by Gill Pringle at San Sebastian Film Festival
If Jesse Eisenberg received huge recognition for portraying Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network 16 years ago, then he has no interest in reprising the role in Aaron Sorkin’s hotly anticipated sequel, The Social Reckoning.
“I’ve talked about it a lot, and Aaron Sorkin’s talked about it a lot. I loved his script, and he’s a genius and the movie, I’m sure, is incredible,” he says of the writer/director who also penned the script for the first film which was directed by David Fincher.
“But, for me, it just didn’t feel like something I wanted to act in again. But that has nothing to do with how great the movie is. The movie will be a great movie, and Jeremy Strong will be amazing in the movie, I’m sure,” he says referring to the Succession star who stepped in to play Zuckerberg instead.
“I just didn’t feel like it’s something I wanted to do again,” says Eisenberg who curiously has appeared in three films in the Now You See Me franchise and two Zombieland movies. But his reluctance, he admits, speaks more to his fear of social media.
“When I acted in that movie, all I felt was that this thing is terrifying. Like the way it was created, what it’s created to do, just scared me, probably because I’m an actor and I don’t want to be in public all the time, and so the idea of kind of putting every picture of yourself in media just scared me,” says Eisenberg, 42, who won an Oscar nomination for his 2010 performance.
“I have basically no opinion on social media because I stay as far away from it. To me, it’s like I know more about cricket than social media. It was just never part of my life,” says the actor/writer/director.
“In terms of how it’s affected the world, I don’t know. I just know it’s not for me. My wife grew up without a television. When it was her 12th birthday, her mother rented a television and a VCR to play The Babysitters Club, and that’s the world I went into when we got married, so I’ve lived without television for a long time. That’s just not my style of life,” he says referencing his wife, actress Anna Strout whom he met while working on The Emperor’s Club in 2002. The couple now have a son together and have generally avoided turning their private world into a public spectacle. “It’s ironic because people associate me with this website, but they know way more about the website than I do, and I’d like to keep it that way,” says the actor who is speaking at the 74th edition of the San Sebastián where his latest film, The Debut – starring Julianne Moore and Paul Giamatti – featured in the Official Selection.
Moore portrays Mona Friedman, a shy, unassuming housewife who is cast in a small role in a small local theatre – transforming her into a full-on method actor who will do anything to protect her artistic integrity, sometimes to the detriment of the production itself.
In many ways, Mona is based on himself, he admits: “I call it an autobiographical movie because it takes place in 1990 in Central New Jersey, and when I was in Central New Jersey in 1990, I was like Mona Friedman.
“I was so shy. I was kind of depressed, and I didn’t have friends. And then I walked into this community theatre when I was seven years old, and suddenly everybody was so nice, and they hugged me, and going from a kid who was made fun of in school because I have curly hair, and the kids were saying mean things to me… And then to when I walked into the community theatre, and everybody’s like, ‘Your hair is so amazing. Come this way. You should play the lead. You’re very funny’,” he recalls.
“So suddenly, it was like I walked into an alien planet where everybody was nice. And then, just like Julianne Moore’s character, I took it too far and became crazy. So really, the movie is kind of charting my life when I was a child. But I just thought it would be so much better to make it about an older woman – and Julianne’s amazing – because it’s more emotionally impactful to see a woman whose life is passing her by, and she only has this one shot to really change her life,” he says.
Born in New York City, Eisenberg grew up in Queens and New Jersey. Acting came relatively early, appearing professionally as a child and making his film debut in Roger Dodger in 2002. His breakthrough came with The Squid and the Whale in 2005, followed by Adventureland and Zombieland, which established him as a distinctive young leading man.
The Debut re-teams him with Moore whom he first directed in his first film, When You Finish Saving the World, based on Eisenberg’s own book.
“I’m not sure where it played. It barely played in America. It barely played at my parents’ house. So, I imagine you might not have seen it,” he says with typical self deprecation.
“But Julianne was amazing in it, and played a character who’s very emotionally guarded, and it’s very different to The Debut. And she’s an intellectual who’s very sharp, but there’s one little scene in that movie where she started doing this unusual voice, and she sounded to me just like a 1950s housewife, and also like a baby.
“She started saying things like, ‘Oh goodness, well, gosh, I surely don’t know if I ….’ and she talked in this unusual way, and that voice was in my head for two years. And when I started writing this movie, I just thought it has to be that voice, and it has to be that actress. So, I started writing, just picturing her in it, and suddenly the movie became real in my head; the character would do all this weird stuff in the movie because I was picturing Julianne Moore doing it,” he says.
“And then after I finished the script, I realised I had written myself into a big problem because if the actress who you write it for doesn’t want to do it… You’re screwed. There’s no movie. And so, I’m very lucky that she liked it and wanted to do it. And she’s just the best. I mean, I can’t say enough good things about her, but not just about her talent. She’s just the best colleague,” he says.
In fact, Moore and Giamatti might just be his two favourite actors in the world.
“What you see in the movie is both their first or second takes of all the scenes because they’re both so good. They’re so responsible. They’re protective over my script and protective over their characters in a way that was just amazing.
“We filmed the first two days of the movie in one day, and they were big, big days with musical numbers because the two actors are just so great,” he says appreciatively.
While acknowledging the biographical nature of aspects of The Debut, he says, “the movie is also trying to tell the story of the birth of an artist. It’s a woman who is so invisible and so quiet that there’s nothing inside of her anymore. She has no friends. Her family ignores her, and then this small part in a silly show, just awakens her and creates a spirit in her for the very first time.
“But it doesn’t end there. The movie then says, ‘Well, what happens when somebody is experiencing this kind of spirit for the first time?’ She goes too far and becomes a monster. She takes over the show, and ruins other people’s experience.
“Because I was thinking about what happens to a new artist when they first find their voice, and they think, ‘Oh, this feels new and interesting’, and then they inevitably go too far because they take it too seriously, and then the pendulum has to swing back.
“So yeah, it’s about a woman finding her inner spirit and then learning how to manage it,” says Eisenberg who also casts himself in a small role.
The Debut is in cinemas Boxing Day 2026
Main Image: Jesse Eisenberg, director of The Debut, Ulises Proust, 23rd September 2026 / San Sebastian Festival Archive / CC BY-NC 4.0
