Jesse Eisenberg, who received an Oscar nomination for portraying Mark Zuckerberg in David Fincher’s “The Social Network,” revealed that he is distancing himself from the Facebook and Meta chief, according to a report by Variety. In an appearance on BBC Radio 4’s Today on Tuesday, Eisenberg expressed that he hasn’t been keeping up with Zuckerberg’s actions, largely because he does not want to associate himself with someone he views in a negative light.
“It’s not like I played a great golfer or something, and now people think I’m a great golfer. It’s like this guy that’s doing things that are problematic—taking away fact-checking and safety concerns, making people who are already threatened in this world more threatened,” stated Jesse Eisenberg, as quoted by Variety.
Eisenberg’s comments come in the wake of Zuckerberg’s announcement on January 7 that Meta would be replacing its fact-checking systems on Facebook and Instagram with a “community notes” model. This change aligns with similar moves made by Elon Musk’s social media platform X. Zuckerberg explained that the previous fact-checking had led to “too many mistakes and too much censorship” and was seen as “too politically biased.”
Moreover, after Donald Trump won the 2024 presidential election, Zuckerberg met with him at Mar-a-Lago, with Meta donating $1 million to his inaugural fund, alongside contributions from other tech giants. Eisenberg reflected on Zuckerberg’s recent actions, emphasizing, “I’m concerned just as a person who reads a newspaper. I don’t think about, ‘Oh, I played the guy in the movie and therefore…’ It’s just I’m a human being, and you read these things, and these people have billions upon billions of dollars, more money than any human person has ever amassed. And what are they doing with it? Oh, they’re doing it to curry favor with somebody who’s preaching hateful things,” as reported by Variety.
Currently, Jesse Eisenberg is in the spotlight for his upcoming film “A Real Pain,” for which he is nominated for Best Original Screenplay. The film follows two cousins traveling to Poland to honor their late grandmother, adding a personal layer to Eisenberg’s already rich narrative as an actor and writer.
