‘Social Network’ Star Has Run Out Of Empathy For Mark Zuckerberg

On January 25, 2025By Littum

As much as Mark Zuckerberg complained that the acclaimed 2010 film “The Social Network” was “hurtful” and manipulated facts about his life story and the creation of Facebook, he had to admit that the Oscar-winning film helped make him a pop culture hero.

Thanks to the movie and the empathetic performance of Jesse Eisenberg, the actor who played him, people even started to like Zuckerberg, Atlantic writer Derek Thompson wrote in his 2011 piece, “How ‘The Social Network’ Saved Mark Zuckerberg.” People began to see him as a cool, Uber-Nerd entrepreneur and the new “boy king” of capitalism, despite the film’s searing analysis of his character and motivations.

Jesse Eisenberg stars as Mark Zuckerberg in “The Social Network.”

In a new interview with Terry Gross of NPR’s Fresh Air, Eisenberg, recently nominated for an Oscar for original screenplay for his film “A Real Pain,” explained that his job as an actor was to “really understand” and “defend” his character—even though his version of Zuckerberg “is a villain in a movie.” But Eisenberg said he has run out of empathy for the Bay Area Meta CEO, given his recent choices as a person and as one of the richest and most powerful people on earth.

Earlier this month, Zuckerberg announced that he was ending professional fact-checking at Meta, which was used to limit the spread of false information and hate speech on Facebook and Instagram. He cited the changing political and social landscape—i.e. the election of Donald Trump as president. During an interview with Podcaster Joe Rogan, Zuckerberg also skewed toward the “cultural elite,” even though he’s the third-richest person in the world, and explained how he essentially reshaped the meta to be “more Maga-friendly,” Axios reported.. And on Jan. 20, Zuckerberg joined other mega-wealthy tech leaders on the dais behind Trump at his Jan. 20 inauguration, essentially showing fealty to the polarizing GOP leader and convicted felon.

As Eisenberg has seen Zuckerberg, he told Gross, he began to wonder if “it’s really an extension of the same person” whose “ambition really supersedes their caution in a way that can be pretty dangerous.”

“This is the same person that I spent a lot of time humanizing and thinking about and trying to justify and defend his behavior,” Eisenberg told Gross. Eisenberg said he came to see how Zuckerberg felt like “an outcast in the world” and created Facebook because “he felt uncomfortable connecting with other people through more traditional social norms.”

L-R, Andrew Garfield, as “Eduardo Saverin,” Joseph Mazzello, as “Dustin Moskovitz,” Jesse Eisenberg, portraying “Mark Zuckerberg” and Patrick Mapel as “Chris Hughes” in Columbia Pictures’ “The Social Network.”

The film shows Eisenberg’s Zuckerberg starting Facebook as a Harvard undergraduate in 2003 to get even with a girlfriend who turned him on. The boyfriend tells Zuckerberg that he’ll probably be rich and successful, but that girls don’t like him, and not because he’s a nerd, but because he’s a “(expletive).”

When he worked on “the social network,” Eisenberg told Gross that he found some of Zuckerberg’s actions “completely justifiable” because he was “an ambitious person who has this big thing that he wants to unleash on the world.”

Eisenberg subsequently got the chance to enjoy a somewhat friendly, if awkward, first meeting with Zuckerberg on live television. When Eisenberg guest-hosted “Saturday Night Live” in late 2010, Zuckerberg broke into his opening monologue to admit that he watched “The Social Network” and found it “interesting.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v49lhkm8zug

Now, Eisenberg said he’s left with that fee “a little sad,” asking Zuckerberg, “Why is this the path you’re taking?”

In fact, Eisenberg’s interview with Gross focused mostly on his acclaimed new film, “A Real Pain,” which he starred in, co-wrote and directed. The film follows two cousins who travel to Poland to visit their grandmother, whose family was decimated by the Holocaust. On Thursday morning, Eisenberg scored a nomination for best original screenplay and his co-star Kieran Culkin was nominated for best supporting actor.

As the role of Facebook and Zuckerberg has evolved in culture over the past several years, speculation has mounted about whether there would ever be a sequel to “The Social Network,” which could reunite Eisenberg with director David Fincher and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin. Said the Daily Beast.

Sorkin himself helped fuel those rumors last spring when he teased how another Trump presidency could factor into the hypothetical project, the Daily Beast reported. “I blame Facebook for January 6,” Sorkin said.

Eisenberg has not dismissed the idea. He indicated that he might be open to the idea of playing Zuckerberg again during an interview with E! News at the Governors Awards in November. He said half-jokingly: “I’m an actor. We do any job that someone offers us. If there’s a car commercial for a Pinto, I’ll show up on set. Do I want to be in that movie? Yes, I’m onto something. If you make a home movie for a kid, I want to be in the home movie. “

Originally published: 23 January 2025 at 10:06 AM PST