Jesse Eisenberg played Mark Zuckerberg in “The Social Network.”
Actor and director Jesse Eisenberg has said he doesn’t want to be associated with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who he portrayed in the 2010 movie “The Social Network,” saying the billionaire’s actions are “problematic.”
“I haven’t been following his (Zuckerberg’s) life trajectory, partly because I don’t want to think of myself as associated with somebody like that. It’s not like I played a great golfer or something, and now people think I’m a great golfer,” Eisenberg told the BBC Tuesday.
“It’s like this guy that’s doing things that are problematic, taking away fact-checking,” he said. “Making people who are already threatened in this world more threatened.”
Eisenberg, whose screenplay for “A Real Pain” is nominated for an Oscar this year, was referencing Zuckerberg’s decision to adjust Meta’s content review policies on Facebook and Instagram, replacing fact checkers with user-generated “community notes.”
Zuckerberg announced the changes just before US President Donald Trump entered the Oval Office for his second term. Trump and other Republicans have lambasted Zuckerberg and Meta for what they view as censorship of right-wing voices.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg pictured making a speech in September 2024.
Manuel Orbegozo/Reuters
Eisenberg stressed that he was “concerned just as a person who reads a newspaper” and is married to someone who teaches disability justice, rather than as an actor who once played Zuckerberg in a movie.
“These people have billions upon billions of dollars, like more money than any human person has ever amassed and what are they doing with it?” he said.
“Oh, they’re doing it to curry favour with somebody who’s preaching hateful things.”
Portraying Zuckerberg in “The Social Network,” which dramatized the founding of Facebook, catapulted Eisenberg to worldwide fame.
Now, the actor is revisiting his memories from that role while on the promotional press tour for “A Real Pain,” which he wrote, directed and stars in.
He told the “Awards Chatter” podcast last month that he never met Zuckerberg before playing him, recalling that he was driving to meet the Meta CEO when he got a call from one of the movie’s producers telling him not to go in there “for a variety of legal reasons.”
