Jesse Eisenberg was going to play the lead in the film he wrote and directed surrounding the Majdanek concentration camp in present-day Poland, but says both his sister and wife agreed after reading the first 20 pages of the script that it HAD to be Succession's , Kieran Culkin. A Real Pain explores the generational trauma of a family's history when they visit the camp. The film also stars Dirty Dancing' s Jennifer Grey and White Lotus star Will Sharpe. Eisenberg says he hopes people find humor in the comedy/drama and they realize what actually happened on this hallowed ground. Emma Stone produced the film.
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00:00 (upbeat music)
00:02 - Hi, I'm Jesse Eisenberg,
00:03 and you're watching Life Minute TV.
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00:08 Yeah, the biggest challenge of acting and directing
00:13 at the same time is twofold.
00:15 One is that, you know, to immerse yourself in the character,
00:18 you have to not think about the kind of external view
00:21 of yourself, and then the other thing is like, you know,
00:23 just this weird vanity thing where you're like,
00:25 I personally don't like looking at myself, you know,
00:28 in movies, and then with this, I had to,
00:31 and it was just like, oh right,
00:32 I have to not focus on my own, you know, insecurities,
00:34 I have to focus on what the movie is doing.
00:37 - Well, I mean, last year I did,
00:39 I played a Christian cult leader.
00:40 I played Gwen Shamblin in Starving for Salvation,
00:44 and it was really hardcore, and with this,
00:48 my best way is to think about how to be of service
00:53 to the filmmaker and to write about the character to myself
00:58 and to write story a little bit and just feel it,
01:02 and then have dreams and ask for my dreams to reveal more.
01:07 - I mean, I just love the script,
01:10 and I loved meeting with Jesse,
01:12 I loved hearing him talk about it.
01:13 You know, James is, I like his innocence,
01:16 I like that he's just genuinely, in a very nerdy,
01:19 academic way, obsessed with the history,
01:21 his passion for the history and Kieran's character
01:24 and the way he likes to kind of find, you know,
01:27 sneaky ways to undermine people, like some of that was fun,
01:29 but yeah, more than anything,
01:30 I was just inspired by Jesse's script.
01:33 - Yeah, my sister and my wife knew Kieran's work
01:35 more intimately than I did,
01:37 and when I wrote 20 pages of the script
01:39 and showed it to them, they said,
01:40 "You know, there's only one person in the world
01:41 "who could do this part, it's Kieran."
01:43 I always loved him personally,
01:44 and I'd seen him in some stuff,
01:46 but it wasn't the first thought in my head.
01:47 He's a little different than how I imagined the character,
01:50 and so much better.
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