David Spade thinks George Clooney will get less political after ‘bailing’ for France: ‘He’ll lower his footprint’

David Spade believes that George Clooney might get less political now that he has been granted French citizenship and might simply not “need the stress of the politics of America anymore”.

On a new episode of the Fly on the Wall podcast, the actor and his co-host Dana Carvey talked about Clooney’s recent move and how they see it affecting his stance on American politics.

“He gets political, which is fine, but I wonder if he will get political in France,” Spade said.

“He did say something even the other day, after he announced this, and it feels like if he tapped out of here, he doesn’t need the stress of the politics of America anymore. You know what I mean? He got out.”

Towards the end of December, it was reported that Clooney and his wife, the human rights lawyer Amal Clooney, had secured French citizenship. Clooney and his wife bought a sprawling 425-acre house in Provence in 2021 for $8.3m, and the estate reportedly consists of an 18th-century mansion with a pool, tennis court, vast gardens, and an ornamental lake.

The naturalisations, which also include their twins Ella and Alexander, were announced in the Journal Officiel, the official gazette for French decrees.

“Like, you’re on the Jets, you go to the Steelers after 20 years and then you go, ‘Hey, I want to send in some plays on the Jets,’” Spade continued, referring to the American football teams New York Jets and Pittsburgh Steelers. “They’re like, ‘Not anymore. No, you’re over there.’”

Carvey replied: “I think he’ll probably lower his footprint and lower the temperature because he just wants to be, he wants to raise his family now.”

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However, Spade said he was surprised the Jay Kelly actor was settling in France instead of Italy, where he bought a villa on Lake Como in 2002.

“I would think if he’s bailing, he would go to Italy because he was in Italy for the last 20 years,” he said.

Clooney has talked about France’s strict privacy and paparazzi laws, telling RTL radio in December: “Here, they don’t take photos of kids. There aren’t any paparazzi hidden at the school gates. That’s number one for us.”

The actor has also said he worried about raising his children in the “culture of Hollywood”.

“I don’t want them to be walking around worried about paparazzi. I don’t want them being compared to somebody else’s famous kids,” he told Esquire in October.

Growing up away from the spotlight in France, “they have dinner with grown-ups and have to take their dishes in. They have a much better life”.

Clooney, a vocal Democrat, has long traded criticisms with the US president in public, and offered commentary on the political climate in the country.

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On New Year’s Eve, Donald Trump tore into Clooney, accusing the actor of being a failed movie star and one of the “worst political prognosticators of all time”.

“Clooney got more publicity for politics than he did for his very few, and totally mediocre, movies,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, while referencing how Clooney “dumped” Joe Biden by urging the former president to drop out of the 2024 election.

“He wasn’t a movie star at all, he was just an average guy who complained, constantly, about common sense in politics,” Trump added in the post. He also criticised news of Clooney’s French citizenship and described France as being in the “midst of a major crime problem because of their absolutely horrendous handling of immigration”.

Clooney responded to Trump by saying he “totally agrees” with him about one thing. “We have to make America great again. We’ll start in November,” Clooney said in a statement, per Deadline. He was referring to the US midterm elections.

Addressing Trump’s criticism of Clooney as “mediocre”, Carvey said on the podcast that “one of Trump’s things that’s funny to me is he’ll go after people about their career”.

Spade agreed, saying: “I don't think you can take that away from Clooney. I feel like he is a huge star.”

Clooney is among the highest-grossing movie stars in the country, and his films have raked in over $2bn over the course of his career. He has won three Golden Globes and two Academy Awards.