Jesse Eisenberg on Feeling “Envious” of Kieran Culkin’s Character in ‘A Real Pain’

Jesse Eisenberg was futzing about on the computer one day when an ad popped up for a Holocaust tour that stated—in parentheses—“with lunch.” “It just was such an evocative phrase and summed up so much of what’s strange about modern life—the way we want to experience reality and we want to experience difficulty but always from a safe place,” he says.

That pop-up ad inspired him to write A Real Pain, a funny and heartfelt story about two cousins (David, played by Eisenberg, and Benji, Succession’s Kieran Culkin) who travel from New York to their beloved grandmother’s birthplace of Poland on a group tour. Like his characters, Eisenberg—who also directed the film, which premiered at Sundance and will open in theaters November 1—was on his own eerie sojourn, even filming scenes outside the home from which his Jewish ancestors were taken by the Nazis. “Our trailers were parked literally adjacent to the cemetery where my family was shot and killed,” he says. “I was expecting all these really cathartic experiences, and a surprise for me was just how similar it felt to being on any other movie shoot, because the concerns of a movie shoot are so overwhelming.”

Script: Searchlight Pictures. Annotations: Courtesy of Jesse Eisenberg.

In the film, the cousins dance around an awkward tension created by their contrasting personalities— David, uptight and sensitive, Benji, charming and unpredictable. They reflect on their grandmother’s harrowing experiences but at the same time grapple with their own more recent complicated history. It’s this heavy dynamic between two longtime friends that Eisenberg says will feel familiar to many: “Even when you try to remember good times, you realize it was also fraught with a little bit of poison.”

Vanity Fair: I heard you had thought about playing Benji originally?

Jesse Eisenberg: I played this kind of part in a play of mine called The Spoils, and we did it in New York for a while and then did it in London. And I really loved playing the part. When I act, I can play that kind of thing. I’m here in Hungary doing Now You See Me III and my character is kind of a showman and very arrogant, and so I can perform that, but in person, it’s just not me.

So I wanted to play the part, and then the first people I sent the script to were Emma Stone, Dave McCarey, her husband, then producer Ali Herting. And the four of us just talked and just realized it would be impossible to direct and then also play this part that’s always such a live wire and kind of jump back and forth. And then now that it’s done and Kieran is playing the part, I realize how lucky I am that it worked out this way.

There must have been some interesting contrasts between being in the home of your ancestors in Poland and also making a movie?

I expected it to be this very cathartic experience. We were literally shooting inside the house that my family left and was taken from in 1939. I was expecting all these really kind of cathartic experiences, and kind of a surprise for me was just how similar it felt to being on any other movie shoot, because the concerns of a movie shoot are so overwhelming, especially if you’re writing, directing, and acting. It just overshadows any kind of emotional catharsis you may have. So for example, there’s a scene where Kieran and I are literally outside the house where my family lived, and the big problem of the day is that we thought we were going to get rain at five o’clock, but before we thought we were going to get rain there was too much sun in Kieran’s eyes. And so when he was looking up to talk to these strangers, he couldn’t see, and he was squinting. So we had to create this wall of flags so that the sun was not in his eyes, and it took a half an hour out of the day, and I was just going crazy that we lost this half hour. So my concerns were really just movie-oriented, rather than indulging in the emotional catharsis of history.

I love this line: “You’re like an awesome guy stuck inside the body of someone who’s always running late.”

It’s so funny because that’s the one line in the entire movie that I just begged Kieran to redo over and over and over again on set, and then in voiceover later in postproduction, because I wanted it to be a pause in there [before] “and I got to fish that guy.” But Kieran read it as one line, and I was like, “No, no. Trust me, it’ll be funnier.”

Kieran’s the greatest actor of all time, so I’m not criticizing him, it was just this thing was in my head. We did that scene, that was the last scene we filmed with Kieran, and it was late at night, and he, by this point in the shoot, he was so deeply ingrained in the role. The first two days, he was struggling because I was being too maybe rigid with him, directorially or whatever. And by this last scene, he was loose. And he was just brilliant.

Jesse Eisenberg (left) and Kieran Culkin star as cousins on a trip to Poland in A Real Pain.Searchlight Pictures.

How did you decide you had the right rooftop?

These guys would’ve had experiences in New York City doing this, and so I wanted to find something that felt similar to that, that felt kind of urban, center city, that saw beautiful skyline in the background. So, it was both aesthetically pleasing for the audience but also reminiscent of what they would do in New York City in years past. So we just looked at several roofs. It’s so funny—you think it’s the easiest thing in the world to find a roof in Warsaw, a city of tall buildings, and then it’s just for one reason or another, roofs look incorrect, or they won’t let us on there, which was obviously mostly the case, or there’s no door for us to come out of, so it’s not believable that we would’ve come out of something.

You mentioned specific spots in New York, like Chinatown and the Williamsburg Bridge. How did you decide what they would reference in the film?

I was thinking that probably David would live in Manhattan and Benji would live in Brooklyn. And it seemed like Benji would probably have gone out to Brooklyn early on in their relationship. Maybe a little more countercultural for a kid in the ’90s than today. And so I assumed that maybe they would start at Benji’s house and be walking to Manhattan. I also just love very specific references in movies that are about New York, just because every other movie takes place in New York, so you just want to make sure the references are clear enough that you’re not rehashing Serendipity or some movie. And then I just romanticized Chinatown so much—you walk around Chinatown at night, it’s just this magical, mysterious place that I think they would be attracted to.

What else do you remember about how this scene changed over time?

This scene was a lot longer. So Benji says, “I got to fish that awesome guy out every time I see you.” And I said, “Thank you, I guess.” And then there was this weird long scene of a transition to get to walking around New York City at night. And I was talking to my mentor Jim Begley, and he said, “Just cut all that out and just say, ‘When I think of us.’” I was like, “Oh, my God, I cut out a page.” And so I would never have written the line, “When I think of us,” because it’s quite expository for a character to say that even though Benji’s somebody who reflects and is stoned and it makes sense, but I would not have written that. But it works just so much better than what I had, which is them talking about the past and then getting into New York. It’s such a waste of time, especially something like 30 pages into a movie when you want to move on. It’s not time for reflection just yet.

But I’m always a little self-conscious when people watch the movie and when I’ve watched the movie with people, when I hear a line, “When I think of us,” I recoil just a little bit because it seems like a trick or a shortcut. But sometimes you need a shortcut to get to the good stuff.

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