The Movies for Grownups Awards on Saturday night played host to an ER reunion, as George Clooney and Noah Wyle reunited (twice) on the awards stage and talked about their longtime friendship.
Both men were winners at the AARP awards show — best actor for Clooney (Jay Kelly) and Wyle for best TV actor (The Pitt).
In presenting to Wyle, Clooney joked that AARP should do a “Sexiest Man Still Alive” issue and declared, “I would nominate Noah Wyle as the first guy.”
“I met Noah in 1993. He hadn’t worked a lot yet and we did this show called ER and it was this crazy hit. At one time we had 40 million people watching and I remember Noah going, ‘Is that good?’ I was like, ‘That’s good, that’ll never happen again.’ He was wise beyond his years from the very beginning, from the very start,” Clooney told the crowd at the Beverly Wilshire. “He was the kindest person I ever met. We became very dear friends very quickly, and remained that way.”
He went on to compliment The Pitt star as a great father and husband as well as an actor, adding, “I’m very proud to call him a friend, I’m also proud to call him a colleague. When I grow up, I want to be Noah Wyle.”
“You got me choked up there buddy,” Wyle said as he took the stage, before crediting much of what he does on the set of The Pitt as an actor, writer, executive producer and director to what he learned from Clooney on ER.
“I remember vividly, the first week of ER, he called the entire cast into his trailer and said ‘OK everybody, this is how it’s gonna be. We’re going to be nice to everyone. There’s not going to be any divisions between the cast and crew or foreground and background, we’re going to learn our lines, we’re going to be on time,’” and take the work seriously themselves, Wyle recalled. He continued, “After that, that was the way it worked, and the first 15 years of my career, that is how it worked. And I spent the next 15 years trying to find that feeling — that sense of family, that sense of commitment. It was only with The Pitt that I found it again.”
Wyle also gave the same treatment to Clooney for his award, presenting him with the best actor honor after praising his work in Jay Kelly.
Clooney teased from the stage, “Thank you to the AARP. I have to say, Movies for Grownups just means old people — I realize now that the only way I was going to win anything was if Timothée Chalamet is too goddamn young” to be nominated.
He went on to express his love for actors, noting, “I have a great affinity [for them] and I don’t enjoy watching people be cruel to actors. By the way, Paul Dano and Owen Wilson and Matthew Lillard, I would be honored to work with those actors,” referencing Quentin Tarantino’s recent comments criticizing those men.
“We live in a time of cruelty, we don’t need to be adding to it,” Clooney said, before concluding, “Thank you for this. It’s going to be a long, tough couple of years but we’ll all get through it together.”
