George Clooney faced challenges while directing the historical drama Boys in a boatincluding the outbreak of COVID-19 on set.
“I was really sick,” Clooney, 62, told PEOPLE in an exclusive interview this weekend. “It was the first time I got COVID.”
As a result of contracting the virus, he was forced to temporarily run the film — set in 2022 and starring Callum Turner as amateur crew member Joe Rantz, who helps lead an underdog University of Washington team to the 1936 Olympics — remotely, albeit with the help of some modern technologies.
“I’m on the iPad and I’m hacking from my bedroom,” recalls Clooney, whose producing partner Grant Heslov helped him from the set. “Grant was sitting on camera and they’d hold up the iPad to Cal and I’d say, ‘Ah, go fast.’ I would speak ‘Faster’ whatever that is.”
Fortunately, the scenario did not last long. “We only had to do it for a week,” he says.
Several other people working on the film also fell ill, including Joel Edgerton, who plays stoic team coach Al Ulbrickson.
George Clooney directs Boys in a boat on first look photos and behind the scenes video (exclusive)
“By the way, he went down first in fairness,” Clooney jokes to Edgerton. “So if we’re looking for ground zero…” At a virtual press conference for the film on Saturday, Edgerton told reporters he “fell hard.”
George Clooney on the set of the movie ‘The Boys in the Boat’.
Pictures by Laurie Sparham/ Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Amazingly, Turner and Heslov managed to avoid contracting the virus. “Yeah, one by one they all went around me,” Turner tells PEOPLE. “Only me and Grant didn’t get it for some reason.”
“It was funny,” he continues. “George is directing on his iPhone from somewhere in a dressing gown.”
Clooney joked at the press conference that directing via iPad is something I’ll “keep doing.”
Joel Edgerton takes the college rowing team to the Olympics in George Clooney’s The Boys in a boat Trailer
The Oscar winner suspects the culprit was an intimate group dinner with key cast members, although he explains that “we’ve all been tested, we’ve all been vaccinated”.
“We all landed in London. We’re going to shoot the next day. And so we have a little dinner for the crew. It means rowers, our children and [costars] Hadley [Robinson] and Courtney [Henggeler] and [Edgerton] me too,” he continues. “That’s it. A small room. And from that small room, let’s say there were 18 people there, 17 people got Covid.”
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Callum Turner and Hadley Robinson in ‘The Boys in the Boat’.
Pictures by Laurie Sparham/ Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
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Clooney, who noted the polarized atmosphere in the country, told a news conference that he hoped the film, about this group of eager working-class kids who bring home Olympic gold, would send a unifying message.
George Clooney and Amal Clooney went out on a date night in Seattle, a movie screening Boys in a boat
“[It’s] a film about the idea that we’re all in this together. “Probably the only way we’re going to come out intact is with each other and supporting each other,” he said. “And the better everyone else is, the better you will be. And so I loved that theme for this film.”
Boys in a boatwhich is based on The New York Times Daniel James Brown’s bestseller is in theaters nationwide on Christmas Day.
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