Interview: Jesse Eisenberg on When You Finish Saving the World and Fleishman Is in Trouble

My first interaction with Jesse Eisenberg, a tangent about basketball borne out of my garbled introduction, serves as a reminder that he has long been an artist with multidisciplinary ambitions and interests despite being best known for his portrayals of anxiety-riddled young men in movies. He enters 2023 hot off the heels of Hulu’s Fleishman Is in Trouble, an incisive look at modern masculinity and midlife crises. But what we’ve convened to discuss in depth is his feature directorial debut, When You Finish Saving the World, an adaptation of an Audible audiobook of the same name that Eisenberg penned in 2020.

Though born from a triptych of two-hour monologues, Eisenberg’s screenplay shows no evidence of such compartmentalization. The stories of domestic violence shelter operator Evelyn Katz (Julianne Moore) and her micro-influencer songwriting son, Ziggy (Finn Wolfhard), harmonize effortlessly as they struggle to understand each another. With a touch both tragic and comedic, Eisenberg charts how both characters invest in a surrogate figure—a young man in the shelter (Billy Byrk’s Kyle) for Evelyn, a socially conscious love interest (Alisha Boe’s Lila) for Ziggy—to provide what they cannot find within their own home.

When You Finish Saving the World devastates with its vantage point on intergenerational relationships, for Evelyn and Ziggy have such a generosity of spirit dealing with other people that they can never show to one another. My conversation with Eisenberg covered this and many other ironies in the film, along with the project’s relationship to Fleishman Is in Trouble and his Oscar-nominated turn as Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network.

Given that this project began as an audiobook, how do you handle the task of adaptation and determine what medium a story is meant to take?

My background as a writer is in theater, and all of my plays began as little monologues that I started writing from a particular character’s voice that I find interesting. With this movie, it started as an audiobook. And it started out as three two-hour monologues from the characters that you see in the film. After I finished the audiobook, I was thinking about something new to write, and I realized I hadn’t really met the mother of the teenage boy. I thought it would just be so wonderful to see this clash of values, a woman who’s devoted her life to social justice but with a son who couldn’t care less about anything outside his own world. Wouldn’t it be such an interesting thing to explore that both feels topical but also timeless in a way?

How do you then start to move it from a medium that values images as much as words?

Thank you for asking that, because that was exactly on my mind. When I start writing something, I’m typically thinking about a play because that’s my background, and I love theater and playwriting. But as I was thinking about the story and seeing the inside of a domestic violence shelter, which is an environment I’ve had a lot of exposure to and volunteered in, I thought it would be so wonderful to see the inner workings of [such a] shelter. But goodness, it would also be so wonderful to be able to see this young man’s app online to see how he interacts with his fans, which is something you can’t do in a theater. As I was thinking about these different worlds, the home they inhabit, the school that he goes to, it just seemed like something that would make a nice film. When I think about what could work well as a movie, you want to have some element that is new to an audience. For me, I think a domestic violence shelter and this kid’s very otherworldly, futuristic app is an interesting juxtaposition.

Given that the audiobook unfolded in three distinct monologues, how did you intertwine Evelyn and Ziggy’s stories in the screenplay?

They really have parallel stories. Both characters in the movie are disenchanted with each other, so they each try to unconsciously replace each other. She finds a young man at the shelter who she feels like she can parent, and Ziggy finds a young woman at school who seems almost like carbon copy of his mother. Their stories naturally reflect each other. But the best thing about adapting something that I’ve already written is that the voices are in my head. When I’m acting in something, my main concern is how I make sure this character feels like something I could do off screen. That it feels like there’s an inner life to the person that makes sense to me off screen. Their tics, their anger, their rage, their hopes, all that stuff. With this, because I had written so much from their perspectives, I felt like I could write a hundred more scenes with them talking to each other and have it be as free-flowing as what you see in the movie.

There was a short story that you had adapted for a TV series that didn’t come to fruition. Was there anything that you learned in the process of trying to get that to the screen that ultimately came in handy here?

It’s hard to say what I learn from experience because I truly don’t codify it in any formal way. I’ve spent a lot of time watching movies getting made, being on set in the capacity of an actor. When I was on set, I would find that it would have unconsciously seeped into my mind, whether it be how to think about talking to a cinematographer, or thinking about a camera move that might be a little more efficient than what we’ve set up already. But I actually made [that] pilot, and then it got bought by a company. And then I don’t know what happened with the company.

Classic Hollywood story. I did really like the idea—something about a mother and a child where each episode they were going would be a different restaurant and tracking their relationship?

Exactly that. The kid writes the restaurant reviews at school after he goes to a restaurant with his mom, who was newly divorced. The only reason she takes him out to dinner was because the father has agreed to pay for everything she does with the son, so he goes to these fancy restaurants so that the mom can still have a reason to dine out. He writes these restaurant reviews, but they just turned into these very emotional diaries. I loved it, and I wrote the whole series. I wrote a whole other series that J.J. Abrams was going to produce, and that didn’t get made. More things that I’ve written haven’t gotten made than have gotten made, but I still probably have a better track record than a lot of writers because I’m a movie actor, and people are giving me opportunities because I have access.

Were there any directors whose process you observed over the years that, consciously or unconsciously, shaped the way you ran your set?

Yes, in fact the first time I had a spark of possibly directing something, I was on the set in New York of a Joachim Trier film [Louder Than Bombs]. He’s a wonderful craftsman when it comes to creating unusual cinematic work. He was very smart and sweet, so I asked him, “What are you doing here in this shot?” He just kept telling me, “Don’t ever cut back to the same shot.” I was on the set of my movie, and I was like, “This is going to be impossible,” because I didn’t have enough footage to never cut back to the same shot. I realized, though, that’s why he had 45 days to shoot, and we had a lot less. I started picking up on little things like that. But I don’t think he would have made a movie exactly like this, and I don’t think I would have made a movie like his. You end up ultimately doing the thing that you were probably always going to do anyway.

You have a background studying anthropology and sociology, but you also have really hands-on experience working in a domestic violence shelter and talking with young people through friends and family. How do you balance the theoretical with the tactical in writing characters whose experience you might not share?

It’s funny, my wife as a teenager was the head of the East Timor action committee, and she was rallying and writing letters every day. I wonder how she would have been an activist, were she a teenager today, given that a lot of activism can be done online and in oftentimes seemingly half-hearted ways. On the other hand, the younger generation—not my generation, but the generation below me—seems like the most activated, socially aware generation that you could think of. People are aware of cultural movements and trends in ways that I at 16 or 17 was completely ignorant to. It’s fascinating to me to see that kind of juxtaposition, and that’s what this movie is. The mother character, who Julianne plays, would have protested the Vietnam War when she was younger. Now there are kids who are doing that, but her son’s contribution to the world is folk songs. It’s just something I think about all the time: how a generation can be so connected and, at the same time, not necessarily doing everything in person.

Do you feel that you bring any perspective about the nature of digital connection and interpersonal disconnection from being in The Social Network, or was your task primarily to just understand Mark Zuckerberg as a person?

I can sympathize with people who are more comfortable existing on a digital platform than in person. I understand that social interactions can be very uncomfortable, and I feel this too. There’s something about the buffer of an online interface that makes things easier. On the other hand, there’s obvious flaws with it, which is that you further isolate yourself from some wonderful in-person interactions and all the challenges and rewards that come with those. This character, Ziggy, is incredibly famous in this sphere, but he’ll never meet anybody who loves him. He has 20,000 followers from Belarus to Bangladesh, yet he’ll never be in the same room as them. That’s a very new phenomenon. I just think there’s a funny irony to the idea that the woman who’s living in the next room over hasn’t heard any one of his songs.

Is it any less real, though, if he feels the love of those 20,000 fans? Maybe it’s not your place as the filmmaker to place that judgment.

Truly, I have no judgment. My life, in some ways, is more like his than his mother’s in that I’m in films that people watch. I will never meet them, and they like watching me in the movie…or not, but their interaction is one that’s one-sided. Yes, I can relate to it, sympathize with it, and, of course, I live it. Just in terms of like the singer-songwriter part of it, I used to go watch singer-songwriters at the Sidewalk Cafe in the Lower East Side in New York City. I was great friends with a singer-songwriter, and he was over at my family’s house for Thanksgiving. And he said, “Excuse me, I have to go up for an hour.” I said, “What are you doing?” He’s like, “I have a show.” He went up and sat in my bedroom, and he did his show online. And I remember thinking, “Oh, that’s so sad.” I think he would have loved a place like the Sidewalk and all of the camaraderie that comes with not just performing in your own silo. Being part of a world that forces you to also watch other people. All the challenges that come with real-world interactions that you miss from being siloed in an isolated community of people who only adore you.

Do you think the surrogate characters, Kyle and Lila, are in some ways analogous to the role that social media plays for the characters? With them, Evelyn and Ziggy can be the people that they can’t be in their own household.

I didn’t think about it until this exact moment, but yes, that’s exactly it. Yes. Online, you’re this different person. There’s an ease to it, if you look at…what’s the new thing, the metaverse or whatever? You can restyle your hair that’s never agreed with you, or [get rid of] the bump in your chin. You can edit out all the things that you don’t like about yourself, and that’s in some ways what these characters are doing. Evelyn is trying to parent Kyle in a way that’s not real because she’s not actually his mom or give him the right kind of advice for his life. Similarly, Ziggy is in no way in the same league as Lila—and will never be unless he really humbles himself and discovers the world on his own. I guess there’s a parallel that didn’t occur to me until this moment about our online selves versus our real selves.

With both this and Fleishman Is in Trouble, I couldn’t help but think about your role in The Squid and the Whale and now being on the other side of children trying to understand their parents as people in their own right. How has your perspective on this conflict changed with time?

I started writing When You Finish Saving the World as an audiobook from the spark of “What if I felt no connection to my newborn son?” I started writing after I just had a child, and then I was projecting into the future and thinking if it was possible to not feel the connection that you’re supposed to feel. Then I took it several steps further and thought of this mother, who’s devoted her life to something that’s so important and wonderful and a child who’s completely gone the other way. How would you not want to parent another child who’s interested in the things that you’re interested in? Having a child has ignited my mind to think about what parenting means and how parents are obviously flawed, normal people who make the same mistakes that they made before they were parents. Now there are different stakes and different victims. How could they possibly completely reform into perfection just because they have a child?

On the note of Fleishman is in Trouble, this was your first miniseries. Was the process any different building out a character with that much time and space?

Yes, I just kept thinking, “God, these scenes are so long!” And I would be reassured that we’re making eight episodes. When you’re doing a movie, if something doesn’t serve a purpose even in a talky, kitchen-sink drama, it’s not in the movie. With this, there’d be side storylines. And I just kept asking because I don’t have experience in that world, I would ask the creator and also ask the executives at Hulu and ABC Signature, “Wait, people stay with stories that have these kind of side plots?” And they said, “Yes, of course, people love that now!” And I thought, okay, this is great. But as an actor, I had to un-censor myself, because normally every scene is vital because it’s an hour-and-a-half movie. In this there was a [calmer] approach to the structure. I really liked it. It’s very appealing. Now that these shows that people are making are so great, with characters that are so rich, it’d be great to do one again.

I know you don’t watch your own work, but did you watch any of the later episodes where we see more of Rachel’s story apart from anything you participated in?

I remember telling Taffy Brodesser-Akner, the writer, that this is one of the best scripts I’ve ever read. I’m referring to episode seven, which is essentially an hour-long panic attack. I know this world, and I thought the script was brilliant. I’m so sorry I’ll never watch it because I do pop in and out. But God, it’s so good. She captured the build of a panic attack so eerily accurately.

When You Finish Saving the World began with you wondering if contributions to the arts pale in comparison to a life served in honor of social justice. Would you answer that question any differently now having made the film?

I will say, I’ve always felt a little bit of guilt as an actor because you’re celebrated all the time, and it feels unearned. And then I was watching Julianne Moore walk around the set in an emotional state between scenes. And I remember thinking, “My god, what an unbelievable gift she’s giving to the world by putting herself in such a vulnerable place in such a public way to tell a story that can hopefully touch people.” It was the first time I ever had like a real appreciation for the craft of acting, even after doing it for 20 years and thinking about it every day. And seeing it from the outside has made me think that there’s wonderful value to it. In some ways, it took me doing another job to appreciate that job.