robin Williams: Critic!

(Laughter)

Jeffrey Brown: The play has been done by certified funnymen such as Steve Martin and Robin Williams and amid boarded-up flooded homes [artist Paul Chan, Creative Time, and the Classical Theatre of Harlem staged a production in New Orleans in the flooded, hurricane-damaged Lower Ninth Ward and Gentilly neighborhoods, November 2007] in the wake of Hurricane Katrina [2005].

This production led by acclaimed British director Jamie Lloyd takes a stripped-down story and strips it further to a bare large tunnel, or cone, with no props at all. That, says Reeves, forced him to think and act in a new way.

Keanu Reeves: It’s even like the way I talked about the play early days, we can have mud, and why don’t we have water, and how about if we do this, and I will come out through the stage.

(Laughter)

Keanu Reeves: And then Jamie Lloyd and Soutra Gilmour, the production designer, went, here’s the set, and all of those ideas like a — like a mandala, just was like — that’s — get over that.

Jeffrey Brown: Yes. Did you find that freeing, though, too to not have the props?

Keanu Reeves: Oh, it’s freeing, but also illuminating. I think that our production is actually illuminating the themes of the play and what it’s asking and talking about. To have a literal tree that doesn’t look like a tree, you’re doing the same thing. You’re asking the audience to pretend that it’s got lots of leaves, and it’s like the spring.

Or then there’s a literal tree, and then I’m saying I see nothing. So they almost become more alive.

[Beckett’s original set instructions were: “A country road. A tree.”]

Alex Winter: Yes.

Keanu Reeves: And to the conceit, it’s more accurate.

Alex Winter: It is, yes. Every night, you find something else. We will come off stage even between act one and act two, and he will say or I will say, that — like, oh, wow, right, that.

Jeffrey Brown: But it’s still — you’re doing that between acts?

Alex Winter: Every night. Every night. Every night, there’s something. It’s just a play of limitless ideas and depth and possibility.

Keanu Reeves [in a scene from Godot]: Do you see anything coming?

Alex Winter: What?

Keanu Reeves: Do you see anything coming?

Alex Winter: No.

Keanu Reeves: Nor I.

Jeffrey Brown: Does it feel that way on stage too, where you’re saying, oh, I’m with Alex?

Keanu Reeves: Oh, yes. I get — I mean, so much of the night or the day of the performance, I’m just literally like looking at you . . .

(Laughter)

 

Alex Winter: Yes, we do a fair amount of that.

 

Keanu Reeves: . . . go through your contortions.

(Laughter)

Keanu Reeves: Poor Vladimir.

Alex Winter: Poor Vladimir.

Keanu Reeves: Trying to figure it out.

Alex Winter: I know, and failing miserably.

Jeffrey Brown: And how does the play land today, in a time of deep cultural and political divisions? Alex Winter had thought much about that, while Keanu Reeves offered lines from the play.

Alex Winter: And we’re certainly driving into it with the way we’re doing, is about looking past those divisions to this sort of human condition as a uniform issue that everyone faces, and this idea that we are all in this struggle together.

Keanu Reeves: And all mankind is us.

Alex Winter: Yes, for this moment of time.

Keanu Reeves: For this moment of time.

Alex Winter: Whether we like it or not. So let’s do something.

Keanu Reeves: Do something. Let us . . .

Alex Winter: I mean, that’s a pretty great thing to say right now.

Keanu Reeves: To help someone.

Alex Winter [lines from Godot]: Yes. Yes.

Keanu Reeves: We help him. We help him.

Alex Winter: Yes. Yes.

Keanu Reeves: Let us help him. We help him.

Alex Winter: Yes.

Keanu Reeves: Yes. Let’s go.

Alex Winter: Yes.

Jeffrey Brown: Is it ultimately a hopeless or hopeful play?

Keanu Reeves: Hopeful.

Alex Winter: Yes.

Jeffrey Brown: You’re going with hopeful?

Keanu Reeves: Yes.

Jeffrey Brown: Yes?

Keanu Reeves: I mean, they say, let’s go. Well, shall we go? Yes, let’s go.

Jeffrey Brown: But then they don’t move.

Alex Winter: But they’re together.

Keanu Reeves: But they still said, let’s go.

Alex Winter: Yes.

Keanu Reeves: They’re still doing it.

Alex Winter: Yes, they’re together. I think that — I think it lands. . .

Keanu Reeves: I will fight another day.

Alex Winter: Yes, they — it lands on this idea that it — that all we may have is each other, but that is enough to continue on. But everything else is up for grabs.

(Laughter)

Jeffrey Brown: Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter, Gogo and Didi, are waiting for Godot into early January.

Alex Winter: Finish a phrase, I tell you.

Keanu Reeves: Finish your own.

Alex Winter: Moron.

Keanu Reeves: That’s the idea. Let’s abuse each other.

Jeffrey Brown: For the “PBS News Hour,” I’m Jeffrey Brown on Broadway.

Alex Winter: Moron!

Keanu Reeves: Vermin!

Alex Winter: Abortion!

Bennett: Online, you can see more from Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter, including their mutual love of Dr. Seuss and their favorite plays. That’s on our YouTube page.

[A word or two about Godot and God: Many people in the English-speaking world feel that Godot is Beckett’s stand-in for God and that the name is meant to invoke that belief.  However, Becket refused to say so, though he hinted that he might have had that in his mind.  However, it should be remembered that he originally wrote the play in French (it had its world première in Paris in 1953), and in French, the word for God is ‘Dieu,’ which has no resemblance to the English word ‘God.’

[In his more than 30-year career with the PBS News Hour, Jeffrey Brown has served as co-anchor, studio moderator, and field reporter on a wide range of national and international issues, with work taking him around the country and to many parts of the globe.  As arts correspondent he has profiled many of the world’s leading writers, musicians, actors and other artists.  Among his signature works at the News Hour: a multi-year series, “Culture at Risk,” about threatened cultural heritage in the United States and abroad; the creation of the News Hour’s online “Art Beat”; and hosting the monthly book club, “Now Read This,” a collaboration with the New York Times.

[Anne Azzi Davenport is the Senior Producer of CANVAS at PBS News Hour.]

Film Stars Twinkle on the Great White Way, Part 2

 

[Good Night, and Good Luck, written by George Clooney and Grant Heslov, adapted from their screenplay for the 2005 film distributed by Warner Bros. and based on the career of renowned newsman Edward R. Murrow, is scheduled to open on Broadway at the Winter Garden Theatre on 3 April (next Thursday).  The play stars Clooney, who played Fred Friendly, a CBS executive, in the movie.  It started previews on 12 March and is scheduled to end its limited engagement on 8 June.  

[The one-act, intermissionless performance runs about 1 hour 40 minutes and the story takes place in 1954, when on 9 March, Murrow attacked Senator Joseph McCarthy’s anti-communist crusade on the reporter’s television show, See It Now.

[The production is directed by David Cromer, a 2018 Tony- and 2017 Drama Desk-winner for direction of The Band’s Visit (2017).  The scenic design is by Scott Pask, the costume design by Brenda Abbandandolo, the lighting design by Heather Gilbert, the sound design by Daniel Kluger, and the projection design by David Bengali. 

[In addition to Clooney as Murrow, his first stage role since 1986 and his Broadway début, the cast includes Ilana Glazer as Shirley Wershba, a reporter and producer on See It Now; Glenn Fleshler as Fred Friendly, creator, with Murrow, of See It Now; Clark Gregg as Don Hollenbeck, a CBS newscaster and commentator, and associate of Murrow and Friendly; Mac Brandt as Colonel Anderson, a fictionalized CBS executive who’s pressured by McCarthy to silence Murrow; Will Dagger as Don Hewitt, the first director of See It Now; and Christopher Denham as John Aaron, a member of the production team of See It Now.

[Despite the limited engagement, the word is that there are seats available for the entire run.  Center orchestra tickets are selling for as much as $775; however, there are $49 rush tickets available at the Winter Garden Theatre box office with a valid student ID, limited to two tickets per person (seats may be partial view) and a limited number of $49 tickets are also available through a digital lottery at Ticket Initiatives | Good Night, and Good Luck. 

[A limited number of standing-room tickets will also be made available when a performance is sold out.  These tickets can only be purchased in person at the box office on the day of the performance for $69 each and are limited to two tickets per person.]

“GEORGE CLOONEY SPEAKS ABOUT HIS BROADWAY DEBUT
IN ‘GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK’”
by Dave Carlin 

[This report was aired on CBS News New York (Channel 2 in New York City) on 7 February 2025]

NEW YORK - George Clooney [b. 1961] is getting ready to appear in his first Broadway production. 

In “Good Night, And Good Luck,” Clooney is making his Broadway debut, which is based on his movie. In it, he’ll play legendary CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow [1908-65] in eight shows a week. 

Clooney, one of the biggest stars in the world, co-wrote the show, and spoke about his personal connections to journalism, and about tackling big challenges on Broadway. 

“[W]hat’s a part of it, is you want to hear Murrow, and those words are fun to hear,” Clooney said. 

The play is an adaptation of the critically acclaimed 2005 film Clooney co-wrote, directed and appeared in. It’s about Murrow and CBS news in the 1950s, investigating Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s [1908-57; Republican U.S. Senator from Wisconsin: 1947-57] much-feared campaign to root out communists in America. Murrow and his team exposed lies. 

“Journalism is always challenged. Power doesn’t like journalism. Never has, and didn’t like it when it was [Thomas] Jefferson [1743-1826; 3rd President of the United States: 1801-09] and [John] Adams [1735-1826; 2nd President of the United States: 1797-1801], and they don’t like it now,” Clooney said. “My father has been, was an anchorman for 40 years. And we really believe in the idea of holding truth to power.

[George Clooney’s father, Nick Clooney (b. 1934), is a former anchorman and television host, who started his broadcast career in 1958. In the early 1970s, he had great success with The Nick Clooney Show, a local morning show with a variety and talk-show format at Cincinnati, Ohio’s WKRC-TV (not to be confused with the fictional WKRP in the 1978-82 TV sitcom).

[Nick Clooney ran as a Democrat in the 2004 election for a seat in the House of Representatives representing Kentucky, his native state, but lost to the Republican candidate. He was also an activist, making a 2006 documentary film with his son in support of the people of the Darfur region of Sudan in its conflict with the government in Khartoum (TV special; A Journey to Darfur).  In 2018, Clooney openly criticized the current owners of WKRC-TV, which he’d left in 1984, for their conservative viewpoints and their dictating certain coverage in the station’s newscasts, according to Cincinnati.com.]

“It’s actually a story about us at our best as Americans, which is holding ourselves accountable, which I think is good,” Clooney added. 

So why do Broadway now?

“Well, it’s scary. But, you know, I haven’t done a play in 40 years, so it’s one of those things where, and I’ve never done the Broadway play, so I’m, of course, you know, petrified to do it. But it’s not such a bad thing being 63 and doing something that you don’t feel both your feet are firmly on the ground. That’s not such a bad thing to do,” Clooney said. 

[Clooney made his stage début and his last appearance in a play in 1986 in a Los Angeles production of a play about Sex Pistols musician Sid Vicious entitled Vicious by Denis Spedaliere, in which he played Champ, a prostitute and dealer.  The production was a revival at The Complex, a theater in Hollywood, of a 1984 première, also in LA. The play traveled to Chicago to play at the Steppenwolf Theatre Company from 4 June to 6 July 1986.]

[Dave Carlin has covered national news stories and events in the past four decades including Superstorm Sandy and its tri-state impacts, Hurricane Hugo in South Carolina, and Iniki on Kauai, Hawaii.  He also covered the Space Shuttle Program; 1989 San Francisco Earthquake; numerous Southern California wildfires; the trial and execution of serial killer Ted Bundy in Florida; the 1994 police shooting death of Tyke, the escaped Cirus Elephant on the streets of Honolulu; 2009’s Miracle on the Hudson; the NYC Mayoral administrations of Michael Bloomberg through Eric Adams; and more.]

*  *  *  *
“GEORGE CLOONEY SHARES THOUGHTS
ON MAKING HIS BROADWAY DEBUT IN ‘GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK’”
by Joelle Garguilo 

[On 7 February 2025, Eyewitness News (WABC; Channel 7 in New York City), broadcast the report below.]

MANHATTAN (WABC) – It was a movie that became a box office sensation and an awards season darling 20 years ago.

[Good Night’s worldwide box office total was $56.6 million, of which $31.5 million was made in the U.S. It was nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay for Clooney and Heslov. Good Night also received nominations for six BAFTA’s, including Best Film, Director, Screenplay, and Supporting Actor (Clooney); four Golden Globes; and two Screen Actors Guild Awards, among many others—including several wins.]

“Good Night and Good Luck” told the story of Edward R[.] Murrow and it was spearheaded by George Clooney.

Now Clooney is reimagining the movie and bringing it and himself to the Broadway stage.

Entertainment Reporter Joelle Garguilo caught up with Clooney to talk about his Broadway debut.

Clooney held an old-school style press conference to announce his cast and chat about the project.

Clooney is starring in the stage adaptation of the 2005 film that he co-wrote and directed as the legendary journalist Edward R. Murrow.

A role that hits close to home.

“How much of you doing this is almost a love letter to your dad in some way?” Garguilo asked.

“It really it is. My father was an Anchorman for 40 years, and he’s still feisty. You know, . . . he’s gonna come see the play, and I’m sure I’ll get some brutal notes about journalism from my dad. But yeah, I’m very proud of the person that my father has been his whole life and career. He taught me all the things that I believe in, and I’m and it’s, and it’s, I’m proud to represent his craft,” Clooney said.

“What do you remember about like being a kid and going to visit him at work?” Garguilo asked.

“I used to run the teleprompter for him. . . . In the old days, and teleprompters in the old days was a camera on top of paper that was taped end to end, and you would run it underneath the camera with a big light on it, and then whenever they break, do a commercial break, they go[, “C]ut that segment,[”] and you had a giant paper cutter, and you cut it, and then you tape it back together. That’s how literally, that’s how old I am,” Clooney said.

The play follows Murrow’s historic confrontation with Senator Joseph McCarthy, a story Clooney says still resonates.

“Unfortunately, this is a story that has been relevant for 100 years and continues to be relevant. I think it’s a good time to always remind ourselves of us at our best. And Murrow was us at our best,” Clooney said.

Garguilo asked what making his Broadway debut means to him.

“It’s fear. It’s abject fear. Is what I have, the . . . wave of emotion. Yeah, I’m terrified. But, I mean, that’s not such a bad thing to be, you know, it’s a kind of a good thing in life to constantly be doing stuff that you don’t feel comfortable with and you don’t feel competent. And I love the story,” Clooney said.

“So, is Brad Pitt getting an invite to opening night?” Garguilo asks.

“No, he’s not. In fact, I don’t want him around. Apparently, we’re fighting. I saw some article the other day, we’re fighting. I don’t know, I don’t know what, where Brad is right now, he’s shooting a movie, so [h]e’s almost done, and then we’re gonna, we’re gonna do another film together soon,” Clooney said.

A strictly limited engagement of “Good Night and Good Luck begins previews March 12th and the show officially opens in April at the Winter Garden Theatre.

[Joelle Garguilo is an Emmy Award-winning entertainment reporter for WABC.  A native New Yorker, she began her career in broadcast television 15 years ago at NBC, interviewing hundreds of stars of the screen and stage including Oprah Winfrey, Tom Cruise, George Clooney, Tom Hanks, Denzel Washington, Timothee Chalamet, Julia Roberts, Tony Bennett, Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth, among others.

[Throughout her tenure, she held multiple roles across the network.  Most recently, she worked as an on-air entertainment and features reporter for New York Live correspondent for E! News while contributing at the Today Show with Hoda & Jenna.

[Garguilo’s talents have earned her two Emmy Awards, one for the magazine program New York Live: Home for the Holidays and a second for Outstanding Entertainment: Program Features/Segment for New York Live Features/Segments.]

*  *  *  *
“GEORGE CLOONEY MAKES BROADWAY DEBUT,
TELLING THE STORY OF PIONEERING JOURNALIST EDWARD R. MURROW”
by Jon Wertheim  

[John Wertheim presented this report on 60 Minutes, the CBS News magazine program, on 23 March 2025, while the play was still in previews.  (The segment was recorded while Good Night was still in rehearsals.)]

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 [Broadway at West 50th Street in Manhattan], 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. 

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 is 63; Murrow would have been 45 at the time the play is set]—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 [1915-98]. 

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 [the series of air raids launched on cities in Great Britain by the German air force from 7 September 1940 to 11 May 1941; literal German meaning: ‘lightning’; from Blitzkrieg – ‘lightning war’]. His trademark signoff doubles as the play’s title. [“Good night, and good luck” was Murrow’s signature signoff for his London radio broadcasts; he brought it forward to TV back in the States after the war.]

Clooney wrote the story with his longtime friend and creative partner, Grant Heslov [actor, writer, and filmmaker; b. 1963]. 

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 [Operation Iraqi Freedom began on 19 March 2003]. 

[According to The Hollywood Reporter (Rick Porter, “George Clooney to Produce Ohio State Abuse Scandal Docuseries,” 22 Feb. 2021), “George Clooney and Grant Heslov’s Smokehouse Pictures will produce a docuseries about a decades-long [sexual] abuse scandal in the athletic department at Ohio State University.”

[“The series, [which is currently in production by HBO with the working title of “Untitled Ohio State Scandal Project,”] is based on an October 2020 Sports Illustrated story by Jon Wertheim, which detailed a long list of allegations against former Ohio State sports doctor Richard Strauss and university officials’ lack of response,” the THR article continued. Clooney, Heslov, and Wertheim are listed among the executive producers, and Wertheim is credited as writer. No release date has been announced.]

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 [9 March 1954 on See It Now], 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)

[The term “fourth estate,” as Clooney is using it above, refers to the press and news media. It’s a relatively common expression but the other “three estates” are rarely invoked. The derivation of the terms is from the historical European concept of the “three estates of the realm”: the clergy, the nobility, and the commoners.

[Clooney, however, is suggesting a slightly alternative use of the terms, implying that the press is a sort of “fourth branch” of the government, hence his reference to “the judiciary and the executive and the legislative branches” as the other three “estates,” since the U.S. has no nobility or commoners in the European sense, and the clergy in this country have no “temporal” (that is, “governmental”) authority.]

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 . . .

[In Michael R. Sisak, “ABC agrees to give $15 million to Donald Trump’s presidential library to settle defamation lawsuit,” 14 Dec. 2024, the Associated Press reported: “ABC News has agreed to pay $15 million toward Donald Trump’s presidential library to settle a defamation lawsuit over anchor George Stephanopoulos’ inaccurate on-air assertion that the president-elect had been found civilly liable for raping writer E. Jean Carroll.” The trial in April and May 2023 concluded that Trump was liable for sexually abusing—but not raping—and defaming Carroll.]

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 [b. 1922].

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. [Pianist, entertainer, and showman Liberace (1919-87) appeared on Person to Person on 6 January 1956.]

David Cromer: If he were playing Willy Loman [lead character in Arthur Miller’s 1949 play, Death of a Salesman], 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 [“I Love Joe Biden. But We Need a New Nominee,” New York Times 11 July 2024, sec. A (news): 19].

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 [with] 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 [Clooney (1928-2002)], 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. 

[Murrow was a chain smoker all his life; he smoked about three packs a day. He was diagnosed with lung cancer and had a lung removed in October 1963.  He died about two years later, on 27 April 1965, two days after his 57th birthday.

[On Broadway, the actors, including Clooney, are using herbal cigarettes on stage to portray the heavy-smoking characters to lessen the health risks associated with real tobacco.]

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. [Clooney was named the “Sexiest Man Alive” by People magazine in 2006.]

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?

[This program was produced by Nathalie Sommer and Kaylee Tully with broadcast associates Elizabeth Germino and Mimi Lamarre. Edited by Sean Kelly.

[L. Jon Wertheim is an accomplished journalist and 60 Minutes correspondent.

[I don't entirely get why George Clooney keeps insisting that he's "old."  He's only 63—advanced middle age!  He’s not even old enough to remember Murrow (who died a little under four years after Clooney was born).  I’m a little over fourteen years Clooney’s senior—I’m legitimately an old man—and Murrow died when I was over 18, so I knew the name and the renown. 

[I vaguely remember seeing Edward R. Murrow on television when I was a boy.  See It Now was on from 1951 to 1958, when I was between 4 and 11.  It was a news show, so I wouldn’t have been watching it for most of its run, but maybe by the time I was 10, I might have watched it when it ran on Sunday evenings at 5, but probably not often.  The McCarthy shows would have been beyond me (though I do remember being aware of the turmoil of those years.  I was only 7 when the 9 March 1954 showdown aired, and 10 when McCarthy died.

[On the other hand, Person to Person ran from 1953 to 1961, when I was between 6 and 14, and I’m pretty sure I watched some of the later shows when Murrow would send cameras into the homes of celebrities.  I sort of remember watching some of the personalities from Hollywood and other fields as they sat in their living rooms as Murrow, back at the studio, interviewed them. 

[Murrow was my dad's first boss at the U.S. Information Agency back in the early 1960s.  (I’ve blogged about that time of my life in “An American Teen in Germany” [9 and 12 March 2013].)

[I’ve told the story of my father taking up President Kennedy’s challenge to “ask what you can do for your country” in his inaugural address in 1961.  JFK appointed Murrow Director of USIA in January 1961 and Dad applied in May.  He went on active duty as a Foreign Service Officer in July ’62.  I have no idea if the two ever actually met, but Murrow was the first director of USIA under whom Dad served.

[Dad went overseas in October 1962 and didn’t return to the States until sometime in September 1963, when his father died.  Murrow resigned in ’64 due to illness and died of lung cancer in '65.  (Dad served until 1968 under two successors to Murrow: Carl Rowan (1925-2000), a well-known journalist, 1964-65, and Leonard Marks (1916-2006), a communications lawyer, 1965-68.)]