George Clooney Shares Heart Behind THE BOYS IN THE BOAT

Published: December 14, 2023

George Clooney Shares Heart Behind THE BOYS IN THE BOAT

By Movieguide® Contributor

Movieguide® caught up with THE BOYS IN THE BOAT cast and crew at the movie’s premiere to discuss how they captured the heart of the story.

“THE BOYS IN THE BOAT is based on the #1 New York Times bestselling non-fiction book written by Daniel James Brown, telling the true story of the University of Washington rowing crew, who won the Gold medal during the Olympic Games of 1936 in Germany,” Forbes reported.

The story focuses on how friendship and struggling together can help people overcome adversity they might never surmount alone. Director George Clooney kept this theme central throughout the movie.

“We love to focus on the things that divide us,” Clooney told Movieguide®. “The truth of the matter is most of us actually root for each other, and we look out for each other.”

The actors experienced this firsthand as they all learned to row for the first time.

“I had no idea how to [row] but there was a two-month training process, and we had the finest coaches that the UK had to offer, and they were able to like titrate two years of rowing into a two-month curriculum where the fellas figured out how to row and I learned how to cox,” said Luke Slattery, who plays Bobby Moch.

“I loved rowing,” added Callum Turner, who stars as Joe Rantz. “You know, it’s hard, it’s excruciating. I’d never done it before… none of us did, and it was a shock to the system, that’s for sure…We did it all for real. We had five months of training. These guys gave us the best facilities down in Radley and Oxford in England and, yeah, it was like being part of a professional sports team… Ultimately, if we didn’t have the hardship, we wouldn’t have had the reward that we got at the end.”

Learning how to row was crucial to the movie, and the cast didn’t simply want to be passable on screen; they wanted to prove to real rowers that they had actually learned the sport.

“I think to a certain degree it was more important to really prove it to the real rowers than it was to prove it to anybody who is actually involved in the film because I think only a real rower can appreciate just how difficult 8-man crewing is and just how many things can go wrong and how much time and trust it requires from everybody in the boat,” Thomas Elms, who plays Chuck Day, explained.

The filmmakers also wanted to honor the real men and women the movie is based on. The real-life rowing team was filled with men who truly loved the craft. Their devotion enabled them to become the best rowers in the world.

“The faith element of the story comes strangely in the person of the boat builder who built these beautiful racing shells for the team. His name was George Pocock, and he approached building his boats as this act of devotion or of love,” explained Brown, the author of the novel the movie is based on. “He told the kids that rode at Washington that if they rode with that same spirit, that the closer they came to perfection when they were rowing, the closer they came to the divine. So really, Pocock sort of hangs over the whole story.”

THE BOYS IN THE BOAT will debut in theaters on Dec. 25.

Check out Movieguide®’s full interview with THE BOYS IN THE BOAT cast and crew here.