John Travolta supported by famous family members in rare TV appearance — but someone is missing

For John Travolta, his directorial debut was a family affair. 

The Grease star debuted his film Propeller One-Way Night Coach, which stars his daughter Ella Travolta, at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this month.

The AppleTV movie is based on his 1997 semi-autobiographical novella, about an eight-year-old boy named Jeff who dreams of flying and takes a cross-country trip to Hollywood with his actress mother, and features not only his daughter, but also all five of his siblings.

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John, appearing on The Kelly Clarkson Show on Tuesday, May 26, had his sisters Ellen, Margaret and Ellen cheering him on from the audience, as well as his brother Sam, while his brother Joey, who also appears in the film, missed the appearance.

"They are all professional actors, my family and friends, so I was hiring pros, it all fit beautifully," John noted, as his sister Ellen, who appears in the movie as the protagonist's grandmother, revealed herself as the one to push him to adapt his novella into a film.

"The book was so lovely and so real, and I had lived a great deal of it with John, so when he came up with the idea of doing it, and then he was going to include the family, that's a legacy," she said, noting: "That first round-trip ticket that I paid for, it was $25, and we went from Newark [New Jersey] to Philadelphia. 20 minutes each way and a hot dog in between, and he was never the same."

© NBC / The Kelly Clarkson Show

"He came out of the womb with a fascination with aviation that was remarkable," Ellen emphasized. 

John then said of his other sister Margaret, who was also in the audience: "Her career in Chicago was doing voiceovers of any product that you can imagine and on-screen commercials. She has this beautiful voice," sharing that she voiced the airport announcements in the film. 

"No one does it better than Margaret, so she painstakingly went through 50 versions of it," he added.

© NBC / The Kelly Clarkson Show

His sister Ann served as a hot dog stand host, making for a full circle moment, as her "claim to fame," as John said, was on Saturday Night Fever, playing a woman who asks John's character Tony how many slices of pizza he wanted.

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As for his brother Sam's role, John said he thought to himself: "'Who can play the crazy man on the plane that gets psychotic when there's too much turbulence,' I said, 'Oh, brother Sam.'"

Last but certainly not least, Joey, who was absent from the talk show appearance, featured as a reporter at the end of the film. "He was crying, because it's so personal, I was crying, but I said, 'Joey we gotta stop crying, we gotta let the audience cry, but we can't cry here,'" John further shared.