George Clooney Wanted Adam Sandler to Be Taken Seriously on the Set of ‘Jay Kelly’ and Not Be “Making Fun of His Incredible Talent”

For their new movie, Jay Kelly, George Clooney had a special rule on set: he didn’t want the cast referring to Adam Sandler by his nickname “Sandman,” in an effort to take the comedian more seriously as an actor.

At the film’s AFI Fest premiere on Thursday, Clooney explained that reasoning to The Hollywood Reporter, saying, “You get treated the way you treat yourself. This was a different kind of role for Adam, and I wanted to make sure that he wasn’t making fun of his incredible talent. He likes to just deflect and I was like, ‘You know what, dude, you’re really good in this film and you’re a really good actor and let’s not just make jokes.’”

In the Netflix movie, Clooney plays movie star Jay Kelly, who has a sudden wake-up call about his life and goes on a trip through Europe with his devoted manager Ron (Sandler).

Sandler joked in response to Clooney’s rule, “I still call myself the Sandman; he can’t stop me,” but he did appreciate the gesture. “He just is very protective over me. He’s a really nice guy,” he continued of Clooney. “We would do all these scenes together and we’d get deep together and he’d say, ‘I just want people to recognize that’ and I’d say, ‘I’m OK, I like just working hard,’ and he’d say, ‘No.’ He’s very nice, he’s trying to look out for me.”

Noah Baumbach, along with co-writer Emily Mortimer, wrote the role specifically for Sandler, as the actor explained the film as less a Hollywood-set story but for “everybody who works and tries to do the best they can at work and the sacrifice that takes on your family and on yourself; things you miss out on when you jump into something and you’re deep into something and that stuff’s going on over there — you tend to go what’s more important, this or that? And it’s a struggle.”

Greta Gerwig plays Sandler’s wife in the film, and along with “Greta’s son and my daughter, we were one nice family together,” Sandler added of their characters. “Greta was fantastic; Greta was so nice to my daughter Sadie — they did a lot of scenes together and they got very close.”

Baumbach, who is married to Gerwig in real life, said he identified “fairly early” that she would play the role: “I basically said to Greta, ‘Who are you going to play?’” He confirmed that she has early dibs on parts, joking, “I mean, she couldn’t play Jay Kelly or Ron, but she could play pretty much anyone else.”

Jay Kelly hits select theaters on Nov. 14 and starts streaming on Netflix Dec. 5.