Warning: minor SPOILERS for Jay Kelly are ahead!
As we inch closer to the end of the year, one of the newest 2025 movie releases that’s generating a lot of chatter is Jay Kelly, which became available to stream with a Netflix subscription last week. Critics have been praising George Clooney’s performance as the title character, a popular actor who’s grappling with the life choices he’s made over his 30+-year-long career as he travels through Europe. In the midst of this main story, there’s a Jay Kelly subplot involving cheesecake that amusingly ties into when Clooney went through a similar situation with fuji apples.
George Clooney Accidentally Got Fuji Apples Added To His Rider
There’s a recurring joke in Jay Kelly where it’s stipulated in his rider that a slice of cheesecake be available for the actor to have wherever he goes. This is despite the fact that George Clooney’s character says he doesn’t even like cheesecake, but Adam Sandler’s Ron Sukenick, his manager, counters that he did once say he enjoyed it, he just doesn’t remember. When Clooney was asked by USA Today if he’s ever had a rider, he answered:
I remember I was in New York and the driver, he was pissed at me. I was like, ‘What's going on, dude?’ He goes, ‘Look, George, I looked everywhere for Fuji apples. I can't find them anywhere.’ Somebody had asked me at some point, do I want anything in my trailer to eat? And I said maybe some apples. They go, ‘Any kind in particular?’ I was like, ‘I don't know, Fuji?’ Because it was the only one I could think of. And all of a sudden it's in your rider. Everywhere you go, people are climbing mountains to find Fuji apples for you. And I had to go, ‘Take that out. You are crazy.’
It boils down to miscommunication, I suppose. Like what evidently happened with Jay Kelly, George Clooney merely saying once that he’d be interested in Fuji apples was enough for someone on his team to add that to his rider. While Clooney didn’t go so far as to say he’s never liked Fuji apples like Jay Kelly said about cheesecake, both men came to the same conclusion that having this kind of demand in their respective riders was ridiculous. So in real life, no other driver ever needs to worry about tracking down those kinds of apples down for him.
George Clooney Isn’t A Fan Of Extremely Specific Rider Requests
The Fuji apples incident is even more perplexing to George Clooney since he’s not one of those actors who makes extremely specific requests in their riders, particularly because he doesn’t spend as much time in his trailer as you might expect. He explained:
A little bit of it happens accidentally with people trying to make everything nice. There's some actors that are literally ‘I only eat green M&M's’ kind of bullshit. I grew up in Kentucky – we try to stay out of trailers. That's not the end all and be all, [me] in a double wide on the set.
George Clooney has certainly demonstrated at times how he can be a more down-to-Earth actor, from how he continues to make fun of his performance in Batman & Robin, to that how he once agreed to change Matt Damon’s filming schedule on Syriana because the Red Sox were playing in the World Series. That’s not to say he doesn’t like to have certain things when working on a movie, but he’s nothing on the level of requiring only a specific color of M&M’s. I just hope Jay Kelly goes to the effort of getting the cheesecake stipulation removed, as those slices deserve to go to people who will actually want them.
Now that Jay Kelly has been widely released, we begin waiting to learn what George Clooney’s next movie will be. My bet is it being Ocean’s 14, as Clooney said back in October that Warner Bros. Pictures approved the budget and that filming would “probably start in about nine or ten months.” Don’t forget to also look over the final 2025 Netflix release dates so you can decide what new offerings to watch on the streaming service before the year is done.
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