'The Social Network' star Jesse Eisenberg doesn't want to be associated with Mark Zuckerberg

USA Today

04-02-2025

'The Social Network' star Jesse Eisenberg doesn't want to be associated with Mark Zuckerberg
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Jesse Eisenberg A Real Pain Kieran Culkin palm springs international film awards
"A Real Pain" director/writer/actor Jesse Eisenberg attended the Palm Springs International Film Awards on Friday night.
Jesse Eisenberg has concerns about Mark Zuckerberg.
The "A Real Pain" star, 41, said in an interview with BBC Radio 4 that he does not want to be associated with the Meta CEO, whom he famously played in the 2010 film "The Social Network."
Eisenberg also expressed disapproval of some of Zuckerberg's recent actions at Facebook, including his decision to end the social network's U.S. fact-checking program.
"I haven't been following (Zuckerberg's) life trajectory, partly because I don't want to think of myself as associated with somebody like that," he said.
But the actor continued that he is "concerned" about the Meta CEO "doing things that are problematic," such as "taking away fact-checking," and alleged he is "making people who are already threatened in this world more threatened."
"These people have billions upon billions of dollars, more money than any human person has ever amassed, and what are they doing with it?" Eisenberg asked. "They're doing it to curry favor with somebody who's preaching hateful things.
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"I think of that not as a person who played (Zuckerberg) in a movie," he added. "I think of it as just somebody who's married to a woman who teaches disability justice in New York, and lives for her students are going to get a little harder this year."
Zuckerberg, who joined several influential CEOs at President Donald Trump's inauguration, announced last month that Meta would get rid of fact-checkers in the U.S. in favor of a community notes approach similar to X. He described this as part of an effort to restore "free expression on our platforms" and said that recent elections represented a "cultural tipping point."
"The Social Network" followed Zuckerberg's creation of Facebook when he was a student at Harvard University and subsequent legal battle with Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss over the genesis of the idea. The movie received eight nominations at the Academy Awards, including best actor for Eisenberg, and won best adapted screenplay.
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Zuckerberg has criticized the film and said its portrayal of him was not accurate.
"They went out of their way in the movie to try to get some interesting details correct, like the design of the office, but on the overarching plot, in terms of why we're building Facebook to help connect the world, or how we did it, they just kind of made up a bunch of stuff that I found kind of hurtful," he said in a 2014 town hall, adding that the film "made up this whole plot line about how I somehow decided to create Facebook to attract girls."
Speaking on NPR last month, Eisenberg said that while playing Zuckerberg, he thought of him as a person whose "ambition supersedes their caution in a way that can be pretty dangerous," and the CEO's recent decisions seem like an extension that.
"I feel a little bit sad," he said. "Why is this the path (he's) taking?"
"The Social Network" screenwriter Aaron Sorkin has also been critical of Zuckerberg in the years since the movie's release. In a 2019 The New York Times essay, he slammed the Meta CEO for allowing "lies that have a very real and incredibly dangerous effect on our elections and our lives and our children's lives" on Facebook.
Sorkin also addressed Zuckerberg's past comments about "The Social Network" being inaccurate, writing that "you and I both know that the screenplay was vetted to within an inch of its life by a team of studio lawyers with one client and one goal: Don't get sued by Mark Zuckerberg."
Contributing: Arienne Thompson