Jesse Eisenberg wants to make it crystal clear that he shouldn’t be linked to Mark Zuckerberg‘s story anymore.
The A Real Pain creator shared his thoughts on BBC Radio 4’s Today show, emphasizing that he doesn’t view himself as connected to the Meta CEO and Facebook founder simply because he played him in the acclaimed 2010 movie, The Social Network.
“I haven’t been following [Zuckerberg’s] life trajectory, partly because I don’t… when I think of myself as associated with somebody like that, it’s not like I played a great golfer and now people think I’m a great golfer. It’s this guy that’s doing things that are problematic,” Eisenberg said. “Taking away fact-checking and safety concerns, making people who are already threatened in this world more threatened.”
Recently, Meta revealed that Facebook and Instagram would abandon their independent fact-checking systems and instead adopt a strategy similar to Elon Musk’s X, letting users provide community notes. Zuckerberg released a video statement calling the previous program “too politically biased” and stated it was “time to get back to our roots around free expression.”
The tech mogul’s latest platform policy shifts have triggered concerns for Eisenberg as an individual — not as an actor.
“I’m concerned just as a person who reads a newspaper. I don’t think about ‘Oh, I played the guy in the movie and therefore.’ I’m a human being,” he said. “And you read these things and people have billions upon billions of dollars, like more money than any human person has ever amassed, and like, what are they doing with it? They’re doing it to curry favor with somebody who’s preaching hateful things?”
He added, “So to me, that’s what I think of. But I think of that not as a person who played [him] in a movie. I think of it as somebody who’s married to a woman who teaches disability justice in New York and lives for her students are gonna get a little harder this year.”
Under David Fincher‘s direction and Aaron Sorkin‘s screenplay, The Social Network chronicled Facebook’s beginnings against the backdrop of intense legal conflicts between Mark Zuckerberg (Eisenberg), Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield), and twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss (Armie Hammer). The cast also featured Justin Timberlake, Rashida Jones, Rooney Mara, and Dakota Johnson.
The critically acclaimed film garnered eight Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, and claimed victories in three categories: Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Film Editing, and Best Original Score.