George Clooney Takes First Broadway Bow in ‘Good Night, and Good Luck’ Play ArticlePure

Welcome to Broadway, George Clooney!

The Oscar-winning actor on Wednesday, March 12 officially made his Broadway debut, as preview performances began for the stage adaptation of his 2005 movie, Good Night, and Good Luck.

Photographers were on hand at the Winter Garden Theatre in New York City to capture Clooney and the cast as they took their first curtain call bow. The pictures gave the first clear glimpse of the silver-haired actor’s new dark locks, spotted by shutterbugs over the weekend as Clooney stepped out in SoHo.

Afterwards, Clooney was snapped signing autographs to eager theatergoers.

Earlier on Wednesday, producers released a photographic portrait of the play’s massive cast on stage the famed locale, as well as a production shot from the play.

Good Night, and Good Luck, like the film, recounts the real-life story of CBS news journalist Edward R. Murrow’s legendary exposé on Senator Joseph McCarthy. The play, head of an opening night of Thursday, April 3.

. On screen, Clooney played producer Fred Friendly, but on stage, he’ll step into the shoes of Murrow — the role that earned David Strathairn a 2006 Oscar nomination.

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Clooney is joined in Good Night, and Good Luck by Mac Brandt as Colonel Anderson, Will Dagger as Don Hewitt, Christopher Denham as John Aaron, Glenn Fleshler as Fred Friendly, Ilana Glazer as Shirley Wershba, Clark Gregg as Don Hollenbeck, Paul Gross as William F. Paley, Georgia Heers as Ella, Carter Hudson as Joe Wershba, Fran Kranz as Palmer Williams, Jennifer Morris as Millie Green, Michael Nathanson as Eddie Scott, Andrew Polk as Charlie Mack and Aaron Roman Weiner as Don Surine.

R. Ward Duffy, Joe Forbrich, Imani Rousselle, Greg Stuhr, JD Taylor, and Sophia Tzougros round out the ensemble. 

This is Clooney’s first stage work since 1986’s Vicious, a play about the life of Sid Vicious he did in Los Angeles and later, at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre. His work in the play, as a male prostitute drug dealer, famously earned him his first agent and on-camera work.

While Clooney co-wrote Good Night, and Good Luck — both the film and the play, and both with Grant Heslov — the actor has said that memorizing his lines has been “a nightmare.”

“I don’t remember my kids names!” joked Clooney, who shares 7-year-old twins Alexander and Ella with wife Amal, during an appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert in February. “I’m 63!”

“It’s weird. When I did ER, we’d do 12 pages a day of medical dialogue and you could just come in and whip it out. I was 30 years [old],” Clooney added, before demonstrating his recall of the phrase “supraventricular tachycardia” which he said he’s “never gotten wrong since” doing the 1994 drama. “Now I can’t remember anything!”

“Honest to God, literally, these are very famous speeches that Murrow wrote and I start to do them and I just sit there going, ‘Uhhh… I don’t remember,’ ” Clooney continued. “It’s sheer panic.”

Tickets for Good Night, and Good Luck are now on sale.