Aaron Sorkin wanted to bring back Jesse Eisenberg, “but even the money…”
The director of The Social Reckoning tried everything to convince the star of The Social Network to reprise the role of Mark Zuckerberg. But even for all the stamps in the world…
He was certain he could get Jesse Eisenberg back in the shoes of Mark Zuckerberg to The Social Reckoning.
But despite Aaron Sorkin’s different approaches and even knowing that the studio was offering him a nice check, the actor refused. The director tells Entertainment Weekly this week how the star of The Social Network said no to the project. Absolutely.
“I knew what the studio was offering him to do it, but money doesn’t motivate Jesse. It’s infuriating (laughs)! Moreover, we can even say that money is more of a deterrent for him. I think it’s admirable. He worries a lot about raising his children with too much money…“
Faced with this unusual argument, Sorkin tried to find other ways to convince him. “I wrote a list of all the things he could do with that money, he explains. Among the ideas proposed: producing oneself “a number of Broadway plays”. But even that wasn’t enough!
The hardest part is that Sorkin never imagined that Jesse Eisenberg could say no. He wrote the screenplay for The Social Reckoning without talking to the actor, or almost. With the actor in mind. A few days before finishing the script, he came across him at a party:
“I told him, ‘I’ll send you something in a few weeks.’ And he smiled and nodded, and I sent it to him. It never occurred to me that he wouldn’t want to do it…”
When Eisenberg finally declined, Aaron Sorkin had three days to try to change his mind. And he prepared a real persuasion file:
“This is the only time I wrote a plan for myself. I don’t do that for the movies, but I did it for my conversations with Jesse, saying, ‘We already know you’re going to be great because you’ve been great before.’ Sorkin also detailed the major scenes he would have to play in the film. He even got a small start of victory. “I remember Jesse saying to me at one point, during the third or fourth exchange, ‘You went further to change my mind than I ever imagined…’ So I was happy.“But not enough to get a yes.
Jesse Eisenberg no longer wants to be Mark Zuckerberg
Because the problem ultimately was not the script, which Eisenberg had appreciated. It was Zuckerberg himself.
“He just doesn’t like being likened to Mark Zuckerberg anymore. He doesn’t like the fact that he looks like her physically; this role is probably the one for which he is best known.“
Eisenberg himself explained this last July at the Karlovy Vary Festival: “I don’t want to be associated with (Zuckerberg) anymore because I don’t really like the comparison.” During the same exchange, the actor also explained that he was terrified of social networks and believed that the founder of Facebook “is not someone who cares about others.”
Difficult, in these conditions, to get him back into the shoes of the man who earned him an Oscar nomination in 2011.
Jesse Eisenberg was therefore replaced by Jeremy Strong in The Social Reckoningcurrently in theaters.
