Jesse Eisenberg wants to socially distance himself from Mark Zuckerberg, saying the billionaire tech boss he portrayed in “The Social Network” is “problematic.”
The 36-year-old actor said he doesn’t follow Zuckerberg’s “life trajectory” because he doesn’t want anything to do with the Facebook founder
“I haven’t been following his (Zuckerberg’s) life trajectory, partly because I don’t want to think of myself as associated with somebody like that. It’s not like I played a great golfer or something, and now people think I’m a great golfer,” Eisenberg told BBC Radio on Tuesday.
“It’s like this guy is doing things that are problematic, taking away fact-checking. Making people who are already threatened in this world more threatened.”
In January, Zuckerberg announced Facebook and Instagram’s parent company Meta will be scrapping the much-maligned third-party fact-checking system for a community note-based system where users can add context to posts, similar to that on rival social media network X.
The tech honcho said the company was returning to its roots after admitting the fact-checking turned into a tool of censorship and became “too politically biased,”
“What started as a movement to be more inclusive has increasingly been used to shut down opinions and shut out people with different ideas,” he said, adding: “It’s gone too far.”
Eisenberg alluded to Zuckerberg’s about-face towards President Donald Trump following the latter’s White House victory, as a cause for concern with his public image.
“These people have billions upon billions of dollars, like more money than any human person has ever amassed and what are they doing with it?” he said, “Oh, they’re doing it to curry favor with somebody who’s preaching hate.”
Following the November election, Zuckerberg positioned himself with Trump even asking for some help with his business problems.
The two met at least twice at Mar-a-Lago before Trump returned to office — once in late November and another in January.
Zuckerberg attended Trump’s inauguration where he sat alongside fellow tech CEOs Tim Cook of Apple, X’s Elon Musk, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Google’s Sundar Pichai.
Eisenberg said his problem with Zuckerberg isn’t because he played him in a movie.
“That’s what I think… not as like a person who played in a movie. I think of it as somebody who is married to a woman who teaches disability justice in New York and lives for her students are going to get a little harder this year,” he added.
Despite his impressive resume and wide range of acting, the New York native is best known for “The Social Network.”
He earned nominations for Best Actor during the 2011 award season at the BAFTAs, the Golden Globes and the Academy Awards.
