George Clooney was a no-show for the first press conference to promote his buzzy new movie, Jay Kelly.

The actor cut short media commitments the day prior–and bailed on private dinner held with his director Noah Baumbach and fellow castmembers–due to bad sinus infection.

“Even movie stars get sick,” Baumbach quipped, as news of Clooney’s absence was revealed.

The team still hopes Clooney will recover enough to walk the red carpet for Jay Kelly‘s Venice world premiere, but he is unlikely to sit through the film, and he is not expected to travel to Telluride Film Fest to support its next screening.

Judging from the effusive early reception at the first press screenings in Venice, the film will instantly project Clooney and Sandler into this fall’s awards season conversation.

Baumbach revealed that he and Mortimer wrote the starring part specifically for Clooney.

“It was really important that the audience watching the movie have a relationship with the actor,” Baumbach explained. “We all watching it have a history with George, just the way the people in the movie have a history with Jay.”

The director said that watching Clooney perform this part left him uncommonly emotional on set.

“The character, Jay Kelly, is running from himself for so much of the movie — deflecting and trying to hide. What essentially I was asking of George is to reveal more and more of himself as he does that,” Baumbach noted. “I’m not one to get emotional on set, watching things, but I really did on this movie.”

Dern added that she was “devastated” Clooney couldn’t be with them, but gushed over how he delivered “such an amazing, raw, true performance” in the film.

Although Jay Kelly is about one of the world’s most famous people coming to terms with the life choices he has made, Baumbach stressed the film’s universal elements: “I feel like if you make a movie about the mob, you’re always making a movie about family. If you make a movie about space, you’re always making a movie about religion. And if you make a movie about an actor, you’re making a movie about identity and performance.”

“So, it was fun to have all of the environment of the movie star and the world and around him,” he explained. “But it was always about the search for selfhood.”

“All our characters have ways, as you watch them, that they give you a moment to laugh and give you a moment to feel pain,” Sandler explained. “As an actor, when you read a script like this, you say, ‘Holy shit, I can’t believe that I’m getting this gift.’”

“I’m just very proud of this one, and I can’t wait for people to see it,” he said.

Baumbach, who worked previously with Sandler on his 2017 Netflix feature, The Meyerowitz Stories, said he wrote the character of the star’s doggedly loyal manager, Ron, specifically for the comedy icon to highlight his real-life decency and reputation as family man.

The 82nd edition of the Venice Film Festival runs Aug. 27-September 6.

Jay Kelly will launch worldwide on Netflix on December 5.