What does Jay’s final line mean?

“Do you know how difficult it is to be yourself?”

Netflix’s Jay Kelly, the latest movie from Oscar-nominated filmmaker Noah Baumbach (Marriage Story), stars George Clooney as an iconic actor not unlike Clooney himself. As with so many of Baumbach’s movies, it’s a prickly, wryly humorous exploration of a difficult person who’s coming to realize how much they’ve alienated those around them.

As the film unfolds, Jay’s career falls by the wayside as he considers his legacy — both in a personal and professional sense. After an encounter with his bitter ex-colleague Timothy (Billy Crudup) that ends in fisticuffs, he decides to bail on a major new film just days before production and attend a tribute to his career in Tuscany. This sends his team of handlers scurrying to deal with the fallout of the fight and the financial consequences of him leaving the project.

What follows is a meditation on fame, friendship, and family that’s equal parts funny and sad. Below, we break down the film’s ending — and what it all means.

Does Timothy sue Jay?

He tries to, though it’s squashed by Jay’s manager Ron (Adam Sandler), who utilizes underhanded means to make it go away.

Still, Jay feels bad. He wants to apologize, but his team tells him to let it go. That’s hard for Jay, who’s reckoning with the wreckage caused by him placing his career ahead of everything else.

Timothy, after all, was among the first ghosts to trigger Jay’s spiral. Jay is initially thrilled to run into Timothy at the funeral of Peter Schneider (Jim Broadbent), the director who gave him his big break. But Timothy has an axe to grind. He was the one who brought Jay to the audition that scored him that big break, but Timothy’s career never took off.

“You kinda stole my life,” he says.

It gets more personal when Timothy, who’s friendly with Jay’s older daughter Jessica (Riley Keough), tells Jay that she thinks of him as an “empty vessel.” Outside, the pair get into a fight that leaves Timothy with a broken nose and Jay with a black eye.

Later, we see Jay’s team managing the narrative of the tussle. Liz (Laura Dern), his publicist, grows exhausted by Jay’s behavior and quits. Ron gets it. He and Liz used to be an item, but their romance was ruined due to their professional commitments to Jay.

Soon, Ron comes to realize that his relationship with Jay, which blurs between the personal and professional, has come at a cost to his own happiness.

Does Jay reconcile with Jessica?

No. Jay’s relations with his father (Stacy Keach) and two daughters, Jessica and Daisy (Grace Edwards), only grow more fractured throughout the film, despite his efforts to fly them to the tribute. But his relationship with Jessica has suffered the most.

Jessica, who worked as an actress for years before flaming out due to insecurity, isn’t shy about her resentments. Jay, after all, cheated on her mom with one of his old costars, Daphne (Eve Hewson), shattering the family unit.

Lonely and desperate in Italy, Jay calls Jessica in desperation. “I just want you to come with me to see what I did, to be there to celebrate,” he says. “It’s got to have meant something.” Her response cuts to the bone: “What if it didn’t?”

He tries to rationalize his failures as a father, but eventually admits that it all boils down to him choosing his career over his family. “There’s no other way to do it,” he says. “But it was supposed to be temporary, until I had what I wanted. Then I had to keep it.”

She replies, “I’m going to have a good life, just not with you.” To her, he’s no longer her father, but simply a movie star. She punctuates this by asking for an autograph for her son’s teacher.

What happens at the end of Jay Kelly?

After a winding odyssey through France and Italy, Jay arrives in Tuscany for the tribute. Though he’s surrounded by starstruck fans, he’s joined only by Ron. It’s a bittersweet result; these two men who are ostensibly business partners now realize that they’re closer to each other than anyone else in their lives.

Onscreen, a reel highlighting Jay’s many performances over the years unfolds. Interestingly, the clips we see are all from actual Clooney films, including Out of Sight (1998), Three Kings (1999), Up in the Air (2009), and The Midnight Sky (2020), among others.

Jay looks around at the enraptured faces in the crowd. Among them, he sees ghosts from his past, including Timothy and Daphne, as well as the younger versions of Jay and Timothy that we see in flashbacks (played by Charlie Rowe and Louis Partridge, respectively).

Jay retreats into his memories, witnessing teenage versions of Jessica and Daisy performing a show in their backyard. In the memory, Jay is grabbing a bag and preparing to leave, only barely paying attention. But then he stops and really watches them, smiling. Did he really do that — or is that just how he wants to remember it? It’s unclear.

As everyone rises for a standing ovation, a teary-eyed Jay stays seated, then looks directly at the camera. “Can I go again?” he asks. “I’d like another one.”

The line references the film’s opening moments, when Jay is filming a death scene on a film set. Then, he was speaking to the director, who assures him the take was good. Here, however, Jay is speaking existentially. He’d like to do his life over again, to not only relive the joys but to correct all of his mistakes.

Where can I watch Jay Kelly?

Jay Kelly is now streaming on Netflix.

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