Jesse Eisenberg On ‘The Social Reckoning’ And Zuckerberg Role

Jesse Eisenberg has not yet seen The Social Reckoning, but he has some thoughts on the subject, he told Deadline on Tuesday.

In an interview about his new film The Debut, which he wrote and directed, and in which he also stars, Eisenberg addressed his feelings on Aaron Sorkin‘s follow-up to The Social Network, in which Eisenberg had originally starred as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg back in 2010 — a role he passed on reprising for The Social Reckoning and which is played this time by Jeremy Strong.

“I haven’t seen the movie yet. It just came out… I have a thousand million thoughts about the movie,” Eisenberg told Deadline.

“I love the script and I love Aaron Sorkin so much, and it was such an honor to be in the first movie, if you can call it the first movie, and, I just didn’t want to be associated with that guy again and go around and do a year of press, where I’m talking about something which I know nothing about, because I’m not on that platform as a user, and I’m not interested in that kind of technology as a person. I just don’t want to be a representative of it. But, no, I’m sure the movie is wonderful.”

Asked how it feels now to have left that role and the tech world behind, Eisenberg said, “Well, I was never in the tech world, again, despite what you think, by looking at me from the side, I’m not in the tech world… I think I look like somebody who probably spends the day sitting in front of a computer or a television, but I really don’t.”

Earlier this month, Sorkin told Entertainment Weekly that he’d assumed Eisenberg would return for the sequel. Sorkin said he was “just a couple of pages from being done” with the script for The Social Reckoning when he ran into the actor “and said, ‘I’m gonna be sending you something in a couple of weeks.’ And he smiled and nodded, and I sent it to him. It never occurred to me that he wouldn’t want to do it.”

Eisenberg turned down the role, despite, as Sorkin told Vanity Fair back in June, his having spent a three-day weekend trying to persuade Eisenberg into it.

“I knew what the studio was offering him to do it,” Sorkin told EW, “but money does not motivate Jesse. It’s infuriating. If anything, money is a disincentive for him. It’s admirable. He’s very concerned about raising his kids with too much money.”

The Social Reckoning stars Strong alongside Mikey Madison as whistleblower Frances Haugen, a former Facebook engineer who leaked thousands of internal documents to Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz, played by Jeremy Allen White. The film was released by Sony Pictures Entertainment on October 9th.

Eisenberg’s The Debut follows his 2024 film A Real Pain, for which he received a Best Screenplay Oscar nomination with co-star Keiran Culkin winning Best Supporting Actor for his role in the film.

The Debut stars Julianne Moore as a shy family woman who finds a powerful voice through community theater, with Paul Giamatti as the theater’s take-no-prisoners director. It premiered at Telluride on September 9 and is set for theatrical release by A24 on December 11th.