Eisenberg hijacks an interview
Actor more interested in asking the questions than speaking about himself
Jesse Eisenberg is bored with talking about himself, bored with promoting his own shows, bored with telling people his opinions or reflecting on his life. So during an interview in advance of his play “The Revisionist,” being staged at the Evelyn Rubenstein Jewish Community Center through April 22, the actor and playwright tries his best to delay the inevitable. “You used to live in Indiana?” He’s apparently researched me already. This catches me off guard. We talk about Bloomington, where he lives, and Indianapolis, where I lived, and then he asks how it compares to Houston.
Meanwhile, I’m pacing the room nervously because I didn’t prepare for this kind of interview. Acting on instinct, I pivot to the topic of Jewish-American identity and immigration, which is what “The Revisionist” is about.
Eisenberg, the Hollywood star who played Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg in “The Social Network,” is smart, personable and observant in talking about how he believes American culture has shifted away from a need for assimilation — what his father and grandfather did to survive in the country — and toward a mainstream desire to celebrate difference. That’s partly why the actor is comfortable playing Marcel Marceau, a mime who saved children as part of the French Resistance during the Holocaust, in the upcoming film “Resistance.”
“I’m very proud to do that movie now,” he says. “A few years ago, I would have felt boxed in.”
By contrast, when he wrote the “The Revisionist,” at age 23, Eisenberg’s version of Jewish identity was dominated by guilt and a hyperawareness of his own privilege. The play, about an encounter between a self-absorbed twentysomething American and a Polish Holocaust survivor (Eisenberg acted opposite Vanessa Redgrave in the 2013 offBroadway production), reflects that mindset. But, at 34, Eisenberg’s neuroses have mellowed. He spends more time asking questions about other people now, rather than fighting demons of his own.
“I’m trying to write about things other than my own neurosis because they seem less extreme for me,” he says. “It can also be that I found the right cocktail of medications.”
Writing plays, he says, is “an extension of exploring another mind. I wish we had more time, because you mentioned Tiger Children and everything. I find your opinion on everything we’re talking about more interesting than mine, just by virtue of me already knowing my opinion. But, because we have to do the interview, I’m giving my opinion.”
The modern celebrity interview is a practice in solipsism and repetition. A celebrity speaks to a journalist for a set amount of time, often with an agent in the same room to keep time and to make sure the interview is “on message.” Conversations are typically over the phone, between 10-20 minutes long and often scheduled back-to-back with other publications. The celebrity and the agent’s jobs are to sell their product, while the journalist’s job is to work within that system of sales-
manship to write a good story — often resorting to brusque, bizarre or inappropriately intimate questions to get there.
But Eisenberg is either unaware of or uninterested in following the unspoken rules of modern-day publicity. It’s as if he sees the interview as simply a conversation with someone who he believes knows a lot that he doesn’t. So, halfway through talking about “The Revisionist,” he starts asking questions again. “Did you grow up in Indiana?” “Why did your parents move to America?” “So you speak Mandarin?” “Do you have any connection to your family in Taiwan, culturally?”
It’s on topic, in fact, since the conversation has revolved around immigrant identity. I’ve inherited some Taiwanese values, I tell him, but I often relate more to, say, neurotic JewishAmericans who like the movie “Manhattan.”
“Do you regret that?” Eisenberg asks. “I lot of people would envy that feeling.” Eisenberg, after all, says he enjoys fleeing a purely American worldview in his plays.
“I’m fascinated because the [global] experience is more interesting and unusual, and I grew up without those experiences,” he says. “It’s a typical American thing, growing up without fully understanding another culture.”
Sweat running down my forehead, I tell Eisenberg he should do a podcast where he interviews people. He says he would love it, but that he doesn’t know enough. He asks me what podcasts I listen to. I tell him, then ask him the same thing.
His favorite is Slate’s “The Gist,” followed by “Freakonomics,” “Radiolab” and “This American Life.” There’s also this basketball podcast from two Canadian hosts, who surprised him once when they talked about politics for the first time after the 2016 election. “They were devastated,” he says. “It’s like seeing an uncle who never sheds a tear start crying.”
Eisenberg loves basketball. He saw the Rockets play recently, and asks if Houstonians are reacting to the team’s success.
“Is it a phenomenon? Are people in theater, in our world, even aware of it?”
In fact, I tell him, a local theater company consisting of Rockets diehards is partnering with Rockets General Manager Daryl Morey — a Stephen Sondheim and Andrew Lloyd Weber geek — to produce “Small Ball,” a basketball musical.
“I’m shocked. He’s the only other person with my exact interests. Musical theater and basketball are my two favorite things. … Wait. Can I come? I’m doing two benefits, and I’ll have to negotiate with my wife. When is our show opening?”
Eisenberg has stayed on the phone for 50 minutes, with no intention of leaving. After we finally hang up, I wasn’t sure what to write about “The Revisionist,” which, if Eisenberg’s conversational style is any indication, should showcase wit, inquisitiveness and self-reflection. But I knew that it was, for sure, one of the best interviews I’ve ever experienced.