Jesse Eisenberg‘s first meeting with Kieran Culkin was a real kick in the crotch — literally.
On this morning’s episode of The Drew Barrymore Show, the actor — who directed and co-starred with Culkin in A Real Pain — said they first met on an audition for the 2009 rom-com Adventureland.
“[Culkin’s] character’s supposed to kind of be a little aggressive with my character but no one was doing that in the auditions except Kieran, who came in [and] punched me in my crotch,” Eisenberg said. “The director, who’s this sweet quiet guy, was like, ‘Please stop. Cut. Please stop.’ And Kieran couldn’t hear him. He’s already won the fight.”
Despite their violent first meeting more than a decade ago, Eisenberg still cast Culkin in A Real Pain — which has been nominated for two Academy Awards.
According to Eisenberg, it was “interesting” to watch Culkin film this movie.
“Kieran showed up a day before shooting,” he explained. “This script had been in my head for three years so I thought maybe he and I could spend months talking about the character. He showed up the day before shooting, didn’t want to rehearse. I didn’t know if he read the script because he wouldn’t talk about it.”
Eisenberg said Culkin was surprised when he found out he was about to film a scene in which he had “five pages of dialogue” — but after only 30 seconds of studying the script, he was “word perfect.”
“I thought, ‘Oh, maybe he doesn’t care about the movie or he’s not working on it,’” Eisenberg said. “And then we found out halfway through the movie, he was sleeping two hours a night on his floor in his hotel room. And I think he was living in the spirit of the character, but just not telling anybody.”
“I would say he’s one of these actors that does kind of like method kind of work but without the pretense of letting everybody know how deep they’re working on it,” Eisenberg added. “And that is like my favorite thing in the entire world.”
The Drew Barrymore Show airs on weekdays on CBS. You can check the website for local airtimes.
