‘Social Network’ Star: I’m Done Defending Mark Zuckerberg

Jesse Eisenberg will forever be associated with Mark Zuckerberg after earning an Oscar nomination for portraying the Facebook founder and CEO in the 2011 film The Social Network. But after watching who Zuckerberg has become over the past decade and a half, Eisenberg says he’s all out of empathy.

During an new interview on NPR’s Fresh Air, host Terry Gross ended a discussion that mostly focused on Eisenberg’s latest movie A Real Pain by asking the actor, writer, and director what he thinks when he sees Zuckerberg do “something that a lot of people really don’t like, like ending fact-checking on Meta.”

“As an actor, your job is to really understand your character, even if the character is a villain in a movie, your job is to defend your character,” Eisenberg explained. “And so I spent a lot of time thinking about this guy and thinking about how he felt [like an] outcast in the world and created this thing in order to connect with other people because he felt uncomfortable connecting with other people through more traditional social norms.”

When he was working on The Social Network, Eisenberg said he found Zuckerberg’s actions “totally defensible.” But as he’s watched Zuckerberg bend over backwards to appease newly sworn-in President Donald Trump, he wondered “if that’s really an extension of that same person” whose “ambition really supersedes their caution in a way that can be pretty dangerous.”

Ultimately, Eisenberg said he’s left feeling “a little bit sad,” asking, “Why is this the path you’re taking?”

“And so I mostly just think of it that way,” he concluded. “This is that same person that I spent a long time humanizing and thinking about and trying to justify and defend his behavior.” That’s something he’s clearly no longer willing to do.

As the role of Facebook and Zuckerberg has evolved in the culture over the past several years, speculation has risen that there could be a sequel of sorts to The Social Network that would reunite Eisenberg with screenwriter Aaron Sorkin and director David Fincher.

Sorkin himself helped fuel those rumors last spring when he teased how Trump’s presidency could factor into the hypothetical project. “I blame Facebook for January 6,” he said at the time, adding that to find out why, “You’re gonna need to buy a movie ticket.”

As for Eisenberg, he has done nothing to shut down the possibility of returning to the Zuckerberg character down the line, telling E! News recently that has no fears about damaging the legacy of the critically beloved original film with a sequel and is generally open to the idea.

“I’m an actor here. We’ll do any job that anybody offers us,” he said. “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.”