George Clooney will make his Broadway debut as 1950s television news reporter and anchor Edward R. Murrow in a stage production of his film “Good Night, and Good Luck.”
The production will debut in spring 2025 at one of 17 Broadway theaters owned by the Shubert Organization, according to a statement.
The 2005 movie, co-written by Clooney, 63, and Grant Heslov, starred David Strathairn as Murrow in the early 1950s, when he challenged the red-baiting antics of Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy, R-Wis.
Clooney’s work on the black-and-white film, including as its director, earned him nominations for the 78th Academy Awards in 2006.
For the play, which he also co-wrote with Heslov, Clooney will portray Murrow, according to the statement.
It’s personal.
His father, Nick Clooney, is a retired television journalist who worked in Kentucky, where Clooney actor grew up, as well as in Cincinnati, Salt Lake City and Los Angeles.
Clooney has said he is proud to have grown up in journalism. Speaking to students at Washington, D.C.’s American University in 2009, he said he wanted to produce “really well-written words about the Fourth Estate again.”
Murrow pushed back against CBS executives opposed to his challenges to McCarthy, who coerced allies and destroyed foes with threats and accusations surrounding communist sympathizing.
Tony Award-winning Broadway director David Cromer, who will direct, said in Monday’s statement that Murrow “operated from a kind of moral clarity that feels vanishingly rare in today’s media landscape.”
Diana Dasrath contributed.