As much as Mark Zuckerberg complained that the acclaimed 2010 film “The Social Network” was “hurtful” and manipulated facts about his life story and creation of Facebook, he had to admit that the Oscar-winning film helped turn him into a pop culture hero.
Thanks to the film and the empathetic performance by Jesse Eisenberg, the actor who played him, people even started to like Zuckerberg, said Atlantic writer Derek Thompson in his 2011 piece, “How ‘The Social Network’ saved Mark Zuckerberg.” People started to see him as a cool, Uber-nerd entrepreneur and the new “boy-king” of capitalism, despite the film’s searing analysis of his character and motivations.
Jesse Eisenberg stars as Mark Zuckerberg in “The Social Network.”
In a new interview with Terry Gross of NPR’s Fresh Air, Eisenberg, newly Oscar nominated for his screenplay for his film, “A Real Pain,’ explained that it his job as an actor was to “really understand” and “defend” his character — even if his version of Zuckerberg “is a villain in a movie.” But Eisenberg said he has run out of empathy for the Bay Area Meta CEO, given his recent choices as a person and as one of the richest and most powerful people on earth.
Earlier this month, Zuckerberg announced that he was ending professional fact-checking on Meta, which was used to curb the spread of false information and hate speech on Facebook and Instagram. He cited the shifting political and social landscape — i.e., the election of Donald Trump as president. During an interview with podcaster Joe Rogan, Zuckerberg also railed against the “cultural elite class,” even though he’s the third richest person in the world, and explained how he essentially was reshaping Meta to be “more MAGA-friendly,” Axios reported.. And, on Jan. 20, Zuckerberg joined other mega-wealthy tech leaders on the dais behind Trump at his Jan. 20 inauguration, essentially showing a fealty to the polarizing GOP leader and convicted felon.
As Eisenberg has watched Zuckerberg, he told Gross that he began to wonder if “that’s really an extension of that same person” whose “ambition really supersedes their caution in a way that can be pretty dangerous.”
“This is that same person that I spent a long time humanizing and thinking about and trying to justify and defend his behavior,” Eisenberg told Gross. Eisenberg said he came to see how Zuckerberg felt like “an outcast in the world” and created Facebook because “he felt uncomfortable connecting with other people through more traditional social norms.”
L-r, Andrew Garfield, as “Eduardo Saverin,” Joseph Mazzello, as “Dustin Moskovitz,” Jesse Eisenberg, portraying “Mark Zuckerberg” and Patrick Mapel as “Chris Hughes,” in Columbia Pictures’ “The Social Network.”
The film shows Eisenberg’s Zuckerberg starting Facebook as a Harvard undergraduate in 2003 to get even with a girlfriend who spurned him. The girlfriend tells Zuckerberg that he’ll probably be rich and successful but that girls won’t like him, and not because he’s a nerd but because he’s an “(expletive).”
When he was working on “The Social Network,” Eisenberg told Gross that he found some of Zuckerberg’s actions “totally defensible” because he was “an ambitious person who has this great thing that he’s going to unleash on the world.”
Eisenberg subsequently got the chance to enjoy a somewhat friendly, if awkward, first meeting with Zuckerberg on live television. When Eisenberg guest-hosted “Saturday Night Live” in late 2010, Zuckerberg broke into his opening monologue to admit that he saw “The Social Network” and found it “interesting.”
Now, Eisenberg said he’s left feeing “a bit sad,” asking Zuckerberg, “Why is this the path you’re taking?”
Actually, Eisenberg’s interview with Gross mostly focused on his acclaimed new film, “A Real Pain,” which he starred in, co-wrote and directed. The film follows two cousins who travel to Poland to visit the childhood home of their grandmother, whose family was decimated by the Holocaust. On Thursday morning, Eisenberg scored a nomination for best original screenplay and his co-star Kieran Culkin was nominated for best supporting actor.
As the role of Facebook and Zuckerberg have evolved in the culture over the past several years, speculation has risen over whether there would ever be a sequel of “The Social Network,” which could unite Eisenberg with director David Fincher and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin, the Daily Beast said.
Sorkin himself helped fuel those rumors last spring when he teased how a second Trump’s presidency could factor into the hypothetical project, the Daily Beast reported. “I blame Facebook for January 6,” Sorkin said.
Eisenberg has not dismissed the idea. He indicated that he might be open to the idea of playing Zuckerberg again during an interview with E! News at the Governors Awards in November. He half jokingly said, “I’m an actor. We’ll do any job that anybody offers us. If there’s a car commercial for a Pinto, I’ll show up on set. Will I be in that movie? Yeah, I’ll be in anything. If you’re making a home movie for a kid, I’ll be in the home movie.”
