Oscars Week with Jesse Eisenberg (‘A Real Pain’)

In the lead-up to Oscar Sunday, our conversation with actor, writer, and director Jesse Eisenberg. At the top, we unpack the journey that shaped his film A Real Pain https://www.searchlightpictures.com/a-real-pain (9:18), memories from his travels to Poland (15:40), and what he observed about his family growing up in East Brunswick (22:23). Then, Eisenberg reflects on his first jokes written on post-it notes (29:20), his breakthrough acting roles in Roger Dodger (31:35) and The Squid and the Whale (34:37), and formative visits to his aunt Doris in New York City (35:32). On the back-half, we talk about his transformation in The Social Network (41:15), the erotic dream that inspired his play The Spoils (42:48), the real anxiety he explored while writing A Real Pain (46:39), lessons on directing from Richard Ayoade and Greg Mottola (51:14), and why he cares so deeply about his art (1:00:10). Thoughts or future guest ideas? Email us at [email protected] mailto:[email protected]. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:21Sam Fragoso?

  This is Talk Easy. I'm Sam Fragoso. Welcome to the show.

• 0:39Sam Fragoso?

  Today, in celebration of Oscar Week, my conversation with Jesse Eisenberg. We sat last fall around the release of his sophomore directorial debut, A Real Pain, where he stars with Kieran Culkin as Cousins, reuniting for a tour through Poland to honor their beloved grandmother. The film is based on a personal short story, Eisenberg Pen, back in 2017. In recent weeks, he's been awarded nearly every writing accolade of the season, taking home Best Screenplay at the Indie Spirit Awards, BAFTA, and WGA. Culkin, too, for his part, has won Best Supporting Actor in just about every race, from the Golden Globes to the SAG Awards this past weekend. A Real Pain is also up

• 1:23Sam Fragoso?

  for Best Original Screenplay at the Academy Awards this Sunday. It was one of my favorite scripts and films of last year, and today we unpack the journey that made the film possible by talking about Eisenberg's upbringing, his winding career through theater, then into acting, and now how he's arrived as someone who likes to work behind the camera. Whether you heard this episode last fall, or you're hearing it for the first time, I really hope you enjoy it. We put out an episode almost every week, and this is definitely one of my favorites of 2024. We will be back on Sunday with a brand-new episode with

• 2:02Sam Fragoso?

  Oscar-nominated actor Monica Barbaro. Until then, here's my talk with Jesse. Have a good week.

• 2:28Speaker 01

  So you ranked every Seinfeld?

• 2:30Sam Fragoso?

  Oh, yeah, for Vanity Fair.

• 2:31Speaker 01

  That is the coolest thing. I've been going through them.

• 2:34Sam Fragoso?

  Um, I rewatched them constantly.

• 2:36Speaker 01

  Me too. I watch them every night.

• 2:37Sam Fragoso?

  There was a, um, you must have Googled that. Um, someone asked me about that ranking as if it was in any way definitive or authoritative.

• 2:47Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:47Sam Fragoso?

  And I was 21 and completely stoned.

• 2:51Speaker 01

  You wrote that at 21?

• 2:51Sam Fragoso?

  I wrote that at 21.

• 2:52Speaker 01

  How'd you get, how'd you get that kind of job at 21?

• 2:54Sam Fragoso?

  It was like, you know, it was like an Almost Famous fake.

• 2:56Speaker 01

  Oh, really?

• 2:57Sam Fragoso?

  Email. Yeah, I pretended I was older.

• 2:58Speaker 01

  Really?

• 2:59Sam Fragoso?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:59Speaker 01

  Um, I wanted to bring something up to you, which is that.

• 3:01Sam Fragoso?

  Okay.

• 3:02Speaker 01

  I, I watch it every night, two or three every night.

• 3:04Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah.

• 3:04Speaker 01

  And the show, and I can't. I'm literally, I've been watching it through the lens of, I want to find an episode. Every single episode is about sex.

• 3:12Sam Fragoso?

  Mm-hmm.

• 3:13Speaker 01

  Except I heard parking garage, maybe.

• 3:16Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah, the parking garage, but that's not really, that's a very.

• 3:18Speaker 01

  It's not like Seinfeld.

• 3:19Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah.

• 3:19Speaker 01

  I know. I know. I want to, I want to, I want a real episode.

• 3:22Sam Fragoso?

  I will, I will do that. I will figure that out for you.

• 3:24Speaker 01

  This is a new list and it's like appropriate to show.

• 3:27Sam Fragoso?

  Appropriate for Jesse's child.

• 3:28Speaker 01

  But also it's fascinating that the show really traded in just juvenile sexual desires.

• 3:34Sam Fragoso?

  Like your early, uh, writings.

• 3:36Speaker 01

  Oh, whoa, you're good. But, but really, like, and I have, fuck it. So I asked ChatGPT and it recommended the parking lot one.

• 3:42Sam Fragoso?

  I'm basically like a Seinfeld ChatGPT, so.

• 3:45Speaker 01

  Oh, really? Okay.

• 3:46Sam Fragoso?

  So I can, I will figure out a few for you by the end of this.

• 3:49Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 3:50Sam Fragoso?

  Let me, let me think about it when we're done with this.

• 3:51Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 3:52Sam Fragoso?

  Uh, hi, Jesse.

• 3:53Speaker 01

  Hello.

• 3:54Sam Fragoso?

  Nice to meet you.

• 3:54Speaker 01

  Nice to meet you too.

• 3:55Sam Fragoso?

  How are you feeling?

• 3:56Speaker 01

  I feel good. Yeah, I mean.

• 3:59Sam Fragoso?

  Is that true?

• 4:00Speaker 01

  Yes, I feel fine. I have anticipatory angst about doing things, but when they're actually happening like this, I feel okay. And we're sitting here and it's happening now.

• 4:08Sam Fragoso?

  Long form interviews, you feel what way about them?

• 4:11Speaker 01

  I like them and then afterwards I think, why did I just say all that stuff? Who gives a shit? Uh, but no, I like long conversations. It's, that's my stock in trade. I love long conversations.

• 4:21Sam Fragoso?

  You know, we're talking not too shortly after the election.

• 4:24Speaker 01

  Right.

• 4:24Sam Fragoso?

  As a former liberal arts major with, I believe, a focus on democracy. Are you glad that your degree is about to finally come in handy?

• 4:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, although, um, just to curry favor with the new government, I'm changing my major retroactively to conservative arts.

• 4:40Sam Fragoso?

  Is that why you also applied for Polish citizenship at the same time?

• 4:42Speaker 01

  No, not at all. No, I applied to Polish citizenship as we were just winning the midterms in 2022. And no, my citizenship was entirely unrelated. And, you know, my wife is a teacher in New York. She's worked with undocumented kids for a long time. And, you know, it, you know, now more than ever is her job, you know, important to stay in New York. You know, to me, I don't fully understand the idea of, you know, rich people fleeing. That seems pretty weird.

• 5:10Sam Fragoso?

  Do you include the Hamptons in that fleeing category?

• 5:14Speaker 01

  No, I'm referring to federal borders. Yeah.

• 5:17Sam Fragoso?

  Okay, just want to make sure.

• 5:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 5:19Sam Fragoso?

  We like clarity on this show.

• 5:21Speaker 01

  Sure, sure, sure.

• 5:21Sam Fragoso?

  I want to talk about this new film.

• 5:23Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 5:23Sam Fragoso?

  And to do that, I want to start with the short story that you wrote in Tablet called Mongolia.

• 5:29Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 5:30Sam Fragoso?

  In 2017, you published this piece, and it was about these two guys.

• 5:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:34Sam Fragoso?

  Who were friendly.

• 5:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:37Sam Fragoso?

  In college. I'm not going to say friends. They were friendly.

• 5:39Speaker 01

  Right, right, right.

• 5:39Sam Fragoso?

  And later decided to embark on this trip to East Asia.

• 5:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:43Sam Fragoso?

  In the story, you describe their dynamic in Mongolia as such. Dennis was a narcissist with more room. I was insecure in a vacuum. As you started adapting the short story for the screen, what about that dynamic did you want to further interrogate?

• 6:01Speaker 01

  Well, what's interesting is now that the movie is over and people are reacting to it, they're noting like a kind of accessible buddy comedy of it. But I never viewed it that way because I'm thinking about it in terms of my relationships with men and, you know, friendships I've had, family relationships I've had, that have affected me so profoundly that they hardly seem archetypical or like movie-like or buddy comedy-like. You know, I am like a self-conscious person and, you know, very, you know, aware of, or at least think, I think I'm aware of my effect on other people.

• 6:35Sam Fragoso?

  I have that in my notes.

• 6:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, I got it, got it. But basically, like, I'm very like, you know, envious and in adoration of, you know, these people who seemingly exist moment to moment and are more comfortable in their own skin. Those people. Yeah, I actually, I think, oh no, I saw one on television and. Seinfeld? It was a, there was a side character on Seinfeld. Now I'm trying to think of who that would be. I think Kramer, actually. Sorry, it's Kramer. No, of course it's Kramer. Sorry. In fact, there were so many things in this movie, Real Pain, that Kieran does. And so I watch Seinfeld every night. That is a Kramer thing. Right. You know, even like, you know, just the way he dabbles into like spirituality, you know, just kind of he dabbles all over the place. And it's always just what he's interested in moment to moment. And it's a Kieran thing. And also, the way,

• 7:22Speaker 01

  the way Kramer walks through New York and there's this like running joke in it. I was just watching the episode where he, he takes over the fire truck. And as he's driving the fire truck, somebody screams out, hey Kramer, and he goes, hey buddy, you know. He's just like. Small city in the world. Yes, exactly. And everywhere he goes, he's just beloved. And Kieran's a Simon Clonan thing, you know, in the opening, we're walking through an airport and he gets stuck flirting with the TSA agent. Right. But anyway, so in terms of like the Mongolia thing, I liked this dynamic between the two of them. Never really thinking, oh, this is kind of a well-worn thing for a movie. I mean, I'm aware of The Odd Couple and all that stuff, but because it was so real to me, I was just creating something that felt like very personal rather than something that felt a little more well-worn. Real to you in what way?

• 8:02Speaker 01

  Real to me in that like I love and envy people like this. I want to be in their orbit. They make me feel so small. They make my life feel so pre-planned, calculated and boring. And on the other hand, I go home at night and I have a family and stability and my rent's been paid at the half point of the month because I'm too worried that if I pay it on the 27th, I'll get in trouble. So I both envy them. I feel small about myself and then kind of go home to a stability that I created because I can't exist in the way they exist. And one of the best pieces of advice I ever got was from the smartest person I know, Richard Iwate. I don't know if you're familiar with his work. He's a comic genius. I'm very familiar. You made a film called The Double. Yeah, that's right. About from Dostoyevsky.

• 8:46Speaker 01

  That's true. So you're, oh, so yeah, you know, Fyodor as well, I guess. He gave me a great piece of advice, but it was in Russian, but. But I had a translator for you today. Oh, thank you so much. That's the ninth pages here. Richard told me, you know, we think we're jealous of people, but we're not. We're jealous of like one aspect of a person's life. And so when we think we're jealous of a person, we actually don't want their lives. We just want one little aspect of it, but chances are that aspect will derail all the other things that we've established in our life.

• 9:10Sam Fragoso?

  Right.

• 9:10Speaker 01

  Anyway, so that's kind of what happens in the movie and what my character thinks about.

• 9:14Sam Fragoso?

  So your character, David.

• 9:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:16Sam Fragoso?

  Is a father, a husband, a man who wears a University of Indiana cap.

• 9:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:22Sam Fragoso?

  Basically you.

• 9:23Speaker 01

  Right.

• 9:24Sam Fragoso?

  And is a surrogate for you.

• 9:26Speaker 01

  Kind of, yeah.

• 9:27Sam Fragoso?

  Which part of Benji, his cousin.

• 9:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:31Sam Fragoso?

  Do you most admire? What's the part that in the I want a framing that you'd like?

• 9:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, wow, that's great. Yeah, I guess just like I had this one time, I was working in Croatia for like four months during for a movie. And somebody gave me some pot to smoke there. Otherwise, we didn't, there wasn't any there. And the one day I smoked pot, I went to the grocery store I used to go to, this little kind of corner grocery store. And I would always try my Croatian out on them, but for some reason, when I was stoned.

• 10:00Sam Fragoso?

  I'm sure they love that.

• 10:01Speaker 01

  They always spoke English back to me, but then this one time when I was stoned, they spoke Croatian back to me. And I realized I had just been projecting this very kind of, just this nervous, unsure person. And when I was stoned, I was not unsure. I was, it had filtered out and so they thought I was Croatian. And that's the Benji, is he just projects such confidence in his eyes that he can talk to anybody. Because he's not feeling uncomfortable, they don't feel uncomfortable. And he can kind of walk through life, basically just turning situations into his whims.

• 10:31Sam Fragoso?

  I love that. At some point in writing the script, you hit a wall and you couldn't find a path forward. How did you break through to the other side?

• 10:41Speaker 01

  Yes, right. So I was, I was writing the, this script, the guys, they got off the plane in, in Ulaanbaatar in Mongolia. But I could tell this was not going to make it to a full length feature film script.

• 10:53Sam Fragoso?

  And when it's not going well, how do you feel?

• 10:55Speaker 01

  Oh, it's, it's the worst. It's the worst because I used to write all the time, little funny things and everything. But now what I do, because I'm trying to have like just more of a professional life, because I have a child now and my time is more limited creatively. I know I have like eight weeks to write a script. I've set it aside. Everything, my, my wife's cool with it. And so if something's not going well, you feel like shit, I'm not gonna have a project for the next two years. You know what I mean? No, with that, not, not, it didn't feel good. And, uh, yeah, no, it, it feel, yeah, feels, yeah, that's bad. And, um, cause I really was thinking for years. I wrote the piece, as you said, I think in 2017. So I was thinking for years that this would be a movie script that I would write. So when it wasn't going well, I was upset and, and an ad popped up online for, for Auschwitz tours with lunch.

• 11:36Sam Fragoso?

  Why did those four words open the, the story up?

• 11:40Speaker 01

  Because I've thought a lot about trauma tourism. Um, I'm, that's the kind of tourism I'm interested in. The last vacation I took was to Timasura, Romania last month, which is the site of the original uprising against Ceausescu in Romania. I know I sound like a total nerd, but this is just, I like traveling, but I feel guilty about traveling. And so like, maybe I offset the balance by going to these places of historical import.

• 12:04Sam Fragoso?

  So you're describing yourself as a trauma tourist?

• 12:07Speaker 01

  I, yeah, or, yeah, as opposed to a traumatized tourist, yes.

• 12:10Sam Fragoso?

  That may come after.

• 12:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's true, depending on what happens. I've been to, uh, Kigali, to the Rwanda genocide museum and Cambodia, the killing fields. I, I'm really interested in these world events and, um, I feel it opens me up and grounds me in some ways to visit these places. But also there's the weird thing of, you know, flood, trying to get the economy plus seating on the trip, you know? So that, you know, you get a little more extra legroom on the flight to Rwanda. And, you know, just the awkwardness of living your modern life. And in my case, my life of great luck and fortune. And, uh, while also being interested in things that, uh, you know, that I thank God every day that didn't befall me.

• 12:52Sam Fragoso?

  In the film, there are these two cousins, as we talked about, you and Kieran Culkin.

• 12:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:56Sam Fragoso?

  And they're there to do this Holocaust tour.

• 12:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:58Sam Fragoso?

  But they're also there to visit the ancestral home of their late grandmother, Dory.

• 13:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:04Sam Fragoso?

  Who's based on your great aunt with the same name.

• 13:07Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 13:08Sam Fragoso?

  Who left Poland in 1918.

• 13:10Speaker 01

  Wow, you're good.

• 13:11Sam Fragoso?

  For America.

• 13:11Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 13:12Sam Fragoso?

  What were your initial impressions when you visited her home as the characters do in the film?

• 13:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, right. So she grew up in this town of Krasnostaf, which is a small village between Lublin and Zamosz for Pole heads out there.

• 13:26Sam Fragoso?

  That actually is a majority of our listeners.

• 13:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:30Speaker 01

  But basically, we found this town. We pulled up. My first thought, actually, driving through this town, I said to my wife, I wonder if we're gonna see anybody that looks like me. And as we're driving through this town, it just like occurred to me, I don't know, maybe 20 seconds after I said that, it occurred to me, oh, right, they were all, they left or died. Such a dumb thing to think, you know, initially. But then, yeah, we got to this house and I was like standing in front of it. It was like the culmination, again, of like a kind of difficult trip because we were trying to find this place that was in this obscure village. And, uh, and I just wasn't like feeling anything. And then, you know, I don't know. I, I, and then after 10 minutes, we were just loitering.

• 14:07Sam Fragoso?

  What were you trying to feel?

• 14:08Speaker 01

  That's a great question. I guess, that's a really great question. I guess I wouldn't have been able to articulate it. I guess I thought that it would give me the answers that I didn't even know the questions to, right? I mean, like, we try to connect to history, assuming that it will tell us something, you know? People are interested getting their 23andMe thing back. Um, you know, I wonder, though, like, how often the thing we, I don't know, I guess I was expecting it would do something for me.

• 14:35Sam Fragoso?

  Do you typically go into experiences aiming to feel something specific?

• 14:38Speaker 01

  Yes. Yes. Wow, you're a very astute interviewer. Yes, I really do. I, that's partly why I do what you codified as trauma tourism, because I'm really hoping to have some profound experience, something to connect me to meaning, a meaning that I'm very much lacking in my own life of material, material good, good fortune.

• 15:03Sam Fragoso?

  Now that you've made the movie, and you've thought about visiting the home of your aunt, and you, of course, go back to New York and, and show her the photo.

• 15:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, right.

• 15:12Sam Fragoso?

  That you had blown up at Kinko's.

• 15:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:15Sam Fragoso?

  And when you showed her, her old home.

• 15:18Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 15:18Sam Fragoso?

  What did she say?

• 15:20Speaker 01

  She looked at it and said, oh, yeah, that looks like it, and dismissed it immediately.

• 15:24Sam Fragoso?

  And you made one of that.

• 15:26Speaker 01

  I always looked to her that everything she said was right. She, she was like not a happy person and, uh, but she was a really wise person.

• 15:34Sam Fragoso?

  She lived 106.

• 15:35Speaker 01

  Yeah. And by wise Henry James, who said wisdom is knowing what to overlook, that was her. She would always know the important thing. And yeah, she would always just figure out whatever the important thing was. I would tell her a long story, maybe even trying to impress her with something I did or received or, you know, got some celebratory notice or something. And she would always just like cut to like, what's the, what's the point of this? What's it actually doing? What is, what does it mean in your life? And actually, is it hurting you in some way you haven't been able to figure out? And so when she said that, I was like, oh yeah, that's right. That's, we don't have that connection anymore. That's the house. What do we do with that? What is she supposed to do with that? Like cry over the picture? Like, what is that? It's meaningless.

• 16:17Speaker 01

  Like her days were about kind of like, she wanted to learn something every day and she wanted to live every day, which meant exercising and eating broccoli.

• 16:25Sam Fragoso?

  Do you inherit those qualities?

• 16:27Speaker 01

  I love broccoli and not the, and the exercising I'm holding off until I'm in my hundreds as well. Um, I think that's the, that's when to start a regimen.

• 16:34Sam Fragoso?

  Right, when to get the three digits and you start running.

• 16:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly, exactly. Just when you can't walk, you start running. Yeah, so her dismissal of it in some ways like kind of informed, like kind of the sensibility of this movie, which is like, oh, that's not ours anymore. Let's focus on what's ours. We don't, we don't belong there anymore.

• 16:50Sam Fragoso?

  I'm trying to hold this ambivalence with the fact that as a kid, you told Time Magazine, I was a very sad kid and I would learn about my family's history. And I just felt this connection to it because I felt they must have been miserable, which is how I felt. Which doesn't sound like an ambivalence to me about your family history. It feels like something you felt rather acutely at a young age.

• 17:15Speaker 01

  Yes, the ambivalence is only that I feel unworthy of connecting my current pain to their trauma.

• 17:20Sam Fragoso?

  As a kid, that's what you thought?

• 17:22Speaker 01

  Oh no, God, no. As a kid, I looked at, you know, as a kid, we were visited by my cousin Maria, who actually just died of COVID. She's a survivor of the war and some of the stories in the movie are about her. So she survived the war as she was in, living in that house up until 1939. So her family stayed, my, my grandfather's family, Doris's family left. But that family stayed and she would come to New York like every few years and we would Good here, Maria's coming and and she, you know, she stands on breadlines. My dad would tell me about Poland during the Soviet era, that she would be standing on breadlines and her life was just this very bleak existence. And she would come and I just had this like very deep feeling of connectivity to her energy, which was one of total melancholy. And I felt, yeah, something like that.

• 18:07Speaker 01

  And because my parents are like very wonderfully self-actualized, happy people. I kind of was looking to like other people who were miserable, like my Aunt Doris, who was really quite a solitary person. And my cousin Maria, who would visit us from Poland and saw like, oh, they seem to feel what I feel.

• 18:24Sam Fragoso?

  Okay, so let me try to understand this. Growing up in East Brunswick.

• 18:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:28Sam Fragoso?

  Your father was a taxi driver turned sociology professor. Your mother was a choreographer at a Christian boys' school in Philadelphia on weekdays.

• 18:36Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 18:37Sam Fragoso?

  And on weekends, was a birthday party clown.

• 18:39Speaker 01

  You're good. You're good.

• 18:41Sam Fragoso?

  They were positive examples. They were examples of self-actualization. What about them did you go, I need something else?

• 18:53Speaker 01

  I remember my dad, like on weekends, would be like, it's sunny outside, we should go out.

• 18:57Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah, and that sounded terrible.

• 18:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I was like, what? And so when it was sunny, I just thought, oh, God, this is like the worst. I can't believe it's sunny. You know, it's interesting, just as we're talking, though, it occurs to me, my parents, it skipped a generation.

• 19:10Sam Fragoso?

  What do you mean?

• 19:11Speaker 01

  My grandparents were also fraught. And I just realized it skipped a generation on purpose, which was that.

• 19:17Sam Fragoso?

  What do you mean?

• 19:18Speaker 01

  Well, my grandparents' lives were much more difficult. And they never talked about their misery. They never talked about the family they lost in the war with my parents, because they wanted them to assimilate into, you know, essentially, you know, mainstream American culture and to not be bogged down with knowing Yiddish and knowing about trauma and knowing about the old country.

• 19:40Sam Fragoso?

  So your parents were second generation?

• 19:41Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 19:42Sam Fragoso?

  And you're third.

• 19:43Speaker 01

  Exactly. In that regard, they probably were insulated from misery.

• 19:48Sam Fragoso?

  And you thought, since they're not feeling miserable, I want to find examples of.

• 19:55Sam Fragoso?

  Something like that.

• 19:56Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 19:56Sam Fragoso?

  Do you think that has anything to do with the fact that instead of Star Wars, you were shown Frederick Weizen movies?

• 20:01Speaker 01

  Wow, you're you're you did a very deep dive and came up with a lot of accurate treasures. Um, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, yeah. Although my I'm sure my parents liked Star Wars, but they never showed it to us. I don't know, not there wasn't like a a rule in the house. But we just never saw that stuff and nor did that kind of stuff appeal to me. In the sense that like things that were popular amongst other kids, just kind of like, I don't know. I just I kind of avoided them. I don't know why.

• 20:29Sam Fragoso?

  My parents considered showing me Frederick Weizen movies.

• 20:32Speaker 01

  Uh, but didn't?

• 20:33Sam Fragoso?

  No, they just said, uh, why don't you just stick around the house and observe us and take notes?

• 20:38Speaker 01

  Oh, really? Got it.

• 20:39Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah.

• 20:40Speaker 01

  That's funny.

• 20:41Sam Fragoso?

  Um, in this new movie of yours,

• 20:43Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 20:43Sam Fragoso?

  you're playing the character of David, who at one point earlier in his life, quote, "did feel more pain, pain that he's now medicated away." But when you were in first grade, getting on that bus to Frost Elementary.

• 20:59Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 21:00Sam Fragoso?

  What were you overwhelmed by?

• 21:03Speaker 01

  It's like 60 Minutes. I promised I wouldn't cry. Um, I, when I was a kid, I was overwhelmed by everything.

• 21:09Sam Fragoso?

  Like what?

• 21:10Speaker 01

  Oh, I mean, really, just like probably pretty amorphous terrors, you know? But I would I would latch my fears onto anything, you know, like I do now. I'm just basically racked with with with dread. And as a kid, I was racked with dread, but was not in a position to kind of figure out little coping mechanisms. Like I find, like I find now, like I could watch Seinfeld at night, every night, which I do, because it'll help me fall asleep. So I'm not like, you know, in my own thoughts and all that stuff at the time. So I just am, I live in just a state of total dread. And as a kid, everything was overwhelming because, you know, as a kid, you're like out of control of everything. You're in school, you know, you'd I would just worry about everything. When I was, yeah, five, I had a I had to take two tissues to school every day.

• 21:53Speaker 01

  One tissue is for crying and one was for bleeding. And my lovely mom, she would she would say as I was leaving the door, wait, do you have your crying tissue and your bleeding tissue? And in retrospect, my mom probably should have just said, honey, you don't need tissues. You're not going to cry or bleed. But instead, we we my very sweet, very well meaning mom, I guess, just reinforced this need that something terrible is going to happen to me every day.

• 22:14Sam Fragoso?

  And what was something terrible that would happen?

• 22:18Speaker 01

  For the bleeding, it would be to get disastrously hurt or have a nosebleed, which I often did.

• 22:24Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah, me too.

• 22:25Speaker 01

  And then the crying one was just that I would miss home is the way I thought about it. I would just miss being home.

• 22:31Sam Fragoso?

  With your sisters?

• 22:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, just with my mom, really. It was like a mom thing, I think. And there's a line that Kieran has in this movie. Kieran is telling the group about me and he goes, "We went to Dewey's sleepaway camp and I had to hug him to sleep every night and talk about his sweet fucking mom to get him to go to sleep," you know? And like, yeah, that's kind of, yeah, how I felt.

• 22:49Sam Fragoso?

  That was you?

• 22:50Speaker 01

  Yeah. I'd tell him about his sweet fucking mom every night just to get him to sleep. Yeah, that's kind of, that was me.

• 22:57Speaker 01

  It's also funny because Kieran is just like insulting my aunt, his aunt.

• 23:02Sam Fragoso?

  I heard you once call it separation anxiety.

• 23:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. Yeah. That's what it was referred to as. And I guess that's what it was. But it felt, I guess if I'm looking back on it psychologically, it felt actually far more like profound than don't like to leave this space. It felt like dreading major, major things.

• 23:20Sam Fragoso?

  When you missed the sixth grade, how did you make sense of that?

• 23:22Speaker 01

  Oh, I mean, I had, I mean, I had like a tutor at my house and I was, as you probably know, because it seems like you know everything else, I was like institutionalized briefly for, for, for trying to hurt myself, et cetera. And, but I, I, I was in like the first month of sixth grade and I was just, it was pure terror. I remember it, literally, I remember it like a fever dream where like, I remember like, like running in and out of rooms. Like, it's so interesting because like, you know, in school, there's a real, pretty strict civil society, which is you walk in this room and then the bell rings and you have three minutes to get to your next class. And all that stuff, just for me, totally upended, where I would like rush in and out of rooms and I would beg people for a quarter so that I can go call my mom on the payphone, which was near the front entrance. And it was just like, all, once, once I like this thing clicked for me that like, I don't have

• 24:06Speaker 01

  to follow the things because I'm so anxious, I'm so miserable. Suddenly it was just like a free for all.

• 24:11Sam Fragoso?

  You were drawing on the lines.

• 24:13Speaker 01

  Yes. I was just in and out of class. It was my birthday and this sweet, sweet girl, Jenny, she said to me, "Jesse, you don't have to cry today. It's your birthday." And then I just started bawling and run it, ran out of the class. And I just remember like, there were no rules. I was just, it was chaos. It was the horse in the hospital. It was just like pure chaos and I was a wreck.

• 24:33Sam Fragoso?

  I don't mean to laugh at this.

• 24:34Speaker 01

  No, no, it's hysterically funny.

• 24:35Sam Fragoso?

  I mean, it's painful.

• 24:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's painful, but now it's funny and, you know, maybe my life is better for it, but probably not.

• 24:41Sam Fragoso?

  Is it?

• 24:42Speaker 01

  Well, you know, it's the kind of thing where you're like, and that's what made me mean. I'm like, actually, maybe that's what made me far worse.

• 24:47Sam Fragoso?

  You know, it's funny, I, I just started going back to therapy.

• 24:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:50Sam Fragoso?

  And I found that in the last month, at the end of the sessions, I'll go, all right, well, I didn't choose this. I am who I am. Like,

• 24:59Speaker 01

  Right, right, right.

• 24:59Sam Fragoso?

  What am I supposed to do with this now?

• 25:01Speaker 01

  Right, exactly.

• 25:02Sam Fragoso?

  And then I leave and I go, why did I pay to get to the conclusion of I didn't choose how I'm wired?

• 25:09Speaker 01

  But,

• 25:10Sam Fragoso?

  It's just horrid.

• 25:11Speaker 01

  Once you say, I didn't choose this, doesn't it actually give you some kind of chance that maybe choosing something else, like?

• 25:17Sam Fragoso?

  That's really what he says.

• 25:18Speaker 01

  Right, exactly. Yeah, that's how they get you with a little rhetorical bullshit.

• 25:23Sam Fragoso?

  When you were 14 and you started writing and you did bits on Post-it notes?

• 25:28Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 25:29Sam Fragoso?

  Did that help alleviate or make use of some of that sadness or pain that we're talking about?

• 25:35Speaker 01

  Oh, that's a great question, and I would never have said that, but actually, now that I'm thinking about it genuinely for the very first time, I would say, yes, I guess. And I'm sure I have the experience that every artist has, which is like, the world feels out of control. So you start doing your art, your painting, your, you know, putting makeup on, whatever it is you're doing, you're dying your hair, you're writing a play, whatever it is.

• 25:54Sam Fragoso?

  Writing sex jokes.

• 25:55Speaker 01

  That's it. So like, I guess, get some control back from what you see as a chaotic world, which is why I'm always a little suspicious of the very confident, self-actualized artist. You know, I'm kind of envious of it, too. Like, oh, wait, you can write scripts and also not hate yourself? Like, and that's always kind of interesting to see. But, um, yeah, I guess when I was like, writing jokes, yes, I guess it allowed me to maybe have some control over what I felt was chaos.

• 26:21Sam Fragoso?

  What kind of jokes would you write?

• 26:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, just sex jokes, just total, total sex jokes.

• 26:25Sam Fragoso?

  From your vast experience that you had?

• 26:26Speaker 01

  From my vast experience of listening to other people tell sex jokes, I realized. Like, I was watching this show on Comedy Central called Make Me Laugh, where a comedian would do like, two minutes to a contest. So they'd get a regular person to sit in a chair and the comedian would try to get them to laugh. And they had two minutes. I'm remembering, like, it was just all sex jokes. It was like, late 90s, when I guess maybe that was like, the new thing. You know, we can, we don't have to hold back anymore, is what that meant. Yeah, so I just knew sex as like, a thing, as a punchline. Yeah, not as a activity to have.

• 26:57Sam Fragoso?

  I think one of the jokes was, uh, I've had sex in every room of this.

• 27:02Speaker 01

  Of my house. Yeah, unfortunately, I live in a studio apartment. A killer one liner. It's also, you know, there's some self-deprecation about my small home.

• 27:10Sam Fragoso?

  It's actually a class comment, really.

• 27:12Speaker 01

  It's, yeah, exactly. If anything, I think in perhaps, there was a whole kind of Marxist set that I did do. And in some ways, it wasn't even about the humor. Actually, my first piece I ever published was called Marxist Socialist Jokes for McSweeney's. And it was a series of jokes about Marxist socialists. You take all the classic jokes and then change it to Marxist socialist. Yeah, obviously, that's what that is.

• 27:35Sam Fragoso?

  Okay, so when you're 17, 17 seems like a really pivotal year for you.

• 27:42Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 27:42Sam Fragoso?

  It's around then that you transfer to the professional performing arts school in New York.

• 27:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:48Sam Fragoso?

  On 48th Street in Midtown.

• 27:50Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 27:51Sam Fragoso?

  What kind of outlet did acting offer you at that age? Sort of in the same spirit of writing Post-it note jokes.

• 27:59Speaker 01

  You know, I don't, I didn't like live or die for acting when I was like a kid in plays. That came later and it became like a really strong interest for me. But really, for me, the great outlet of like doing theater or being in New York City was I was just with people that were more like-minded. I was with people who were adults primarily, which was a great relief. I just felt like so much more comfortable in my skin around people who were adults. And then when I was in, I was in this high school in New York that was performing arts high school, I was just around like-minded people, sensitive people, people who like weren't embarrassed by emotions, who didn't make fun of each other. And if they did, it was like in good nature. It wasn't like, you know, bullying or cliques like

• 28:43Speaker 01

  you find maybe more in the suburbs and stuff like that.

• 28:46Sam Fragoso?

  Frederick Weisman jokes.

• 28:47Speaker 01

  Every day, a Frederick Weisman joke. It was amazing. From all the kids, each one a different joke. It was just great. It was like, it was just like a social outlet kind of thing. And then I started like getting good acting parts, like, which is just random because I had other great actors in my school. And I kind of just, I started getting good parts. This movie I was in when I was 18 was Roger Dodger, this like great New York independent film. And I started getting like good parts after that. And I started to really fall in love with, with acting. And then for me, it's become about that. But, you know, at the time, it was just like, I gotta get out of this life I don't like. And theater provided a great outlet.

• 29:21Sam Fragoso?

  You said to The Guardian once, when playing a role. I would feel more comfortable as you're given a prescribed way of behaving.

• 29:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:30Sam Fragoso?

  I guess, did you find it more comfortable saying words that weren't your own?

• 29:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. Yeah, not only that, like, you know, it's like, I think probably a lot of people would relate to this, even if you're not an actor, but like, you know, all the anxiety people have socially about going into like a new situation. Like, imagine if you had to sit there and you had to, in between saying hello and nice to meet you, you had to take a sip of your Sprite and they chose the Sprite for you. And then you had to have this conversation that turned into a fight with this other person. And then you had to walk away crying. Like, I know that sounds like a difficult test, but to me, that sounded like pure freedom. I don't have to worry about what I'm gonna say. I don't have to worry about stifling my emotions because it's scripted that I get angry and then walk away crying. And to me, it was just like, this is the greatest freedom in the world. I don't have to worry about being judged as me.

• 30:21Speaker 01

  I'm this character. And actually, you know what? This character is kind of arrogant on the page, but you know what? It's gonna make me feel really good to feel that.

• 30:28Sam Fragoso?

  Well, with that, here's a clip from the film The Squid and the Whale from 2005, directed by the great Noah Baumbach. Here it is.

• 30:39Speaker 02

  Do you want to go to my house? I thought we could-

• 30:41Speaker 03

  Jesus, you really want to do it, don't you?

• 30:43Speaker 02

  I don't know.

• 30:45Speaker 03

  What's the obsession with sex?

• 30:47Speaker 02

  It's not an obsession. I'm not so sure I want to do it either. I'm scared too.

• 30:51Speaker 03

  Well, scared is not the issue. Everything is so serious suddenly. We're not getting married.

• 30:56Speaker 02

  What are you saying?

• 30:57Speaker 03

  Nothing. I just don't want to feel this pressure from you.

• 31:00Speaker 02

  Do you like someone else? Your dad's girlfriend?

• 31:03Speaker 03

  No. No, why? No, and she's not his girlfriend.

• 31:09Speaker 02

  My father said you had a weak handshake, which is a sign of indecision.

• 31:12Speaker 03

  His hands are so huge, I can't get a good grip.

• 31:14Speaker 02

  My mother said you don't have a very good model for relationships because of your parents.

• 31:18Speaker 03

  What? Your mother doesn't know anything. Well, I thought it went well. You told me she said I was hilarious.

• 31:29Speaker 03

  Like, don't be difficult, please.

• 31:35Sam Fragoso?

  The other side of that age of 17, when you really were like starting to act, is that you began to forge this relationship with your Aunt Doris.

• 31:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 31:46Sam Fragoso?

  When you began to visit her every Thursday uptown.

• 31:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:50Sam Fragoso?

  What were you looking for? Was it some kind of direction?

• 31:54Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly. I was looking for direction. She, as an actor, I'm probably speaking for the majority of actors, which is like you feel one day celebrated and the next day rejected. And it's just the nature of being an actor. You know, you're celebrated for something and then rejected by something else, usually within an hour. And that's if you're successful. That's like, that's, that's.

• 32:13Sam Fragoso?

  Right. That's the dream.

• 32:14Speaker 01

  That's the dream. Exactly. And it applies to everybody, like really does. And I know people far more successful than me and they have those feelings too. And like, it's just normal.

• 32:23Sam Fragoso?

  Sort of an inspirational speech you're giving.

• 32:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Even you could make it and feel those awful things.

• 32:29Sam Fragoso?

  Do you feel bad right now? How about you feel even worse, but you have a little bit more money?

• 32:33Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly. Well, yeah, that, that.

• 32:35Sam Fragoso?

  That's not that bad.

• 32:35Speaker 01

  That does help. That does help. Absolutely. I mean, obviously it helps, you know, but, and my Aunt Doris was basically, she basically grounded me on both of those fronts. So if I was like celebrated for something, I would like tell her about it and she would not be impressed. And if something was bad, and I told her I got rejected from this thing, I'd say, who cares? Like, why, why, you know, just get to the heart of it. Like, why is that an important thing for you? And ultimately, I'd wind up in the same place every time, which is the celebratory things are kind of fleeting and fake. And the rejection part thing is kind of fleeting and fake too, if you choose to look at those things in that way. And she had been through a crazy life. She's really had quite a crazy life. And, uh, and I would say she just was able to egolessly pierce into the truth of kind of the meaning

• 33:17Speaker 01

  of life, which again, she always said, you know, wisdom is knowing what to overlook. That was her.

• 33:22Sam Fragoso?

  Why didn't you want to go see her starting at 17?

• 33:25Speaker 01

  Well, basically, what happened was I was going to this performing arts school, high school I went to was a was a public school. And I lived in New Jersey, so I had to lie and say I was a resident of New York City to go to this school. So I used her address because she was my relative who lived in New York City. So I used her address. And so I think I went to like pick up mail or something there because I would get mail sent there from my school. And I felt a little guilty that I was like exploiting her apartment, but not having a relationship. And and then when I so I I kind of like, you know, got together with her, you know, a little bit, let me take her out to dinner. She's, you know, old and living alone. And it became like revelatory pretty quickly of like who this person is and and what they mean to me.

• 34:02Sam Fragoso?

  That's incredible.

• 34:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:04Sam Fragoso?

  That it came from a place of guilt.

• 34:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, sure.

• 34:06Sam Fragoso?

  First and foremost.

• 34:07Speaker 01

  Sure, you know, all my things derive from. Yeah, I would say my my career is like, yeah, half dread and half creativity and guilt.

• 34:18Sam Fragoso?

  After the break, more from actor and director Jesse Eisenberg.

• 34:28Sam Fragoso?

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• 35:10Sam Fragoso?

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• 35:59Sam Fragoso?

  In those early films, I'm thinking about Squid and the Whale, Adventureland, Social Network. You said once, "I enjoy playing selfish characters."

• 36:10Speaker 04

  You had 42 days to study your system and get out ahead.

• 36:13Speaker 03

  Do you see any of your code on Facebook? Si, could you-- Mark-- Did I use any of your code?

• 36:16Speaker 04

  You stole our whole goddamn idea.

• 36:18Speaker 03

  Fellas. Match.com for Harvard, guys. Can I continue with my deposition? You know, you really don't need a forensics team to get to the bottom of this. If you guys were the inventors of Facebook, you'd have invented Facebook.

• 36:32Sam Fragoso?

  Your plays, too, are often about culturally insensitive people--

• 36:36Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 36:36Sam Fragoso?

  --and the shaming of them.

• 36:38Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 36:39Sam Fragoso?

  Do you think you play these parts to exorcise your more selfish tendencies?

• 36:43Speaker 01

  Oh, 100%. Yeah. No, that's precisely-- 10 years of therapy can be summed up in exactly what you said. It's like, I feel so guilty--

• 36:50Sam Fragoso?

  I'm just like your aunt.

• 36:53Speaker 01

  Yeah. She was meaner, but--

• 36:55Sam Fragoso?

  There's still time.

• 36:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. But if you can get meaner, I would come here every week.

• 36:59Sam Fragoso?

  You fly from New York to LA.

• 37:00Speaker 01

  Listen, if you insult me, I will be here every Thursday, 4 to 7.

• 37:04Sam Fragoso?

  We don't have the studio at that time, but--

• 37:06Speaker 01

  We don't have the studio at that time. That's good. You know, for me, I would be writing these plays, and there's something quite arrogant about writing a play that, you know, "Oh, all of my thoughts deserve to be on." And so, like, the plays would be kind of these very real-- like, they would feature characters that were so kind of grossly tormented and offensive.

• 37:27Sam Fragoso?

  The Revisionist, for example.

• 37:29Speaker 01

  Revisionist was more tame, but like, I wrote a play called The Spoils, and the storyline was my character was using my Nepalese roommate as bait to get a girl that I was in love with when I was younger to defecate on my face before her wedding. And this was the plotline, and I could only, you know, experience joy through being completely humiliated and disgusted. And so, this was just a really self-hating, maladaptive kind of person. And maybe what was happening was while I was writing-- This, I was trying to offset the arrogance of writing a play with a character that is so demeaned that the only good time in his life was when he was being defecated on. And so, um, like, uh, which was a dream, a recurring dream he had had. And so, yeah. Was it a recurring dream you had had?

• 38:13Speaker 01

  I had this dream once. It was very disturbing. It was in the lobby of like, um, my, my theater camp. When I was like, you know, eight years old or something. And yeah, this girl, she laid out newspaper on the ground and I lied on the newspaper and this happened. New York Post? Then you're, oh, that's good. Topical. And, uh, yeah, I'd had this dream and it kind of stayed with me as like this very kind of erotic thing. And, uh, I can say why this was a hit play. Yeah, it was a hit play. It was a bestselling play in the West End in the theater we played in. You know why? Because I was getting at the truth. That's what they said at the Time Out London. You, you joke, but that's all true. Basically, so like, yeah, this was a dream I had. I don't actually have this desire in, in, in my real life, but nonetheless, yeah.

• 38:54Speaker 01

  So this character that I had written was basically this guy who was so self-hating that he could only feel comfortable while being, you know? Do you find being self-hating a useful quality in, in, in your writing, in your work? Yeah. I mean, I guess I wouldn't say I'm self-hating. Like that implies a certain activity, which I don't have. You know what I mean? Like, I like, oh, I wake up and I think of the bad. Read this as a verb. Okay. I really, yeah, I really don't. Exactly. Yeah. I don't do that. I don't think about that. And I'm not stupid, so I kind of understand like where I fit into the world. And I know it's like, I'm not doing that much damage and all that stuff, you know? So I don't really walk around thinking that. But no, I just, I feel, you know, at once very lucky that my life has like allowed me to be in the arts and everything. And I feel just terribly guilty because I know I'm in a position that few get to be in.

• 39:39Speaker 01

  And so, yeah, it's those weird, it's that, it's this weird intersection of feeling really lucky and then also feeling guilty for the luck that I've been given. And in terms of self-hatred, I guess I don't think of self-hatred. I guess I just think I'm silly. Like, I recognize that, like, all the things I do are kind of like meaningless in the world. And yet I do them with a kind of fervor that would imply that they have some ripple effect of importance. And there's something really funny about that. And so I like. Writing about that.

• 40:08Sam Fragoso?

  That's very much embedded in this movie.

• 40:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. In A Real Pain, my character literally says, I, you know, I have OCD and, you know, and everything, but I medicated away and I know my pain is unexceptional, so I don't feel the need to burden everybody with it. And that's pretty much how I feel. Like, yeah, I feel like, you know, like a lot of people, embarrassed to live inside my own skin, but I'm not going to say that all the time, except in, of course, interviews like this one. Um, you know, but I'm not going to go around and say that because there's nothing more obnoxious than somebody who has run-of-the-mill anxiety constantly telling every room that they enter about it.

• 40:36Sam Fragoso?

  You're, like I said, always welcome to share that.

• 40:38Speaker 01

  Okay, thank you.

• 40:39Sam Fragoso?

  But, but I want to try to hold this sincerely, which it feels almost anathema to you, but I want to just try to do it.

• 40:45Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 40:45Sam Fragoso?

  That scene you're talking about.

• 40:47Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 40:47Sam Fragoso?

  In your film, A Real Pain, where you're at the dinner table.

• 40:51Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 40:51Sam Fragoso?

  And Benji has gone up and excused himself and gone to the bathroom and, and your character, David, basically unloads on, on the rest of the tourists.

• 40:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:59Sam Fragoso?

  And says all these things. I take a pill for my OCD. I jog. I meditate. I know that my pain is unexceptional. I hate him and I want to kill him and I want to be him and I feel so stupid around him.

• 41:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:10Sam Fragoso?

  Which is also almost the exact language you used in the beginning of this conversation.

• 41:14Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 41:15Sam Fragoso?

  And describing him.

• 41:16Speaker 01

  Shows my limited range literarily.

• 41:18Sam Fragoso?

  It's okay.

• 41:19Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 41:19Sam Fragoso?

  There's time.

• 41:20Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 41:20Sam Fragoso?

  You're only 41.

• 41:21Speaker 01

  That's true.

• 41:22Sam Fragoso?

  When you wrote that scene.

• 41:24Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 41:24Sam Fragoso?

  You did it in a library.

• 41:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:28Sam Fragoso?

  And you told The New Yorker that you were crying while, while, while writing that.

• 41:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:33Sam Fragoso?

  Why?

• 41:35Speaker 01

  Oh, because it's like literally everything I feel, you know, you know, writing in addition to kind of like, I guess, trying to upend whatever ego I might have is also cathartic, you know, and that's the way I feel around so many people. I, I find people like Benji to be really alluring, you know, especially for somebody like me, but just in general also alluring, somebody who seems comfortable in their own skin, somebody for whom even their grief is enviable. Benji's grief far outweighs mine. Um, it's revealed in the movie that he's had kind of much more trouble the last few years than me, but even his grief is like grounded, even his grief is like earthy, whereas my grief, I like medicated away. So it's kind of just like this fuzzy thing and.

• 42:17Speaker 01

  Side of me, Benji's grief is all in. He goes all in. Again, it's revealed what he's been through. And even that's enviable. You know, this is a person who is living at an 11 and I'm living at a four. And like, it's just, I just wish I could spend an hour living at that, at that level.

• 42:34Sam Fragoso?

  You, Jesse?

• 42:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:36Sam Fragoso?

  At the 11?

• 42:37Speaker 01

  Of course, of course.

• 42:38Sam Fragoso?

  For an hour?

• 42:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, of course. Yeah, of course. I'm just, oh, I'm just like, I'm, I'm doing this amazing stuff now. Like, it's amazing. This movie is coming out all over the world and like, I, we have to go to these like events and these parties and I've yet to have like a sip of alcohol because I feel so guilty that I'm going to these events that like, I can't like, people are like cheers. I'm, I just can't, I like, I feel so mortified to be at all of these wonderful events and be included in everything that I just like, I can't even, you know, I can't enjoy the thing.

• 43:06Sam Fragoso?

  What are you mortified about?

• 43:09Speaker 01

  Mortified that again, like being celebrated for something that's not worthy of being celebrated. My wife works in disability justice in New York City. I'm like, no one claps for her at the end of the day. She doesn't go on, you know, a, a radio program and talks about what she was thinking when she was teaching, you know, you know? So I'm just around things that just seem to me far more noble.

• 43:30Sam Fragoso?

  But why does that have to negate an enjoyment of making a movie?

• 43:34Speaker 01

  Because I'm a narrow-minded, black and white thinker.

• 43:36Sam Fragoso?

  And besides that?

• 43:37Speaker 01

  Oh, no, that's precisely it, is I don't have like the nuance to see, uh, you know, the world as anything.

• 43:43Sam Fragoso?

  Jesse, if that was true, then you couldn't have made this movie.

• 43:45Speaker 01

  That's true. Well, maybe I just don't apply it to myself. Maybe that's what it is.

• 43:48Sam Fragoso?

  Again, you couldn't have made this movie if that was true.

• 43:51Speaker 01

  That's true. Maybe I can apply it to myself when I'm like writing something, but then as I'm talking about it. You know, one of the interesting things about doing interviews like this one and doing, um, a, a lot of press for a movie is that all the things I wanted to express about relationships and myself and my childhood are in the movie.

• 44:06Sam Fragoso?

  Right.

• 44:07Speaker 01

  And they're hard for me to kind of fully articulate as a regular person because it implies a certain self-awareness that I don't know that I even have. But in the movie, it, it allows me to do it through characters. And in some ways, it's far more true and articulated than I can do in person.

• 44:23Sam Fragoso?

  I think you've done a great job.

• 44:24Speaker 01

  Thanks, but you know what I mean, right?

• 44:25Sam Fragoso?

  Of course I do.

• 44:26Speaker 01

  You know, I, um.

• 44:27Sam Fragoso?

  That's why we try to hold both. I've brought the text in and I've asked you about the text.

• 44:31Speaker 01

  That's true. That's true. No, no. And you're, you know, I would do these interviews with Richard Iwate. Actually, we were paired up for a lot of these interviews. And Richard kept saying in between interviews, he's, he would say to me like, I made the movie because I didn't know how to articulate the things they're asking me. And that's what the movie is.

• 44:45Sam Fragoso?

  When you made that film with them, The Double.

• 44:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:48Sam Fragoso?

  Do you see that film sort of in conversation with this one?

• 44:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, and one very specific way that I find so entertaining, which is that like in that movie, I was playing two characters who are exactly alike. But in for one character, the world just opens up its doors and the other character, the doors close just as he's about to get inside. And it's like this funny thing. So like this character makes like a stupid joke and everybody in the elevator laughs. And then I utter one thing and somebody screams at me for talking in the elevator. And it's this really funny, it's like a fever dream of a movie where it's like, oh, this is what this crazy thing might feel like. And in this movie, there's a similar thing. Benji says all these awfully inappropriate things to the group and they all find him great. And then I try to talk to somebody and like they kind of ignore me or I like, I'm just, I miss the person by a second or I'm a little too late with my joke.

• 45:33Speaker 01

  It's just this great thing and like that you could see in, you know, in comedy where the world seems to like one person and not the other for no other reason. Then this is the way the world has panned out for these people.

• 45:42Sam Fragoso?

  I think that the the parallels between the two is incredible to me.

• 45:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, the movies are so different. I don't think anybody would account for that, but to me it's.

• 45:49Sam Fragoso?

  Only an unwell person like me. Yeah, understood.

• 45:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, with a Yankee in shadow.

• 45:54Sam Fragoso?

  Oh, thank you. And so Richard Iwata, I want to talk about directing before we leave.

• 45:58Speaker 01

  Oh, sure.

• 45:58Sam Fragoso?

  You said your two favorite filmmakers that you've worked with are Richard Iwata and Greg Mottola.

• 46:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:03Sam Fragoso?

  And you said they're two of the most nervous people you have ever met.

• 46:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:08Sam Fragoso?

  As filmmakers.

• 46:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:09Sam Fragoso?

  What about their approaches to the craft or their frankly nervous energy? Inspired you to direct or or sort of taught you about directing?

• 46:19Speaker 01

  Oh, because what it taught me is like they had very strong taste, but not strong personalities. And so like they were very clear on what they wanted to make, but they were not interested in like the authority that the that the position granted them, you know what I mean? And so like they could be nice and collaborative and allow other people to excel. While also making sure that we the thing we were doing was kind of of a piece and was creatively rich. And that's what I just loved about it, seeing people in positions of leadership from a creative perspective, not from a kind of authoritarian perspective. I just loved it and. They both made me feel the most comfortable I've ever felt on sets. And it's what makes it's it's just it was like a kind of role model of how to behave in the world.

• 47:04Sam Fragoso?

  How do you do that on set?

• 47:06Speaker 01

  I I do it naturally. And by naturally, I mean, I am so grateful that anybody is coming to work on these things. I'm not making these big budget, you know, commercial things where everybody's getting paid a lot of money. I'm doing stuff that are like, that's like very personal to me. And the fact that any other person would want to sign on to it is just makes me feel so indebted to them. And I mean, in every single position on set. And so so the way it manifests is like really listening to other people and knowing that they're great at their job and probably know a lot more about their job than you know about their job. And appreciating and allowing them to feel like they can excel. It's about knowing that actors are in very uncomfortable positions of exposing themselves, of trying to kind of

• 47:49Speaker 01

  not, you know, account for their own vanity at the same time as playing a real person. At the same time as like memorizing lines and emoting on cue, even though you didn't sleep last night and all these men are staring at you while you're crying, you know. And I just have such gratitude that anybody is giving themselves over to working on a movie that I wrote that it comes naturally.

• 48:08Sam Fragoso?

  In Adventureland, Squid and the Whale, and Louder Than Bombs, you were playing essentially surrogates for the director.

• 48:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:14Sam Fragoso?

  When you're making this film.

• 48:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:16Sam Fragoso?

  Playing a version of yourself.

• 48:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, kind of.

• 48:19Sam Fragoso?

  How do you give yourself over to the part in the way you're talking about?

• 48:23Speaker 01

  It's not hard for me because I've been acting so much longer than I've done anything else. And I've acted so much more than I've directed, obviously. So like, to me, the easy thing to step in is to an emotional experience. I know how to get to an emotional place. I know all of my physiological shortcuts that can get me to a very emotional place immediately. Because as an actor, that's the job is like, you know, you have to change your emotions immediately.

• 48:46Sam Fragoso?

  How do you do that?

• 48:47Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 48:49Speaker 01

  You know, oh, for me, I mean, a few different ways. There are literal, physical things that I can evoke feelings in myself, which is what every actor kind of gleaned over the course of a career.

• 48:59Sam Fragoso?

  Like, things you tell yourself?

• 49:00Speaker 01

  No, literally feelings. I can put my body in certain feelings and breathing techniques and feeling certain things in the back of my throat. And I think maybe what it is, is like, it just puts me in an emotional place instantaneously. And then also, I think about the story. And when I work on something I like, the story is so impactful to me. I think about what this character is going through. In this case, I think about the fact that this guy has lived in the shadow of this person. And even in, you know, a movie that might not ask for the same emotional depth, I still think about the stakes of what this person is dealing with. In these movies, Now You See Me, for example, the way I can give the movie stakes, even though the character is this kind of confident magician

• 49:43Speaker 01

  and it's a kind of a popcorn-y fun movie, is that this is a guy who's practiced every day of his life, sleight-of-hand magic in the mirror. And now is the time where he has to use all those skills and just create stakes. I mean, that's what acting is. You're creating stakes in fictitious circumstances and you're contorting your own emotional inner life to account for those stakes. And I love it. I just love it. To me, it's just, if I could act every day of my life, I would be so thrilled.

• 50:10Sam Fragoso?

  In the beginning, we talked about visiting Poland to try to untangle or understand some of this historical trauma.

• 50:16Speaker 01

  Right.

• 50:17Sam Fragoso?

  Or just to show your Aunt Doris that you cared enough about her story, that you wanted to see its beginning.

• 50:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:24Sam Fragoso?

  But as I was watching A Real Pain and then re-watching it, I kept returning to this passage from Proust's In Search of Lost Time. And I thought maybe you could read from this for a moment and see where it lands with you.

• 50:37Speaker 01

  Okay, this is Proust's In Search of Lost Time, Volume Three. "Poets make out that we recapture for a moment the self that we were long ago when we enter some house or garden in which we used to live in our youth. But these are most hazardous pilgrimages, which end as often in disappointment as in success. The fixed places, contemporary with different years, it is in ourselves that we should rather seek to find them." Yes, so I don't know which came out first, my script or this, but somebody's stealing from somebody else.

• 51:12Speaker 01

  And I'm just gonna say, I have all the email evidence that I need to show that this was written in 2022. And I don't know what Proust has. But yes, of course, that's, thank you for picking up this very appropriate passage, which just, yes, is exactly my, exactly my experience. Yeah, we think we're going to, I love it, just enter some house and garden, and it's going to stir up, of course, all the old feelings. And no, it just, it doesn't. Yeah, no, it doesn't. I mean, one of the things I like about this as it relates to a real pain is that in a real pain, like, it's none of the things that they expect give them the emotion. It's just themselves. It's the interpersonal envy and bittersweet loss of an old friendship. That is what's most emotionally impactful.

• 51:54Sam Fragoso?

  Going back to the house, and not feeling a whole lot of anything. And then years later, bringing a whole film crew.

• 52:05Speaker 01

  It's like a rich boy's little dream.

• 52:09Sam Fragoso?

  To the same house. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's true to do that as a hazardous pilgrimage. And yet you have done it, and you have made this movie. And I guess I want to know, at the end of it, having made the film, how you think about your relationship to your aunt's story, to your family's history?

• 52:29Speaker 01

  I guess, maybe I, I could say I saw it in like, maybe my father's eyes, like, after he saw the movie, which was that, what he saw in the movie was me going back to a house that he's never been to, because he was never told about Poland, because his parents were kind of just living in denial of the Holocaust, because it was so painful to talk about. And he saw a movie where I was not only writing about it, and not only going to that house, but casting my child as my child. And I think my dad probably saw the movie as this thing that I was doing about our family. And I guess, I never really conceived of it as that, because I'm the creative person. So I'm thinking, what's going to work structurally, and how are these characters going to interact, etc. But he

• 53:10Speaker 01

  saw it as like, what an interesting thing to do about our family. And so maybe, seeing it through his eyes, made me realize that the movie, I guess, speaks to something that is like another attempt at trying to find a connection to the past. And, and it's awkward, and in this case, it's fictionalized even. But it's just like another, you know, frantic grab at trying to hold on to something that ended so. Tragically, which is our family's life in Poland. You know, my father's not in the arts. And so a lot of the stuff that I write is probably not exactly stuff that, you know, as I told you, the plot of my play, The Spoils,

• 53:55Speaker 01

  you know, is not, you know, exactly something I think my parents can connect to. But this was just, I think this was something that for probably my father, and this was about his side of the family, not my mom's, that this was a movie that probably, and a story that probably he would say is, is, is personal. I think all of my stuff is personal. But this, yeah, I guess this is really familial and, and probably maybe is doing something for him that maybe he never had access to, which is giving him some, a peek behind the curtain of his family's history, the history that his parents were so careful to shield him from.

• 54:31Sam Fragoso?

  Hmm, right, because it skipped a generation.

• 54:33Speaker 01

  It skipped a generation because my, my, his father lost all of his aunts and uncles and cousins and never talked about it. And so my father grew up shielded from the horrors of the Holocaust. And maybe this movie gives him a little, you know, maybe a little, you know, window into something that, that, that had long evaded him.

• 54:54Sam Fragoso?

  My last question for us.

• 54:55Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 54:55Sam Fragoso?

  In 2016, you and I spoke.

• 54:59Speaker 01

  I know.

• 55:00Sam Fragoso?

  By phone.

• 55:01Speaker 01

  I know, Jesse will not read this interview.

• 55:02Sam Fragoso?

  How do you know that?

• 55:04Speaker 01

  Because I was looking at your work and right below the Seinfeld rankings is a headline, Jesse Eisenberg will not read this interview. And I was like, oh, God, I am such a cliche.

• 55:14Sam Fragoso?

  I did not write that headline.

• 55:15Speaker 01

  Even if you did or didn't, it was just like, I was like, oh, God, have I just been peddling the same self-deprecating line of answers for years?

• 55:25Sam Fragoso?

  I was 21, I believe, yeah.

• 55:28Speaker 01

  Are you serious?

• 55:29Sam Fragoso?

  Yes.

• 55:29Speaker 01

  Wow. I would never have let a 21-year-old interview me.

• 55:32Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah, it was over by phone, so you.

• 55:34Speaker 01

  Got it. Of course, I wouldn't have sat down.

• 55:36Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah, yeah, right. You were, I think you were walking in the street. There's an answer you give at the very end. That I thought was so good and I thought, I thought maybe you want to read it and see where it lands with it.

• 55:48Speaker 01

  Oh, sure. Okay, right. So I'm talking about a play that, yeah, a play that I was writing and acting in. And I say, I remember who saw The Revisionist, which is the play, and what happened almost moment for moment. I know there was one unspoken moment three years ago with Richard Iawade in the audience, and there was a joke where I screwed up the line and it killed me. I don't think I'm alone in that way. I'm friends with Marv Albert, the sports announcer, who told me that there are games that he still laments because he missed a call or a phrase that he thought would have improved the telecast. People who care about what they do, whether they're good at what they do, think this way.

• 56:21Sam Fragoso?

  Oh, yeah. I just want, the reason I wanted to bring that back, beyond closing the loop on the two of us talking.

• 56:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:29Sam Fragoso?

  Is that instinct, first, to over-index on the negative aspect.

• 56:36Speaker 01

  Of course. Oh, yes, of course.

• 56:38Sam Fragoso?

  And the shortcomings.

• 56:39Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 56:39Sam Fragoso?

  And the one joke that you biffed.

• 56:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 56:42Sam Fragoso?

  But the second thing is the care.

• 56:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:45Sam Fragoso?

  Like, the care that's in this movie, the care that's in that Mongolia short story I quoted from, the care that dates back to Squid and the Whale and before that.

• 56:54Speaker 01

  Oh, thanks, yeah.

• 56:55Sam Fragoso?

  Is that still there with you? Is that still the driving force?

• 57:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, of course. I mean, I love what I do, don't get me wrong. I mean, I love what I write and putting it on. I mean, it just tickles me, you know? And that's not a place of arrogance, that's just the nature of writing anything that you want to produce is like, you have to like it a lot, you know? And, because it's going to get rejected by a lot of people, irrespective of how popular you are or whatever. And, um, so, yeah, I like what I do a lot, but what that actually does is when it's not going well, it's infuriating, you know? So I think that's maybe why I over-index the flaws or the criticism, because I like what I do so much, and when it's criticized and when I feel the criticism is correct, like I missed a joke and it didn't go over well, you know?

• 57:41Speaker 01

  I over-index it because I really like what I do and that was a, that was a flaw in it. So, uh, yeah, yeah, I guess that's very astute of you bringing that up. Yeah, I still care so much. I mean, God. Marv Albert did it for, I don't know, 50 years or something. He was announcing for a really long time, maybe 45 years, something. No, and was still like, you know, biting his nails before the game. The woman who was in the Revisionist with me was Vanessa Redgrave. She was 76 years old. She had won every award a performer can win in her life. She was considered and written about with like an objectivity saying like, the greatest actor in the English language, you know, it was her. And she would be panicking before each show. This is just like what I've noticed with people who really care. I mean, yeah, it's a trait. And yeah, I guess those people are not really satisfied.

• 58:26Speaker 01

  But I guess if they were satisfied, they wouldn't be doing work at a level that people really like, maybe. Jesse Eisenberg, thank you for the time. Thank you so much. It was great to see you.

• 59:47Speaker 01

  And that's our show.

• 59:49Sam Fragoso?

  If you enjoyed today's episode, be sure to leave us a review on Apple. If you're listening on Spotify, give us five stars. If you want to go above and beyond, you can share the program on social media. Tag us at Talk Easy Pod. All of this ensures that we can continue making this show each and every Sunday. I want to give a special thanks to the team at Searchlight, Ji-Yun So, Taffy Brodesser-Ackner, Deb Seeger, and of course, our guest, Jesse Eisenberg. His new film, A Real Pain, is now playing in select theaters across the country. To find where it's playing at a theater near you, visit our website at talkeasypod.com. For more episodes like this one, I'd recommend our talks with Jeff Daniels, Joaquin Phoenix,

• 1:00:34Sam Fragoso?

  and Natasha Lyonne. To hear those and more Pushkin podcasts, listen on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen. You can also follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, at Talk Easy Pod. If you want to purchase one of our mugs for a holiday gift, becoming cream or navy, you can do so at talkeasypod.com/shop. Talk Easy is produced by Caroline Reebok. Our executive producer is Janix Bravo. Today's talk was edited by Matt Sasaki and mixed by Andrew Bastola. Our music is by Dylan Peck. Our illustrations are by Chris Shannoy. Photographs today are by Julius Chu. I'm Sam Fragoso. Thank you for listening to Talk Easy.

• 1:01:17Sam Fragoso?

  We'll be back next week with another episode. Until then, stay safe and so long.

• 1:01:34Speaker 05

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  I mean, how many rats would you guess were back there?

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  There were 32,000 pounds of them.

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  32,000 pounds of frozen dead rats. Yeah, correct. Find out what it's like to be a long haul trucker, a couples therapist, or an FBI agent, all on the podcast What It's Like to Be.

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