A closely guarded early screening of the film\u2014still not quite finished\u2014in August revealed that character to be a perfectly Sorkinian creation: wary, wry, and nerdily superior, given to spouting data points and calling out mixed metaphors. (Pity the colleague who compares her both to the Trojan priestess Cassandra and the boy who cried wolf.) Not long after they connect via LinkedIn DM, she and Horwitz are sparring like siblings\u2014she, skeptical that he actually understands the information she\u2019s leaking; he, disturbed by her belief that Facebook can still be a tool for good, even after seeing its emphasis on free speech and community-building distorted beyond recognition. (The film\u2019s dutiful unpicking of the ties that bind big tech, politics, and the media makes its early October release date\u2014just a few weeks ahead of the midterm elections\u2014especially apropos.)<\/p>\n
I ask how Madison found White as a scene partner. Much of the movie has them hunched over a laptop, discussing the mechanics of Facebook\u2019s algorithm. (There have also been some similarities in their particular career trajectories, with both working for years on a family dramedy before a darker, more-grown-up part made them a sudden sensation.) \u201cVery sweet,\u201d she says. \u201cVery, very, very professional. Stoic. I appreciate his work ethic.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sorkin\u2019s set could not have been more different from Sean Baker\u2019s. \u201cIt was challenging, in some ways, especially because Anora was the movie that I did before Reckoning. That was an entirely different energy and vibe and had so much improvisation,\u201d she says. \u201cWith Aaron\u2019s dialogue, it\u2019s scientifically perfected, in a way.\u201d<\/p>\n
He expects you to say it as written, I offer, intending it as a question.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd I want to too,\u201d Madison replies. \u201cBecause every line and every word is very intentional, and so it\u2019s important to do that in a certain way.\u201d<\/p>\n
If she wobbled at all, adjusting to the rigors of his filmmaking style, Sorkin wasn\u2019t aware of it. \u201cMikey doesn\u2019t need much more than: Play it a little hotter\u2026a little cooler\u2026. Drive to the end of the line\u2026, things like that, and she\u2019s there,\u201d he says. \u201cAs great as she was in Anora and as great as she is in The Social Reckoning, I\u2019m certain that she hasn\u2019t yet done the best work that she\u2019s going to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
Of course, the funny thing about her playing a Facebook wonk is that Madison herself is not on social media at all. She was, for a time\u2014in middle school she was one of the millions of other 13-year-olds Instagramming slices of pizza or cookies on a cooling rack\u2014but it was never an obsession, and eventually she forgot the account existed. (Only recently did her father discover that her Instagram was, indeed, still live.) Now it\u2019s a more deliberate thing, staying offline. \u201cIt feels kind of big and vast and stressful,\u201d she says, referring, it seems, to the internet in general. Acting may have made her slightly less shy, but Madison still describes herself as \u201csensitive\u201d\u2014too nervous to read reviews (\u201cI don\u2019t think I ever did until Anora, but that was only after someone told me it was safe and I wouldn\u2019t get my feelings hurt\u201d) and certainly too delicate to confront a comments section.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A closely guarded early screening of the film\u2014still not quite finished\u2014in August revealed that character to be a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":773810,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6491,96,56,54,55,255217],"class_list":["post-773809","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-vogue-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/773809","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=773809"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/773809\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/773810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=773809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=773809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=773809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}