Jesse Eisenberg distances himself from Mark Zuckerberg and ‘The Social Network’: “He’s doing things that are problematic”

Jesse Eisenberg, who played Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network in 2010, has put distance between himself and the billionaire.

Eisenberg said on BBC Radio 4 earlier today (February 4) that he hadn’t been following Zuckerberg of late, due to some of his recent actions.

He explained: “I don’t want to think of myself as associated with somebody like that. 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.”

Eisenberg explained: “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 favour with somebody who’s preaching hateful things.”

He added that he holds the beliefs he does “not as a person who played [Zuckerberg] in a movie” but “as somebody who is married to a woman who teaches disability justice in New York, and lives for her students are going to get a little harder this year.”

"I don't want to think of myself as associated with somebody like that."

Actor Jesse Eisenberg accuses Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg – who he played in The Social Network – of 'doing things that are problematic'.#R4Today pic.twitter.com/V5aqeMJaZ4

— BBC Radio 4 Today (@BBCr4today) February 4, 2025

In recent weeks, Zuckerberg announced that Facebook’s parent company, Meta, would be replacing its fact-checking systems on Facebook and Instagram with a “community notes” feature closer to that on Elon Musk’s X, formerly Twitter.

Explaining the reasoning, he said that the fact-checking model had caused “too many mistakes and too much censorship” and was “too politically biased.” Zuckerberg also met with US President Donald Trump after he won the 2024 election and attended his inauguration in January, while Meta donated $1million to his inaugural fund alongside other huge tech names.

Meanwhile, Eisenberg – who received an Oscar nomination for his turn as Zuckerberg in The Social Network – is currently hoping to win the Best Original Screenplay Oscar for his movie A Real Pain, which he wrote, directed, co-produced and starred in.

In the movie, Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin play two Jewish American cousins who travel to Poland to honour their late grandmother. Eisenberg has Polish citizenship himself, too. While he was born in New York City, he traces his ancestry back to Poland and Ukraine.

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