George Clooney chose ‘Ticket to Paradise’ for the ‘breather’ we all need right now
By Marianne Garvey, CNN
George Clooney needed a rom-com just as badly as the rest of us.
The “Ticket to Paradise” star joins CNN’s “Who’s Talking To Chris Wallace?” this week, where he explained why he chose to return to the romantic comedy genre with his pal and co-star Julia Roberts.
“I got sent the script and you know, we’ve had a lot of dark things going on in the world. And I always feel that films try to reflect that, often. They’re usually late because it takes a couple of years to make a film,” Clooney said. “It felt like we all needed a break. I needed a break. I needed it to be a little carefree.”
“You know, if you look back during the Depression, for instance, romantic comedies really flourished,” he added.
In “Ticket to Paradise,” Clooney and Roberts play a divorced couple who travel to Bali to try and stop their daughter’s wedding. Humor and heart follow, in an uplifting movie escape.
“I think people needed a break,” Clooney said. “I certainly know Julia and I, when we [both] read it, we thought I need a breather here. And this was the perfect thing for us.”
As for the state of the world and US democracy, in particular, Clooney weighed in with his concerns.
“I’m worried about it. I’m worried about the coarsening of America. I’m worried about how we celebrate unkindness now,” he told Wallace. “Everybody jumps up and down and cheers when somebody’s owned, you know, own the libs or you know, yell at some conservative, I’m worried about that. There’s always been a sort of a certain amount of acrimony between everyone, but it’s, it’s at a level. I worry about things, I’ll tell you.”
He’s also voiced his disbelief in the “new cruelty” of sending migrants and people seeking asylum to other places to try to send some sort of political message.
“Let’s send them without any warning, you know, because it’s fun to own the liberals. We’ll send them to Martha’s Vineyard, you know, where Obama’s people [are] and we’ll send them to the Vice President’s house with no warning, no health, no, nothing. So I look at where we are in this sort of coarsening of our discourse, and I find it to be worrying,” he said.
He does, however, recognize the good fortunate in his own life, saying his wife Amal Clooney “walked in and changed everything.”
“I feel incredibly lucky every day, I have my wife, someone who is my best friend and someone who I am terribly in love with,” he said. “It’s probably because it happened for me later in life. I don’t take any of that for granted, any moment of any day. And I think we both really made a commitment to make sure that we understand how lucky we are.”
“Who’s Talking To Chris Wallace?” streams Friday on HBO Max and Sunday night on CNN.
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