Another aspect here is that Jesse Eisenberg also played a young Mark Zuckerberg in the earlier film, which was written by director Aaron Sorkin. I’d love to know what role he plays, and what role Sorkin plays – or will he leave the role entirely to you to create?
I loved the first movie and I thought Jesse was a great actor. But I didn’t really think about what he did in that movie. All I thought about was Mark Zuckerberg—just like when I played Roy Cohn, I didn’t look back at James Woods. I didn’t go back to see Pacino, if at all, because anxiety of impact may have had an impact. I think the goal is to own it, find your version of it, and connect with your own early intuition and let your intuition guide you.
Is it a harder thing to do when you’re playing a “real” person rather than someone made up by a screenwriter?
Yeah, I think it’s a different set of challenges. In this case, I have to try to embody a character with such conviction and belief that you can accept it and suspend your disbelief. You might forget Jesse, and you might even forget what Mark looked like in front of Congress in 2019. This is my only goal. Anything that doesn’t achieve this goal, I throw away.
I think, as far as Aaron is concerned, he’s the greatest writer in the history of film. So he gave me – like a golden record – like a nearly perfect text, which is very rare. In a sense, the text is all you need. You need to prepare your life for the text, but the text will get you there.
To put it mildly, I think a lot of people are tired of Mark Zuckerberg now, and they weren’t necessarily that way when they watched The Social Network. Now he has wealth, power and influence that even he can’t imagine. And you contacted him – you wrote him a letter, right?
I wrote him an email.
What does it say? What are you looking for?
I basically said, “You may have heard that I’m going to be playing you, or a character based on you, in this movie. I just want you to know that I’m taking this very seriously, I’m trying to learn everything I can, and I’m going to approach it with as much respect and honesty as possible.”
What did you hear from him?
I feel like I can’t talk about this issue because replies are private and I don’t want to violate that.
What is the spirit of the response?
I think the spirit of response is hedging, but also responsiveness. I wouldn’t say he was grateful. I think if I were Mark, I would be cautious and wary of making another movie because so much of the first movie was fictional. This is Aaron Sorkin’s version.
must. You can hear it in the speech—very Sorkinesque. He even parodied himself several times. “Can we have a room?” I think someone said at some point in a West Wing-style way.
I think one of the things I’m trying to understand is his transformation into a wartime executive, essentially a besieged, embattled but determined man. I think, if wrongly, that he was an idealistic and principled man.
When the film begins, we have already experienced interference in the 2016 election by state actors. We already have a misinformation campaign from Macedonian trolls. In 2014, we had violence against Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar. All of these things put added pressure on that person, the crucible of that pressure, fighting content moderation like hate speech, terrorist content, harmful content, child exploitation, election misinformation — all these things. By 2019, they will be investigated by the FBI, DOJ, SEC, and FTC. And, by 2019, 100 billion messages were flowing on their platform every day.