{"id":932949,"date":"2026-10-18T20:08:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-18T20:08:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/932949\/"},"modified":"2026-10-18T20:08:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-18T20:08:09","slug":"jesse-eisenberg-on-the-debut-kieran-culkin-and-doing-a-tv-show-next","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/932949\/","title":{"rendered":"Jesse Eisenberg on ‘The Debut,’ Kieran Culkin and Doing a TV Show Next"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tJesse Eisenberg<\/a> continues to tread the festival circuit with his musical comedy The Debut<\/a>, and on Sunday afternoon was wildly entertaining at a high-energy Screen Talk event ahead of his film\u2019s closing the BFI London Film Festival<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tEisenberg, star of Zombieland, Now You See Me and The Social Network, had the crowd in stitches as he spoke about growing up in community theater, refusing to watch himself on screen \u2014\u00a0\u201dI don\u2019t like the way I look\u201d \u2014\u00a0and why he believes musical theater performers are closer to NBA athletes than they are to regular movie and TV actors.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut there was one story in particular that had the room hanging onto Eisenberg\u2019s every word, as he relived the chaotic process of working with Kieran Culkin<\/a> on Eisenberg\u2019s last film, A Real Pain<\/a> \u2014\u00a0the same movie that would earn Culkin his first Oscar for best supporting actor last year.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe didn\u2019t know if Kieran was ever gonna show up to Poland,\u201d began Eisenberg about the process (A Real Pain stars him and Culkin as two Jewish-American cousins who reunite for a Holocaust heritage tour through Poland). \u201cKieran doesn\u2019t call on anybody back \u2014\u00a0he\u2019s one of those people that you hear about occasionally. They\u2019re brilliant, but you don\u2019t know if they\u2019re gonna be there.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tEisenberg said Culkin, best known for his role as Roman Roy in HBO\u2019s Succession, will \u201csign on to your thing, but then he decides he likes potatoes instead,\u201d prompting laughter. Culkin is \u201cworth the risk because he\u2019s so great,\u201d but Eisenberg\u2019s Zombieland co-star Emma Stone \u2014\u00a0who has produced all three of the actor-director\u2019s movies \u2014\u00a0had to chaperone Culkin on the plane to Poland. \u201cShe sent me a video of him going through customs saying, \u2018We are here.\u2019 And then he was still late,\u201d continued Eisenberg.<\/p>\n

\n\tEisenberg went on to explain that because Culkin had come off the free-wheeling set of Succession, he was initially \u201cangry\u201d at Eisenberg\u2019s rigidity and for telling him to stand on certain marks. Eisenberg soon realized he had to reimagine the whole film around Culkin\u2019s live-wire act. \u201cHe\u2019s not great in the first half of the scene because I made him [stand] at the mark,\u201d said Eisenberg after the audience was shown a clip from A Real Pain. \u201cHe was frustrated that he had to stand there\u2026 Once [we began] following him around \u2014\u00a0because that\u2019s the only way he\u2019s gonna be loose \u2014\u00a0holy shit, he was so brilliant.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIt worked out well for Culkin\u2019s performance and Eisenberg\u2019s film \u2014 after all, he said, Culkin\u2019s manic-depressive character is the driving force of the story. But the problem was Culkin \u201cnever wanted to rehearse it.\u201d Eisenberg continued: \u201cHe wouldn\u2019t do a phone call with me. He asked me to meet him once before we filmed the movie and I met him and his kids at a diner. I couldn\u2019t get a word in and I wanted to talk about the Holocaust, and he\u2019s sitting there feeding his kids French toast.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOn that note, Eisenberg was asked about being championed by the two-time Oscar-winning actress Stone, whose Fruit Tree production company has financed When You Finish Saving the World (2022), A Real Pain (2024) and The Debut (2026). \u201cI met Emma when she was 20 and I was 25, we were doing Zombieland together,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd we had really similar taste. She\u2019s a very glamorous Hollywood actress, but at heart she\u2019s a comedy nerd.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI couldn\u2019t have foreseen that 15 years later, we\u2019d be making movies together, except for the fact that it seems so obvious now. You meet people when you\u2019re young [\u2026] and when you both get enough experience or in her case, much more power in the industry, she can help shepherd my stuff along. And I feel really lucky.\u201d He added: \u201cWe\u2019re contemporaries, but she got really, really powerful. Now she can do this kind of stuff and I\u2019m the beneficiary.\u201d Though as a footnote, when it was suggested that Stone is using her platform \u201cfor good,\u201d Eisenberg quipped: \u201cWell, she\u2019s not, like, planting trees.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tEisenberg touched on working with David Fincher on The Social Network and even said the set was so \u201cmoody\u201d and \u201cintense\u201d that he developed insomnia while playing a young Mark Zuckerberg. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t be able to sleep so I\u2019d watch Seinfeld all night,\u201d he revealed. \u201cWe had these doctors come to set and the doctors were giving samples of sleeping pills, but they wouldn\u2019t give you more than four. So I would have to call another doctor who didn\u2019t know that because I needed a new sample.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tLater in the session, after Eisenberg had talked about his close friendship with British comedian Richard Ayoade and why the entirety of The Debut depended on Julianne Moore, he was asked what\u2019s next and revealed that he\u2019d written six episodes of a TV show a few years ago, though he didn\u2019t seem particularly excited about the project. \u201cIt\u2019ll be a series,\u201d he said. \u201cI know that\u2019s boring. You just have to sit there.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tEisenberg was amusingly nervous about getting himself into hot water during the session. He told the crowd, \u201cForgive me for bringing up someone who was triggering; I\u2019m so sorry about that,\u201d when discussing Woody Allen\u2019s influence on his early career ambitions. He also jokingly said, \u201cI\u2019d love to bring up the current war\u2026\u201d when an attendee asked whether Eisenberg plans to tell more Jewish stories. He answered that he enjoys the overlapping of feeling like both an insider and an outsider as an Ashkenazi Jew. \u201cWe are in circles that have been more homogeneous throughout history, but we also have an outsider perspective on it. [\u2026] Forgive me if whatever I just said was offensive to anybody in any way,\u201d he added. \u201cThis is how I think of myself and how I think of my relationship to my culture. I\u2019m not speaking for Jews or any other culture.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIf I\u2019m not cancelled,\u201d Eisenberg\u2019s The Debut will be closing the 70th BFI London Film Festival on Sunday night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jesse Eisenberg continues to tread the festival circuit with his musical comedy The Debut, and on Sunday afternoon…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":932950,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[499778,64,63,130166,484860,447,134,3389,149284,142865,361689,3586],"class_list":["post-932949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-a-real-pain","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-bfi-london-film-festival","tag-bfi-london-film-festival-2026","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-international","tag-jesse-eisenberg","tag-kieran-culkin","tag-the-debut","tag-united-kingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/932949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=932949"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/932949\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/932950"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=932949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=932949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=932949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}