Highlights
- Aaron Sorkin spent three days and a hefty studio offer trying to lure Jesse Eisenberg back as Mark Zuckerberg.
- Sorkin says money is a ‘disincentive’ for Eisenberg, who worries about raising his kids with too much wealth.
- Eisenberg says he no longer wants to be associated with Zuckerberg, so Jeremy Strong plays him in the Oct. 9 film.
Aaron Sorkin backed up the Brinks truck. Jesse Eisenberg waved it off.
The writer-director now admits he spent three days trying to convince Eisenberg to return as Mark Zuckerberg for The Social Reckoning, and none of his arguments, including a hefty payday, moved the actor.
“Money does not motivate Jesse. It’s infuriating,” Sorkin told Entertainment Weekly with a laugh.
Then came the twist nobody in Hollywood saw coming. “If anything, money is a disincentive for him. It’s admirable.”
Yes, really. A movie star who treats a giant check like a parenting hazard. “He’s very concerned about raising his kids with too much money.”
So Sorkin switched tactics and made a spreadsheet of temptations. He pitched that “he could produce X number of Broadway plays of his own.”
Eisenberg still passed.
Sorkin swears it got close. He recalls Eisenberg admitting, during one of their back-and-forths, that Sorkin had come nearer to changing his mind than he expected.
Close doesn’t get you a call sheet. Jeremy Strong plays Zuckerberg in The Social Reckoning, which Sorkin calls a companion piece to The Social Network, hitting cinemas October 9.
The deal-breaker wasn’t the script, which Eisenberg reportedly liked. It was the mirror. “He just doesn’t like being conflated with Mark Zuckerberg anymore,” Sorkin said.
Sorkin added that the physical resemblance bugs Eisenberg, as does the fact that the role remains one of his best-known performances.
He was even blunter with Vanity Fair, saying Eisenberg “has his problems with the guy.”
Understatement of the year. At the Karlovy Vary Film Festival, where he received the President’s Award, Eisenberg didn’t mince words. “I don’t want to be associated with him anymore.”
He kept going. Making the first film, he said, showed him the Facebook founder is “not a person who cares about people.”
And the mic drop: if Zuckerberg is the architect of this world, “I don’t want to live in that world.”
Here’s the delicious irony. Back in July 2019, Eisenberg was practically RSVPing to a sequel, gushing that “Sorkin is a genius” and promising interest in whatever he wrote.
Sorkin didn’t see the rejection coming. He says it “never occurred” to him that Eisenberg wouldn’t be on board. He bumped into the actor at a party, told him a script was coming in a couple of weeks, and Eisenberg “smiled and nodded.”
That’s the Hollywood equivalent of being left on read.
The new film has bigger fish to fry anyway. It centers on former Facebook engineer Frances Haugen, played by Mikey Madison, whose disclosures fueled a series of Wall Street Journal reports.
Sorkin got his sequel. Strong got the hoodie. And Eisenberg got exactly what no paycheck could buy him: distance.
