Actor George Clooney narrated a new ad supporting Kamala Harris’ campaign in his latest public sign of support for the vice president since his dramatic call for Joe Biden to drop out of the race this summer.
The Oscar-winner can be heard in the 30-second ad from progressive evangelical group Vote Common Good reminding male voters they can “vote any way you want, and no one will ever know.” It ends with Clooney saying: “What happens in the booth stays in the booth—vote Harris-Walz.”
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The advert shows three men heading into a polling station. “Come on boys,” says one wearing a t-shirt referencing Jason Aldean’s controversial song “Try That in a Small Town,” before invoking Donald Trump’s campaign slogan: “Let’s make America great again.”
“Before you cast your vote in this election, think about how it’ll impact the people you care about the most,” Clooney says in the voiceover, as one of the men looks at his young daughter before casting his vote for Harris.
Earlier in the week, Vote Common Good released another ad narrated by Julia Roberts. That advert featured a woman entering a polling booth, which Roberts describes as “the one place in America where women still have a right to choose.” After voting for Harris, the woman is greeted by a man wearing a cap emblazoned with an American flag and an eagle who asks her if she “made the right choice.”
“Sure did, honey,” the woman replies.
Doug Pagitt, executive director of Vote Common Good, told NBC News the point of both ads is to remind people they do not have to vote in the same way as their Republican relatives and friends. “We know the MAGA movement is putting increased pressure on people, but we also know the strong will of Americans when they stand in the voting booth,” Pagitt said.
Clooney’s participation in the ad comes three months after he wrote an explosive op-ed in The New York Times calling for President Biden to drop out of the race. The actor, who had co-hosted a record-breaking fundraiser for Biden in June, wrote about his first-hand experience of seeing Biden’s decline.
“It’s devastating to say it, but the Joe Biden I was with three weeks ago at the fundraiser was not the Joe ‘big F---ing deal’ Biden of 2010. He wasn’t even the Joe Biden of 2020,” Clooney wrote at the time. Instead, he said Biden was “the same man we all witnessed at the debate” between Biden and Trump, the event which triggered an ultimately fatal crisis of confidence in Biden’s leadership.
After Biden stepped aside for Harris to replace at the top of the Democratic ticket, Clooney praised the president for “saving democracy once again” and said he’d “done the most selfless thing a president has done since George Washington.”
