Jesse Eisenberg spoke to Variety about how he felt when he turned down the chance to reprise his role as Facebook mastermind Mark Zuckerberg in Aaron Sorkin’s The Social Network sequel, The Social Reckoning.
“It’s been an honor to talk to Aaron in any capacity because he’s a very articulate, engaging, very intelligent person,” Eisenberg told Variety at the Los Angeles premiere of Minions and Monsters on Sunday. “We talked for a few days about making this movie, and we wrote that Aaron’s way of speaking is so great that if we’re not going to do something with him, we feel like we’re letting America down, in a way.”
She added, “I told him I was moving in a different direction with my life, and what he said summed it up nicely. I don’t want to be associated with that character, but all the reasons I don’t want to do the movie have nothing to do with how great the movie is and will continue to be. And I’m sure it already is.”
In early June, Mr. Sorkin told Vanity Fair that he spent three days trying to convince Mr. Eisenberg to return as Mr. Zuckerberg, but ultimately said he no longer wanted to be “confused” with the tech mogul.
“I felt like it belonged to him, and he was certainly a veteran,” Sorkin said. “He just didn’t want to be confused any more with Mark Zuckerberg. He has a problem with this guy. He didn’t like kids coming up to him at the airport with business cards that said ‘I’m CEO, bitch’ and asking for his autograph.”
“Social Reckoning,” starring Jeremy Strong as Zuckerberg, follows Facebook engineer Francis Haugen (Mikey Madison) and Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz (Jeremy Allen White), whose reporting scrutinizes the company’s inner workings. A 2021 research series reveals Facebook’s negative influence on teens and its role in disseminating misinformation, including content related to political violence.
