George Clooney sang the praises of his longtime friend and former ER co-star Noah Wyle at the Movies for Grownups AARP Awards on Saturday night, where both men walked away winners.
Presenting Wyle with the award for Best TV Actor for playing Dr. Michael “Robby” Robinavitch on HBO Max’s The Pitt, Clooney joked that AARP should do its own version of People’s “Sexiest Man Alive” issue and award the title to Wyle.
“I would nominate Noah Wyle as the first guy,” he told attendees gathered at the Beverly Wilshire hotel. He went on to talk fondly about his 30-year-long friendship with Wyle, saying, “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. He was the kindest person I’d ever met. We became very dear friends very quickly, and remained that way.”
He also praised Wyle for being a great father and husband as well as actor before 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.”
Taking the stage, Wyle told Clooney, “You got me choked up there, buddy,” before going on to credit Clooney with teaching him lessons he would go on to use as an actor, writer, director, and executive producer on The Pitt.
“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,’” Wyle said.
“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.”
Clooney and Wyle met on the set of ER, where Clooney played Dr. Doug Ross and Wyle was Dr. John Carter. Wyle would go on to have the longest-running stint on the show, while Clooney departed at the end of season five due to his burgeoning film career.
In his own acceptance speech for Best Actor for Jay Kelly, Clooney thanked the AARP and quipped, “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.
Clooney also referenced controversial comments made by director Quentin Tarantino last year, expressing his love for actors and telling attendees, “I have a great affinity [for actors] 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.”
In addition to working with Tarantino on 1996’s From Dusk Till Dawn, as well as a 1995 episode of ER, which the Pulp Fiction filmmaker directed, Clooney worked with Lillard, too. They both appeared in Alexander Payne’s Oscar-winning The Descendants.
“We live in a time of cruelty, we don’t need to be adding to it,“ Clooney said, before finishing with, “Thank you for this. It’s going to be a long, tough couple of years, but we’ll all get through it together.”
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