Sandra Bullock reveals George Clooney's advice before she took on 'Ocean's 8'
The Ocean’s movies are ensemble pieces, but there’s always an Ocean calling the shots. In 1960’s Ocean’s 11, it was Frank Sinatra doing it his way as Danny Ocean. In the trilogy launched in 2001, it was George Clooney in the same suave role. And now in the sequel/reboot Ocean’s 8, it’s Sandra Bullock, as Danny’s sister Debbie Ocean, who assembles her own (all-female) dream team of criminals for a high-stakes heist (this time at the Met Gala in Manhattan).
Bullock and Clooney are old friends and occasional colleagues, having starred in the 2015 sci-fi two-hander Gravity and later co-producing the 2015 political comedy Our Brand Is Crisis.
In taking over the family business, Bullock said that she did in fact talk her pal Jorge Cloons, as she called him at the film’s New York press junket.
“We were at a Christmas party and he said, ‘Are you doing it?’ And I was like, ‘I think we are,'” Bullock said (watch above).
“He just wanted us to have as good a time as they had. I said, ‘Well, that’s not happening. We’re not all single. There’s not gonna be a bar in the room. And we’re not in Vegas.'”
Clooney and buddies Brad Pitt and Matt Damon did indeed live it up while shooting Ocean’s Eleven, staying at the Bellagio (where Clooney reportedly had a keg of Guinness installed in his room) and hitting up the blackjack tables after hours.
Bullock and her castmates (Cate Blanchett, Sarah Paulson, Mindy Kaling, Anne Hathaway, Rihanna, Helena Bonham Carter, and Awkwafina) still found ways to entertain themselves, she said.
Like, for instance, “Lying on a floor of a loft in Brooklyn while Helena Bonham Carter had a charcuterie platter on her chest that she would feed us from,” Bullock said, laughing. “And Nora [Awkwafina] would read us interesting facts from the internets.
“So we had our own way of bonding. It just wasn’t as lively and sexy.”
Ocean’s 8 opens Friday.
Watch the cast talk about work, work, working with Rihanna:
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