Jesse Eisenberg on ‘The Debut’ and How Community Theater Saved Him as a ‘Shy’ Child Who Was ‘Made Fun of in School’: ‘Suddenly Everyone Was So Nice’

Jesse Eisenberg‘s latest film “The Debut” came from the depths of his own experience in community theater.

Speaking at the San Sebastian Film Festival in his typically comical and self-deprecating manner, the actor-turned-filmmaker elaborated on the autobiographical elements of the movie, in which Julianne Moore plays Mona Friedman, a New Jersey housewife who finds herself after joining a local musical production.

“I call it autobiographical because the movie takes place in 1990 in central New Jersey, and when I was in central New Jersey in 1990, I was like Mona Friedman,” he told a press conference on Wednesday. “I was so shy, I was depressed, and I didn’t have friends. And then I walked into this community theater when I was seven years old, and suddenly everybody was so nice and they hugged me.”

He added: “Going from a kid who was made fun of in school because he had curly hair, and the kids would say anything to me… and then I walked into the community theater, and everybody’s like: ‘Your hair is amazing. Come this way, you should play with me.'”

Eisenberg picked out a particular scene that was taken out of his own “real pain,” when Moore’s character is shouted at by Paul Giamatti’s director.

“When I was in drama school, I just was doing really silly things to make my friends laugh, like really bad acting, just to make them laugh,” he recalled. “And then my teacher realized I needed to take it seriously, so in front of all my friends in a dark room, just like Julianne in the movie, he broke me down and was screaming: ‘What is wrong with you? And after like five minutes, you’re screaming and crying, and then after that, you’re like, I can do anything. I can do anything on stage now because I’ve already embarrassed myself. I’ve already gotten to the depths of my my my soul, and now I can do anything.”

The scene, he said, came from “years of feeling forgotten and all the annoying stuff that artists feel that they burden the audiences with.”

Perhaps predictably, Eisenberg was asked about choosing not to return as Mark Zuckerberg in Aaron Sorkin’s “The Social Network” sequel “The Social Reckoning,” with the role going to Jeremy Strong instead.

“I’ve talked about it a lot, and Aaron Sorkin’s talked about it a lot, and I loved his script, and he’s a genius, and the movie I’m sure is incredible,” he said. “But for me, it just didn’t feel like something I wanted to act in again. But that has nothing to do with how great the movie is. The movie will be a great, great movie, and Jeremy Strong will be amazing in the movie. I’m sure. I just didn’t feel like it’s something I wanted to do again.”

On social media in general, Eisenberg says he has “no opinion” because “I stay as far away from it.”

He added: “It’s ironic, because people associate me with this website, but they know way more about the website than I do, and I’d like to keep it that way.”