Jesse Eisenberg has addressed the decision to cast Jeremy Strong as Mark Zuckerberg in the sequel to The Social Network.
Eisenberg, 42, played the founder of Facebook in the acclaimed 2010 film, which focused on the origins of the social networking behemoth.
Now, Aaron Sorkin, who wrote the original film, is writing and directing a new sequel, which will cover Zuckerberg’s actions during the time of the January 6 riots outside the US Capitol Building in 2010.
Succession star Strong has been cast as Zuckerberg, taking over the mantle from Eisenberg.
Appearing on the Today show, Eisenberg was asked why he wasn’t involved in the film, titled The Social Reckoning.
“Listen, for reasons that have nothing to do with how amazing that movie will be, really, truthfully, but when you play a character, you feel, at some point, you’ve grown into something else,” he said.
“But it’s a really wonderful movie. I’m friends with Aaron Sorkin, who wrote and is directing this movie, and all of the reasons that I am not in it are completely unrelated to how brilliant it will be.”
The film is said to follow Facebook engineer Frances Haugen (Mikey Madison) andWall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz (Jeremy Allen White) as they bring secrets about Facebook to light.
Speaking to The Independent earlier this year, Eisenberg discussed the sudden influx of fame that The Social Network had brought him.
Describing the heightened fame as transient”, the actor explained: “I’d been in some popular movies before – not as popular – and I’d seen kind of what happens: you’re celebrated for a brief period of time, and you’re on top of some vague lists and agencies for a few months, and then you go back to whatever your status is in the movie industry.
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“I’m having that experience right now,” he continued. “I made a movie [independent drama A Real Pain] that’s relatively popular, at least critically popular, so I’m getting a lot of calls and notes from people I haven’t spoken to in a long time, and that will go away in a few weeks, and then I’ll be back to feeling like, you know, a freelance artist eager to find my next job.”
