We’ll tell you up front: Actor-director Jesse Eisenberg, who says he can appreciate a good Jewish deli, is a different kind of movie star. We joined him last week at the legendary Canter’s Deli in Los Angeles, and shared some chocolate babka, with a dill pickle chaser. “This is the real test,” Eisenberg said.
CBS News
It was a little unusual, but for Eisenberg, it’d already been a pretty unusual day. Just a few hours earlier, he received his second Oscar nomination, this time for best original screenplay.
And he was mortified.
I asked, “Are you able to enjoy moments like this?”
“No, I’m not really wired to enjoy praise,” he replied. “I don’t know why. I think it just, like, I don’t know, triggers some guilt response in my brain and I try to find something to be miserable about. But I’ll tell you what I do love: I love actually doing my job. Like, I feel so lucky that I found something I like to do.”
At the moment, his job is to promote the film he wrote, directed and starred in, “A Real Pain,” co-starring Kieran Culkin. The film is about two cousins who travel to Poland to see their ancestral home, and visit the actual home of their late grandmother, who barely survived the Holocaust.
Searchlight Pictures
The film started out as a buddy movie about a trip to Mongolia. As he was writing the script, Eisenberg got stuck, until inspiration literally popped up on his computer. “I was, like, 30 pages into the script and something was missing,” he said. “I knew the script was not going well. And so, I’m, like, kind of, like, banging my head against the keyboard. And an ad pops up online for ‘Auschwitz tours.’ And then in parentheses, ‘with lunch.’ And I was like, ‘Auschwitz tours (with lunch)?’ That’s, like, the strangest pairing of four words I’ve ever seen. And once I saw that, and once I read that brochure, I was like, ‘Oh, that’s the movie. That is so interesting,’ because I was trying to deal with these two characters who are both kind of, like, in pain in their own ways.”
“Dude, we are Jews on a train in Poland, ******* think about it. … Does no one else see the irony here? Like, eating fancy food and sitting up here, when 80 years ago we would’ve been herded into the backs of these ******* things like cattle?”
Watch a scene with Jesse Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin in “A Real Pain” [Warning: Graphic language]
Eisenberg has had those same thoughts. He is himself of Polish lineage, and he has relatives who were victims of the Holocaust. “I come from a family who survived the war; a lot of, you know, cousins, aunts, and uncles who didn’t,” he said. “And yet, I walk around New York City, like, kind of miserable. Like, I’m not, like, a happy person. I’m not asking for pity or anything; I’m just recognizing objectively, like, I’m not a happy person. And yet, I come from people who survived through miracles. Intellectually, I think I should be waking up every morning kissing the dirt that I’m here by virtue of a thousand miracles. And instead, I walk around, I’m like, Oh my God. What am I gonna do today? Oh my God. I shouldn’t drink a coffee ’cause then I’ll peak at noon.
“And so, I’m constantly trying to reconcile my fortunate life with how I feel about things, and my forebears’ very unfortunate lives and how they appreciated things. And that’s what this movie is kind of focusing on.”
It seems he’s been feeling that same kind of anxiety all of his life. Raised in New Jersey, Jesse Eisenberg was, by his own admission, a “sad kid” who was uncomfortable at school, and took refuge in acting. By 2010 he’d made a name for himself in Hollywood, with roles like Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in “The Social Network.” The part earned him an Oscar nod, and the juice to branch out into writing and directing.
But when COVID shut down the film industry in 2020, Eisenberg and his wife, Anna Strout, moved back to her native Indiana, and spent their days volunteering at her mom’s domestic violence shelter in Bloomington. “I was just volunteering every day at the shelter,” he said. “It sounds weird to say this, and I don’t mean this for any kind of – it was, like, the happiest time of my life. I was painting walls and fixing garbage disposals. And I just loved it so much. I loved being able to, like, accomplish something where there was no, like, critique of it, you know what I mean?”
“It makes total sense,” I said. “You fix the garbage disposal, the garbage disposal’s fixed. End of it.”
“Exactly.”
But of all the roles he’s played, on-screen and off-, he says the confident illusionist in the “Now You See Me” franchise is the most challenging, because it’s absolutely nothing like him. “We just did the third ‘Now You See Me,’ and it’s such a blast,” he said. “And it’s such a challenge, because I’m doing something that’s, like, the exact opposite of my psychology. It’s the only time I ever walk away thinking, ‘I did a good job today.’ But that’s because my character thinks that they’re doing well. And yes, they’re Hollywood movies, and they’re really fun. But, like, for me, it’s been a kind of like a therapy.”
“Does that confidence linger at all past the shoots?” I asked.
“Yes, normally it will linger through dinner,” he replied. “Once I get on set and I’m in those clothes, and I’m speaking in the way they’ve written for me … I stand up straighter. I’m, like, an inch taller. It’s amazing. I can make eye contact with my father!”
You’d think the success of “A Real Pain” would give Eisenberg some swagger. His movie also snagged Culkin an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor. But like the babka and pickles at Canter’s, Eisenberg can’t seem to enjoy the sweet without just a little bit of sour.
I asked, “Is there a part of you that finds this whole experience, with the way that ‘A Real Pain’ has been received, kind of unreal? That at some moment you’re gonna wake up?”
“Oh, yeah, I assume a piano is gonna fall on my head every day,” Eisenberg said. “Because I feel like, I am so lucky. And, like, the way my mind does equations is that this lucky thing must mean this horrible upcoming thing. And so, yes, I’m not walking under any air conditioners in New York City. I don’t know how to think about it any other way. And that’s really unfortunate, but true!”
Watch an extended interview with Jesse Eisenberg:
To watch a trailer for “A Real Pain,” click on the video player below:
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Story produced by John D’Amelio. Editor: Ed Givnish.
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