Clooney and Downey and Farrow, Oh My! A Star-Powered Broadway Season Begins to Take Shape

Broadway and Hollywood have long enjoyed a healthy symbiosis. Film stars face their fears of live theater while fulfilling a lifelong artistic ambition. Broadway gets a much-needed bump in attendance, and with any luck, some lasting converts. Everyone goes home happy. And never forget that the river flows both ways. Broadway will forever lay claim to Oscar-winning legends like Barbra Streisand and Meryl Streep who got their start on stage before they ventured west, never to return. And no matter how many Matrix movies or Disney blockbusters he leads, Jonathan Groff will always, first and foremost, be a creature of the stage.

This past Broadway season boasted its fair share of Hollywood names—from the homegrown Groff and his Merrily We Roll Along costar Daniel Radcliffe of enduring Harry Potter fame; to Academy Award nominee Rachel McAdams, who made a bold Broadway debut in Amy Herzog’s exposing drama Mary Jane; to the Michael Imperioli-Jeremy Strong boxing match happening at Circle in the Square Theatre in Herzog’s adaptation of An Enemy of the People (Herzog’s work has clearly cast a spell on film and TV actors); to two-time Oscar winner Jessica Lange's gin-soaked turn in Paula Vogel's Mother Play. But the 2024-25 season, which is just starting to take shape, could already blind this one with its star power.

The latest surprise for theatergoers dropped earlier this week when it was announced that two-time Academy Award winner and eternal heartthrob George Clooney will make his Broadway debut next spring in a stage adaptation of Good Night, and Good Luck, a historical drama set in the world of broadcast journalism at the height of Red-Scare politics. Clooney, who played Fred Friendly in the 2005 film he directed and also co-wrote with Grant Heslov, will now step into the lead role of Edward R. Murrow—again co-writing the stage play with Heslov but leaving the directing to Tony winner David Cromer. And if he writes McCarthy into the play rather than using actual footage of the senator as he did in the film, we’ll get to see Clooney go head-to-head with another powerhouse actor—perhaps a fellow film transplant that will make this production even more of a hot ticket than it’s already bound to be.

To venture outside the bounds of a cozy Hollywood career to make a Broadway debut as both a playwright and actor—and at 63 no less—is an audacious move. But audacity levels are high within the Good Night, and Good Luck family, as just last week, Robert Downey Jr. also announced Broadway plans. Downey, who shared the screen with Clooney back in 2005 as CBS News correspondent Joseph Wershba, decided to follow up his recent Oppenheimer Oscar win with a Broadway debut in the new Ayad Akhtar play McNeal, coming to Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont Theater in the fall. Because what else are the safety-averse to do after a creative high? He’ll beat Clooney to the stage by a few months—just enough time to be his pal’s Broadway canary.

It begs to be said that theater, or any art form for that matter, is not about accolades. But in a month where awards are top of mind, it’s hard not to forecast next year’s Tony race—potentially one for the ages. Yes, there could be a Clooney-Downey run-off, but the Lead Actor in a Play category in which they would hypothetically be featured could also include a third Oscar winner in Denzel Washington, who is set to star in director Kenny Leon’s revival of Othello. Washington’s Academy Award-nominated Iago, Jake Gyllenhaal, could also grace that category, along with Peter Gallagher, who is returning to Broadway in Delia Ephron’s adaptation of her own memoir, Left on Tenth, and newcomer Kit Connor, who will bring his Heartstopper fandom to Broadway in the fall as Romeo in Sam Gold’s raucous Romeo + Juliet.

Golden Globe Award winner Rachel Zegler—of West Side Story and Hunger Games fame—will be the Gen Z Juliet to Connor’s Romeo, making for a potentially interesting awards race with Emmy and Golden Globe Award winner Julianna Margulies, who will perform opposite Gallagher as Ephron’s Broadway avatar (with both Margulies and Clooney coming to the stage, this is the season for ER fans). Then there’s iconic Rosemary’s Baby star Mia Farrow and the fabulously chaotic Patti LuPone (returning early from a stage hiatus), who will co-star in Jen Silverman’s two-hander, The Roommate, later this summer. We could also be getting Succession star Sarah Snook’s solo performance of The Picture of Dorian Gray, rumored for a spring 2025 run on the heels of an Olivier Award-winning stint in the West End. Put that Lead Actress in a Play category together and you have a Tony mixer that could be fodder for a play all its own.

Still, for the many names giving the 2024-25 Broadway season its special luster, it’s the variety of generations, genres and performance styles that will make it a year to be remembered. And if the gravitational pull of Hollywood is the thing that puts screaming crowds in the presence of new work, Shakespearean classics and Oscar Wilde’s gothic world of hedonistic madness (you have to appreciate the irony), Broadway will be all the better for it.