NEED TO KNOW
Jesse Eisenberg avoided a question about his decision to not reprise his role as Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Reckoning
The Today show’s Craig Melvin asked the Oscar-nominated actor about his decision to skip the Aaron Sorkin project on Thursday, Oct. 30
Eisenberg didn’t directly answer the question, but did say he expected the film to be “brilliant”
He’s no longer CEO….bitch.
On Thursday, Oct. 30, Jesse Eisenberg tap danced around a question about his decision not to participate in the upcoming sequel to his 2010 Oscar-winning film, The Social Network.
Eisenberg famously played Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in the film, earning him a Best Actor nomination. However, although writer Aaron Sorkin confirmed that The Social Reckoning is in the works, Eisenberg opted not to reprise his role.
“There’s been some reporting that you passed on the sequel. Why?” Craig Melvin asked the actor and director on the Today show
“You know, I was in Paris. And I had some tools and I figured there was a way to make a little more of a statement at the Louvre,” Eisenberg quipped, referencing the recent jewel heist at the Louvre museum in Paris.
NBC
Craig Melvin and Jesse Eisenberg laugh on the ‘Today’ show.
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Melvin laughed off Eisenberg’s response, saying, “I see what you did there.”
“I see what you did there,” Eisenberg countered. “We both are playing chess.”
The two men then had a back and forth, with Melvin telling Eisenberg, “Your turn.”
“Your turn! My turn?” Eisenberg asked, seemingly confused. “What do you have coming out this month?”
Melvin continued to laugh at Eisenberg’s responses before getting back to the point, asking, “The Social Network, why would you say no to a sequel of that?”
“Listen, for reasons that have nothing to do with how amazing that movie will be, really, truthfully,” Eisenberg said. “But when you play a character, you feel, you know, at some point you’ve grown into something else.”
Melvin asked, “You’ve outgrown it?” To which Eisenberg replied, “Yeah, something. But it’s a really wonderful movie. I’m friends with Aaron Sorkin who wrote and is directing this movie and all of the reasons that I am not in it are completely unrelated to how brilliant it will be.”
Columbia/Kobal/Shutterstock
Jesse Eisenberg plays Mark Zuckerberg in ‘The Social Network.’
Succession star Jeremy Strong is taking over the role from Eisenberg.
Though he didn’t directly share his reason for opting out of the project, Eisenberg has recently been outspoken against Zuckerberg. In February, the Real Pain actor spoke out against the tech billionaire during a BBC Radio 4 Today interview, noting, “I don’t want to think of myself as associated with somebody like that.”
“It’s like this guy is… doing things that are problematic, taking away fact-checking,” Eisenberg added of Zuckerberg’s Meta policies. “[There are] safety concerns. Making people who are already threatened in the world more threatened.”
Zuckerberg himself recently spoke out against the original film during an interview in March.
“They got all these very specific details of what I was wearing, or these specific things correct, but then the whole narrative arc around my motivations and all this stuff were like, completely wrong,” the Meta CEO said on The Colin and Samir Show podcast.
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