Thinking of all the great co stars you’ve worked with in your career, which one would most likely be a superhero because he’s least like a superhero?
The thing that leaps to my mind about that less-than-a-month last summer: Jesse Eisenberg, Jesse Eisenberg and Jesse Eisenberg. I knew the first time I met him that there was a great hope that he’d play my son in the film. [I would have been upset] if anybody else would have ended up playing that boy, because he was so perfect for it, the maternal instinct I had for him the second I met him, and the respect and the admiration.
Jesse was one of the most pleasurable actors to work with that I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with. His willingness to dive in and be his character all day long on the set… I’d give him a hard time all day long and he’d give me a harder time back and I’d bring to him — each week that we worked I brought a little gift to him, like really ridiculous things — shoelaces and things like that, but I’m his mommy and I figured I’d spent a lot of birthdays with him. And his acceptance of the presents was so filled with Eli, and so to work with an actor who’s willing to go all the way down that road with you so that both of you are, quite simply, better prepared to go in front of the cameras when that moment — you never know when it’s gonna happen — happens, and there you are, and the scene’s shot and you don’t have a chance to go back over it […] So that thing of being able to play with another actor, where on one hand it’s very silly and just quite frankly a lot of fun and why what I do is called playing… not really all that many actors who are willing to be quite as fun, have as much fun with it.
- Interviewer: Speaking of auteurship, how’s work on your next film, The Double?
- Richard Ayoade: I'm so kind of impressed and thrilled by Jesse [Eisenberg] and Mia [Wasikowska]. I knew they were terrific actors, but to see them actually do it was just a great thrill. If I haven't really screwed up, they should be really terrific. In fact, they're so good, I don't think I can prevent them from being terrific.
- Interviewer: So, you didn’t hold a stopwatch to Jesse Eisenberg and make him do 99 takes again? [I.e., like David Fincher did to him for The Social Network.]
- Richard Ayoade: Well, we did quite a lot of takes. But they're so good you don't want them to stop … It's going great. We have three days left of filming and Jesse and Mia are just terrific. I kind of can't believe I captured them in a moment of weakness where they agreed to be in it. I'm looking forward to starting editing.
- INTERVIEWER: Did you hear about actor Jesse Eisenberg declaring that Ween was the only band he listened to?
- MICKEY: Yeah, he’s a huge fan. I’ve heard a lot of stories before that even, and since about his Ween fandom. “Oh man, that guy loves you. I was working on the set of this or that, I was wearing my Ween t-shirt. He came over to me and he didn’t stop for 20 minutes.” He's seen us a bunch of times apparently, but never introduced himself.
- INTERVIEWER: Are you a fan of his acting?
- MICKEY: Yeah, I think he’s great actually. I love Zombieland. The one I love.
- INTERVIEWER: That’s a great movie.
- MICKEY: My son is really into zombies. He’s eleven years old. Walking Dead. Zombieland. Anything zombies. We’ve watched that movie like a hundred times, but I’ve never seen The Social Network and I hear it’s a great movie.
- INTERVIEWER: Oh my god. You have to see it.
- MICKEY: I hear it’s killer. And it’s an interesting story I hear. Who would be interested in seeing a movie about that? It doesn’t sound like a great concept for a film. But apparently, it’s really, really compelling. People’s opinions I really trust have unanimously told me that I have to see it.
- INTERVIEWER: Honestly, if I had to rank it. In my opinion, it’s one of the strongest movies in the last decade.
- MICKEY: That’s what I’ve heard. When people that talk about it, their opinions about it are that strong and positive. He got nominated for an Oscar, right?
- INTERVIEWER: Yup. He was up for best actor for that.
- MICKEY: Well, there you go.
[Holy Rollers is] a great character study, again showing off the nuance of Eisenberg’s craft. It’s impossible to explain what it is that makes him a great actor. To a layman, it appears as though he is acting like himself, but that’s the brilliance. Sammy Gold and Mark Zuckerberg are completely different character efforts, and yet it just seems like Jesse being Jesse. That’s what he’s good at, though; that’s what allows him to slip in and out of roles.
Perhaps Eisenberg’s funniest moment in the Q & A after the screening was when someone asked if his preparations to play Sammy were similar to playing Zuckerberg, noting similar aspirations (read: a lot of gelt) for both. Jesse quipped “Yes, both characters do end up in clubs with bad people in the films,” getting a dig in against the asker. Relating characters to an actor is basically saying he can’t act.
Source:
I caught up with Eisenberg, currently on location in London, to talk about working with a man he’s idolized most of his life, and learned fast that he couldn’t be less Zuckerbergian – early on in our conversation, he inquired as to my cell phone’s upstate New York area code, and we discovered that both of our parents work at the same college. To boot, after abruptly hanging up at the end of our interview, he called back moments later to apologize for hitting the wrong button on his Skype and properly say goodbye.
At the Paris Theatre screening, Greta Gerwig said that meals on Italian film sets do not consist of regular craft-services fare. “First of all, I ate so much pasta. I was so lucky, all the costumes were big and flowy,” she said. “And also, we had these three-hour lunch breaks. I’m not kidding, me, Jesse, Ellen [Page], and our driver, Spartacus, would go in the Italian countryside to eat pasta and drink wine, in the middle of a shoot day! And that was totally normal. It was the most amazing thing.”
Gerwig also said that in their downtime, Eisenberg had difficulty going incognito around Rome. “Our first couple days we didn’t have a lot to do, so we went to the Coliseum, and we stuck out because everybody recognized Jesse,” she said, laughing. “So that was its own level of, like, not only are you an American, but there’s this other level.”via (x)
How’s Jesse Eisenberg? [x]
I was one of The King’s Speech people that wanted that to win Best Picture. I actually just saw The Social Network for the first time; I had it saved on DVR and I was afraid to watch it because I would have felt bad if I thought it was better than The King’s Speech. And everyone was saying how good it was, so I was also afraid I’d hate it. I started watching and to be honest with you, the first 10-20 minutes, I didn’t like it. I was just like, ‘Jesse Eisenberg is an asshole in this movie, I don’t feel bad for him whatsoever…’ But then as I watched it, I was like,
‘Okay, he’s making sense here.’ You know? I would be pissed off too if somebody was—if my best friend was suing me and then these two guys are saying I stole their idea? I would be pretty pissed off! …And then he became likable by the end of the movie. It was just like, ‘Wow. He really did us a favor. He really did something cool that most twenty-somethings don’t do.’
‘Okay, he’s making sense here.’ You know? I would be pissed off too if somebody was—if my best friend was suing me and then these two guys are saying I stole their idea? I would be pretty pissed off! …And then he became likable by the end of the movie. It was just like, ‘Wow. He really did us a favor. He really did something cool that most twenty-somethings don’t do.’
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