{"id":676117,"date":"2026-09-07T01:14:15","date_gmt":"2026-09-07T01:14:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/676117\/"},"modified":"2026-09-07T01:14:15","modified_gmt":"2026-09-07T01:14:15","slug":"jesse-eisenberg-the-debut-interview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/676117\/","title":{"rendered":"Jesse Eisenberg ‘The Debut’ Interview"},"content":{"rendered":"

While he was shooting \u201cA Real Pain<\/a>,\u201d a personal family drama that yielded Jesse Eisenberg<\/a> an Original Screenplay nomination and Kieran Culkin a Supporting Actor win, the writer-director was musing on what his next movie should be. Maybe something lighter and stranger. Maybe something about community theater. <\/p>\n

The end result, the musical comedy \u201cThe Debut\u201d <\/a>(A24), premiered at the Telluride<\/a> Film<\/a> Festival Saturday to upbeat reviews and raves for its star, Julianne Moore<\/a>, who plays a sad suburban homemaker turned anxious aspiring actress in a local community theater. A sixth Oscar nomination is in the offing, and possibly a second Oscar win after \u201cStill Alice.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"Woman<\/a> \"Hombre<\/a> <\/p>\n

Eisenberg and I sat down at the New Sheridan Hotel over breakfast. \u201cI\u2019m in a fugue state,\u201d said Eisenberg, musing over Saturday\u2019s screening.<\/p>\n

Anne Thompson:<\/strong> You saw how the film played yesterday.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Eisenberg: <\/strong>Yes, there are elements that are objectively audience-friendly, and raucous in a surprising way, and so I\u2019m confident in that. It\u2019s stuff around the margins that you hope people like. I hope people like my songs and that they understand that it\u2019s a movie that comes from a personal place. I never thought of it as a straight comedy with a musical theater punchline. To me the movie is about my childhood and the terror that I felt doing the thing I liked.<\/p>\n

You didn\u2019t know that at the beginning<\/strong>, right?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t know it was autobiographical until we were scouting houses, and it was like my mom\u2019s kitchen, and when we were choosing costumes: \u201cThis should all be 1990.\u201d And I realized over a series of decisions that the movie is not a straightforward thing. The movie is a fever dream. So all these decisions that I made, these decisions that physicalized the movie, coincided with my need to make it about myself.<\/p>\n

The movie surprised me. It wasn\u2019t what I expected at all. I expected it to be more naturalistic.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I did not want to do naturalism. For practical reasons and creative reasons. Practical reasons were: my first movie wasn\u2019t received so well. My second movie was \u201cA Real Pain,\u201d and we were on the set, and a movie called \u201cDream Scenario\u201d was about to come out from A24, and I noticed that it was getting a lot of excitement, and I was excited to see it. I thought maybe that\u2019s what I should be doing: something with more tone. My two favorite acting experiences ever have been on tone movies. One was called \u201cThe Double\u201d by Richard Ayoade, and the other was called \u201cThe Art of Self-Defense\u201d by Riley Stearns. It was the most freeing experience, and so I wanted to give the opportunity for actors to live in that freedom that I got to experience on those movies, to allow actors to live out their their animal id. I knew I would have more fun as a writer, doing something more outlandish. <\/p>\n

When did you know you were writing musical songs<\/strong>? The movie has seven.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"'The\u2018The Debut\u2019A24<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve written musical songs for about 20 years. I had a musical that was almost produced 20 years ago, and then fell apart. I write music all the time, but I\u2019m too shy to put it out there. This gave me a perfect opportunity to write what I love, which is musical theater songs. Some of the songs in the movie I wrote in the script, and then put melody to later because it fit what I needed thematically in the movie and the musical. And then other songs like Julie\u2019s [Julianne] big song was a big thing to write because I wanted the songs to have some thematic resonance in the movie too. The movie\u2019s about this woman who has been chewed up but not spit out, so that\u2019s her character as well.<\/p>\n

Did you write it for Julianne?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yes, entirely for her. Can you picture another actor? No. Exactly. <\/p>\n

You gave her the opportunity to use every bit of talent, experience, and skill she has accrued. You served it up for her. She\u2019s central. It\u2019s about her. It\u2019s told from her point of view. <\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s my point of view through somebody I consider a muse. I was writing something about myself as a seven-year-old in 1990, but I couldn\u2019t picture anybody else except her doing it. <\/p>\n

The way that Julianne Moore moves from one space to the other as she is changing radically through the course of the movie is quite seamless. Was it hard for her?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The only note I would give her on set would be, \u201cI saw Julianne there.\u201d She and Paul Giamatti<\/a> are so good on take one. It\u2019s embarrassing. This is a small budget movie. [Nobody got paid oodles of money.] The first two days of our schedule, we filmed in one day. The first two days, which were big ensemble musical numbers, we filmed in one day because we were prepared as a crew, but the actors were perfect on take one. I\u2019ve worked with Woody Allen a bunch. When the thing was good, he would say, \u201cGreat, let\u2019s go to the next one.\u201d He would not nitpick. I\u2019ve worked for directors. (Not David Fincher, David Fincher is a fucking genius, and everything he does, in my opinion, is valuable.) I\u2019ve worked with directors who they get a good take and then they try to push and they say \u201cone fun one for you\u201d and no actor knows what the fuck that means and then they say \u201coh, let\u2019s try this.\u201d They just want to direct. When you have actors like this, they\u2019re great. When they were good, we would go to the next scene. Paul Giamatti is fearless. He has no ego. What you\u2019re seeing Paul Giamatti do is take one. Almost every scene is take one. That\u2019s how good he is. Paul Giamatti is the only actor who ever told me the following thing: \u201cDon\u2019t put the camera on me for this scene. It\u2019s about Julie.\u201d<\/p>\n

Well, the movie is about Julianne Moore as this timid aspiring actress.<\/strong> At home she is a complete nonentity. She\u2019s invisible. No one sees her. No one knows her.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Exactly. And then she\u2019s taken in under this dreamlike perfect family. \u201cWe know who you are, honey. Oh my God. We are all so thrilled. We made this outfit just in your size. Come here. We\u2019re going to get you breakfast. I couldn\u2019t get your salad dressing, so I got all five. You said a joke. That\u2019s funny.\u201d <\/p>\n

Everything is the exact opposite. She\u2019s a kid who has found friends for the first time. She\u2019s the girl who transferred to the right school at seven years old, and then the first rehearsal happens, and she is told she is terrible, and she has no idea why. And it\u2019s the girl who transferred to the right school and gets an F on the very first test, and and then the rest of the semester is panicking, and all she\u2019s seeing is everybody else get A\u2019s, and she still has the F, and she doesn\u2019t know what to do. And then the teacher pulls her aside and says, \u201cYou either show up, or you are out on your ass.\u201d And something switches in her, and she makes the decision: \u201cI am going to show up.\u201d And she begins to turn into a monster.<\/p>\n

It all starts when the director breaks her down. <\/strong><\/p>\n

This happened to me. I had a breakdown scene in acting school. I was screaming and crying, and everybody clapped after, like I did something wonderful. She had broken herself down so much that she finally saw, in some ways, a window into the reality of the situation, which is that he was doing this to her for his own reasons. If I had plotted out that scene or made an outline of the movie, that scene would not be in the movie. My best writing has been stream of consciousness, and my worst writing has been using a spreadsheet. <\/p>\n

Did it take you a while to figure out Giamatti? <\/strong><\/p>\n

It really did. Paul has been my favorite actor since I saw the movie \u201cThe Negotiator.\u201d He has a kind of intellectual self contempt, an emotionally grounded world weariness. I never ever thought he would do this. It was before \u201cA Real Pain\u201d got celebrated: \u201cWho am I?\u201d I also thought that the character should be more mercurial than familiar, and so he wasn\u2019t the prototype. I\u2019d also based it on some people who couldn\u2019t be more different than Paul. There are some things in the movie straight from my life: a director asking for \u201ca mocha, no milk,\u201d and then it comes and \u201cit\u2019s too late.\u201d I took things, and it was different than Paul. And then once we got into the swing as a production team, \u201cCan we just ask my favorite actor of all time, Paul Giamatti?\u201d And simultaneously, I had gotten a text from Billy Lazarus, Paul\u2019s agent, and he said, \u201cWould you ever consider Paul?\u201d I said, \u201cConsider? I\u2019d give him a pint of my blood every day if he would show up.\u201d So that\u2019s how it worked. And then when I met Paul, Paul said, \u201cI have no idea what the fuck this is, but I love it.\u201d And I said: \u201cThat\u2019s the right reaction.\u201d<\/p>\n

When she moves to the sleazebag hotel, you take a turn. It feels like you had a blast. <\/strong><\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t censor myself at all. If the cinematographer had an interesting idea to make it look weird, or some lighting that feels Lynchian, or German Expressionistic, I said \u201cyes.\u201d All of this I learned on the movie \u201cThe Double.\u201d I paid attention to every second of that movie. Richard taught me what happens when you point a light directly at an actor\u2019s face instead of off of a bounce. When Julie has her big scene where she\u2019s screaming at Paul, the light is unnervingly on her face directly. It isolates her in an almost fever dream-like atmosphere. So Drew Daniels, this cinematographer, said, \u201cI want to light the street a bright yellow and an evil red on the right side.\u201d I said, \u201cYes, that works.\u201d And when our costume designer said, \u201cI want to have her in these schoolgirl plaid skirts,\u201d I said, \u201cAbsolutely.\u201d And our production designer, Anne Ross, she wants to put these 1920s flop house signs in the hotel? That\u2019s exactly it. I knew when it would go too far. But it was entrusting and collaborating with people who are artful, saying \u201cthis is an art project.\u201d This house is not supposed to look like a real house. It\u2019s supposed to look like a prison for her. Sharp angles. Let\u2019s emphasize those. Let\u2019s emphasize her isolation by shooting it this way. So it was always an art project more than \u201cA Real Pain,\u201d which was about getting at the authenticity of what these guys are feeling.<\/p>\n

You did not make a glossy movie. It feels low-budget.<\/strong><\/p>\n

That was purposeful. Anytime I had an idea of a flashier shot or a flashier set, it felt wrong. I wanted the movie to feel like it was made in 1990. It looks I was intentionally making it look homemade. <\/p>\n

The musical part of it is probably the most difficult, and it doesn\u2019t take up the most space in the movie. It appears to have been extremely demanding, and you put all these theater people in the film. <\/strong><\/p>\n

It was ridiculous. The people we got to play, you wouldn\u2019t know. The people on that stage are the most talented people in America. But everybody wanted to do it because it\u2019s like a two-week commitment, and you\u2019re in a movie, and it\u2019s a love letter to the theater. Andy Blankenbuehler did the choreography. He\u2019s \u201cHamilton.\u201d Everybody is overqualified, and everybody knew what the musical was: it\u2019s not a parody musical, but this is not \u201cHamilton.\u201d <\/p>\n

Where were you exactly when you were growing up?<\/strong><\/p>\n

[East Brunswick, New Jersey] Twenty minutes from where the movie takes place. <\/p>\n

So how did you how did you finance this? Who gave you the money?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Topic funded it. A 24 picked it up as a distribution title, which means they did like an indie pickup prior to shooting. Topic did \u201cA Real Pain.\u201d We had a great experience on that one, and they love musicals. <\/p>\n

You made the decision to put yourself in it and to sing and to dance.<\/strong><\/p>\n

When I was young like 13, 14, I only got understudy parts in community theater musicals. When I started acting professionally, then I recognized I was not good enough as a musical theater performer to be successful in the field, and so I found my voice in other things and in comedies and movies, but I longed to do it. So with this movie I created the perfect opportunity for me to not be able to fail. Because if you think I\u2019m not very good, then it\u2019s a community theater musical, and if you think I\u2019m good, well then I should have gotten that part that you\u2019re watching right now. I\u2019m not good at learning dance combinations. I\u2019m really bad. I gave myself the perfect opportunity to do the thing I love doing that I\u2019m not as good as I wish I was.<\/p>\n

\"AA REAL PAIN, from left: Kieran Culkin, Jesse Eisenberg, 2024. \u00a9 Searchlight Pictures \/ Courtesy Everett Collection\u00a9Searchlight Pictures\/Courtesy Everett Collection<\/p>\n

Do you know what you\u2019re doing next?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019m doing a series with Peter Rice that A24 is producing based on short stories I wrote, and hopefully we\u2019ll go in the spring. It takes place September, October, November, 2002 in Indiana, and it\u2019s about what\u2019s happening at that point in time and history, but hopefully has echoes to what\u2019s happening today. It\u2019s an 18-year-old freshman on campus. The last thing I acted in was a one-man show that I wrote, and it was like an hour and 10-minute show. I don\u2019t consider myself somebody who\u2019s steeped in the film industry, and I try to follow what feels more creatively correct for me. Would I love to put out another movie? Yeah.<\/p>\n

Over the years, you\u2019ve written stories on your own that you put away in a drawer. <\/strong><\/p>\n

Exactly. \u201cA Real Pain\u201d was a defining experience for me because then people took me seriously as a writer, as opposed to just an actor who has access to literary agents. I\u2019ve gotten asked to write big things, and and I\u2019m flattered by it. But it also allows me to pursue things that I\u2019ve always liked that no one else would have written.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While he was shooting \u201cA Real Pain,\u201d a personal family drama that yielded Jesse Eisenberg an Original Screenplay…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":676118,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[268],"tags":[286031,4648,434,18,117,6319,597,19,2810,17,90098,53841,7012,45266,26555],"class_list":["post-676117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-a-real-pain","tag-awards","tag-celebrities","tag-eire","tag-entertainment","tag-festivals","tag-film","tag-ie","tag-interviews","tag-ireland","tag-jesse-eisenberg","tag-julianne-moore","tag-oscars","tag-paul-giamatti","tag-telluride"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117227112649421859","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/676117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=676117"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/676117\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/676118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=676117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=676117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=676117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}