Jesse Eisenberg did not know the work of Kieran Culkin before engaging in Real Pain

“Not even succession”, laughs the actor, who admits having “freaks out” his game partner and director with his game method.

By receiving the BAFTA for the best actor in a supporting role in place of Kieran Culkina few days ago, Jesse Eisenberg made the public laugh well by recalling that this absence was logical to “Someone who wanted to abandon A Real Pain Just before filming. “ A small spades in reference to an anecdote already told by Emma Stonethe producer of this drama according to two cousins ​​that everything opposes who go on a trip to Poland, to honor the memory of their grandmother, who has recently died. When she saw Kieran get scared when he was committed, she managed to convince him to come back using her own acting experience, and the team does not regret it: today Culkin is named everywhere for this film, especially to the Oscar for best actor in a supporting role. Facing his “brother” successionBesides ! Will he win this Sunday?

Jesse Eisenberg: “Emma Stone, I don’t see her as my producer, it’s my good fairy”

Jesse tells USA Today How he had the idea of ​​this film, which released a little more than two years after his first, When you finish Saving the World. He took the opportunity to confirm his casting method, unveiled some time earlier by Kieran Culkin, who was hilarious by telling the actor Colman Domingo That Eisenberg had chosen him without knowing anything about his work, not even the family series which has been so hit and offered him multiple awards.

“I had an excellent opening and an excellent conclusion for this film, but nothing between the two, Starts Jesse Eisenberg. You could say that it was not going very well. I saw an advertisement for a visit to a camp, a ’round’ organized in memory of the victims of the holocaust, but which specified ‘With lunch’. This is where I had the click, it was so weird. “

“Part of the film comes from thoughts that I had every time I was traveling,” continues Eisenberg, evoking a theme that is played in the film. This idea that we all measure the luck we have when we make this kind of visit, but nobody seems to want to talk about it. Should we deprive ourselves of dinner after discovering Auschwitz because people deported there were hungry? This is the kind of question that we find in the film. With A Real PainI wanted to tell a story on major themes, but which would appear neither academic nor pretentious, with characters who are neither heroes nor victims. “

Eisenberg is obviously perfect as a young man who is uncomfortable, full of knocks against whom he must himself fight in real life, and Culkin is even more stunning, both contagiously friendly (all those who cross his path instantly appreciate him), but who hides a certain darkness, and cannot help being often unnecessarily provocative.

“I was the two people, explains the screenwriter and director ofA Real Pain. My character may seem more similar to me, shy and aware of himself, but the reality is that I am an artist with a dark inner life, and that I find myself imposing it on others. “

It was there that he says he was not “Absolutely not familiar” With Culkin’s work:

“It was my sister who saw the scene that I wrote where Benji tries to have everyone posed in the visit group with giant statues. She said to me: ‘Kieran Culkin would be perfect for that.’ I did not know his acting work, but I knew that the playwright Kenneth Longan (also director of Manchester by the Seaamong others) had chosen it for two rooms, and that, for me, is the highest validation possible. “

A Real Pain – Jesse Eisenberg: “Kieran Culkin is not a normal player” (interview)

Tented by Kieran Culkin, this cast is just as surprising. Explaining during an interview organized by Variety “Adoring hearings, because they prevent bored and become complacent”he detailed at Colman Domingo (who marked him the public this year thanks to Sing Sing):

“Whenever I do not spend a casting, I can’t help but tell myself that it could get stuck. I feel guilty for being there because a producer would have said: ‘You have to give this role to this guy.’ While if I auditioned, I start from the principle that the director will know what to expect. For example, for A Real Pain, Jesse Eisenberg had not seen Succession. He hired me without testing me or seeing me in anything. Never. And it completely normal. He said to me: “I have already met you.”while in reality, we met twice in a gust of wind. This is not how we choose someone! “

Seeing Colman take the defense of Jesse (“I already met you and I too thought that I had captured you right away. It must be in the way you establish the visual contact?”), he adds about his character, whom he finally loved interpreting:

“Benji, I don’t think he is thinking at all before doing anything. So, on this film, I decided not to plan. I literally went to the set by asking lots of questions to Jesse, I asked him what scene we were going to shoot, which gave him a panic crisis. He replied: ‘But finally, you have a speech of an entire page!’and I got out: ‘Oh, you know, I learn the replicas quickly. (laughs) Come on, we will discover what this scene is talking about by playing it … ‘”

A Real Pain has just been released in the movies. Here is his trailer:

A Real Pain: Jesse Eisenberg- Kieran Culkin, Duo Major (Critique)