Matt Damon mocks ‘movie star’ George Clooney’s ‘class and sophistication’ with cat litter story

Matt Damon has brought the strange story of George Clooney defecating in a cat’s litter tray back into the limelight.

In a teaser for the 2022 Kennedy Centre Honours ceremony, which will air on 28 December, Damon can be heard talking about Clooney’s prankster antics.

He says: “It has been said that my friend George Clooney is the last of the true movie stars.

“So I got to thinking about exactly what that meant. Of course, a number of past Kennedy Centre honourees have certainly been movie stars in that classic sense. Actors with class and sophistication – Cary Grant, Henry Fonda, Paul Newman, Gregory Peck.

“And then I think of George. A man who defected in Richard Kind’s kitty litter box as a joke.

“A man who once stole Bill Clinton’s stationery and wrote fake notes to actors, saying how much the president loved their movies.”

Clooney, who used to live with Spin City star Kind, talked about the litter tray prank last year, during an appearance on the podcast SmartLess.

It all started out because Clooney kept cleaning the cat’s litter box, making Kind think his pet was constipated.

“And then he takes the cat to the vet, and they give him this kitty Metamucil,” Clooney said. “And so now this little kitty is s***ting 15 times a day, and I am scooping it all up, because I have nothing else to do. I have no idea why. It’s just funny.”

All this time, Kind thought his cat was still severely constipated.

“The light bulb, you know, goes off, and I realised what I must do, which is take a s*** in the cat box,” Clooney said on the podcast.

“He’s in there for like a minute, and I don’t hear anything and then, all of a sudden, I hear, ‘Oh, my God!’ I come in and I just, tears coming down my eyes, I’m laughing, and slowly he figures it out.

“He gets madder and madder and, finally, he’s like, ‘I understand humour. Defecation doesn’t make me laugh.’”

Clooney recently starred in the romcom Ticket to Paradise with Julia Roberts. Read The Independent’s review here.