Kieran Culkin and Jesse Eisenberg chatted, joked, exchanged barbs and compliments, and debated the proceedings in an hour-long, crazy conversation at the Tribeca Festival tonight, after apparently bonding over A real pain. They play mismatched cousins on a tension-filled road trip in the thrilling Sundance comedy, which hits theaters this fall.
Eisenberg (Fleishman is in trouble) wrote and directed the film and said he had never seen Culkin’s work before casting him. Or nothing new. He admitted he had Home alone 17 times. The 1990 film was Culkin’s first feature film. He played a small role alongside his brother Macaulay Culkin. “I had no idea what the damn movie was about at the time,” Culkin recalls.
“In my eyes, you are a magical person because I don’t think I’ve ever seen you in anything. And then when I thought of you in the movie, I intentionally didn’t see anything. And Successionwhen I wrote it, it wasn’t as profound as it is now that it’s over,” Eisenberg told the Emmy and Golden Globe winner, who played Roman Roy in the HBO hit.
“So why did you cast me?” asked Culkin.
“You have a feeling for people… I had a feeling for you. And I met you a few times.” The first time was on the set of Zombieland (2009), when Culkin was dating Emma Stone. “And you said this nice thing… you gave me such a nice compliment, without any ego. I thought that was the nicest person.” Culkin had Eisenberg’s star turn as Mark Zuckerberg in The social network.
Eisenberg delivered the same super-fast, choppy speech tonight, saying he was nervous. Neither of them realized that Eisenberg was scheduled to interview Culkin at the event, one of Tribeca’s Storytellers sessions. Culkin taunted him – “Is there a question? … Hey, it took seven minutes, but it’s a question.”
“Are you aware of your unusual characteristics and presence?” Eisenberg asked him.
“What what?!”
The conversation actually started flowing. Culkin said Succession changed his attitude toward his craft. Before the show began, “I really felt like I had a way of doing things. I wanted to know the whole thing inside and out, know the other characters’ perspectives. And then the show came out and it was like, ‘Okay, we don’t have a next episode and also we’re going to change this scene,’ and I was forced to change that completely. And there was a little panic [but] I felt a strange freedom in doing something completely unknown. And I thought to myself, “Okay, I don’t actually need to know. Why don’t I just know as much as my character would know in that moment?”
Eisenberg said Culkin was still uptight about some things. The two “spent a lot of hours in the costume department because the shoes he wears had a sole and he wanted the sole to be thinner.”
“I don’t want to feel like I’m wearing a costume… and I don’t know how to put into words why the shoes made me feel like I was wearing a costume,” Culkin said.
Then there was the hummus. “We’re sitting at the table shooting a scene and… I didn’t know you would be worried about the hummus. Because in the weeks leading up to the hummus, you didn’t care about anything… and you were so dogmatic about the hummus.”
(Look for a scene involving hummus in theaters from Searchlight Pictures this October.)
“Working with you is extraordinary and frustrating,” Eisenberg said.
None of the actors watch their performances, and they agree that there would be no point.
Eisenberg said The social network was the last thing he ever saw of himself.
He recalled a Wes Craven horror film where the director asked him to come to the monitor. “He said, ‘Just look at this shot.’ I’m walking down a hallway with a shovel for some reason. And he said, ‘Look at your face. You look like you’re nauseous.’ And I said I was scared. And he said, ‘Yeah, it looks like nauseous to us.'” (He didn’t name the film, but it was probably Cursed2005).
Eisenberg said Culkin often scratched himself in A real pain“He started doing this thing and it got big and weirdly pronounced.”
“And it was like, oh shit, I didn’t realize that,” Culkin said.
“What if I told you that I love that you itch?”