Jeremy Strong confirmed in an interview published Wednesday that he reached out to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg after he was cast as the Facebook co-founder in Aaron Sorkin’s forthcoming “Social Network” sequel, “The Social Reckoning.”
“I wrote to him—I’m probably going to give Sony an aneurysm—I sent him an email,” Strong told GQ. “Just to say that I take this responsibility very seriously, and the veracity of it seriously, and I’m approaching it with respect.”
The Oscar nominee confirmed that Zuckerberg wrote him back but declined to share what the Meta CEO said. According to Strong, he and Zuckerberg have only been in the same room once, when the actor presented an award at the Breakthrough Prize ceremony last year to University of Washington biochemist David Baker. The two did not allegedly meet that day.
Strong told GQ that, had Zuckerberg invited him to Meta’s offices after their private correspondence, he would have declined out of a desire to keep some distance between him and his subject. The actor also acknowledged the public perception of Zuckerberg.
“I know that he is a reviled person and not a popular person in our culture, but I do not think you should have an actor playing him who wants to set out to condemn him,” Strong said. “It’s crazy to take this on at all. It’s crazy.”
“It feels incredibly fraught to talk about the movie, to talk about Mark and being the person who is playing Mark and representing Mark in a sense to the world and to posterity; I feel an enormous sense of weight and responsibility,” the actor added. “My job is to understand and defend his point of view and fight his fight.”
Strong compared his decision to play Zuckerberg to his “Apprentice” co-star Sebastian Stan’s choice to portray a young Donald Trump in that Oscar-nominated film and his “Deliver Me from Nowhere” co-star Jeremy Allen White’s willingness to step into the shoes of Bruce Springsteen.
“It’s the kind of role that fascinates me. It’s like Sebastian playing Trump. You are wearing the cape. It’s like Jeremy playing Bruce,” Strong explained. “The perils of that could not be greater. To commit to it, and to be free within it, is a great challenge.”
Strong, of course, stepped in to play Zuckerberg in place of Jesse Eisenberg, who earned an Oscar nomination in 2011 for playing the Facebook co-founder in “The Social Network.” Eisenberg has been open about his desire to distance himself from Zuckerberg as much as possible, after being so closely associated with the controversial figure for over a decade.
There is, consequently, already a lot of scrutiny surrounding Strong’s performance. The reactions to the film’s first trailer included more than a few jokes about Strong having either an Oscar or a Razzie in his future. Speaking with GQ, Strong acknowledged those jokes and seemed to shrug them off.
“I thought that was the greatest endorsement,” the actor said. “Listen, I’ll be sad if I win a Razzie, but that’s the place you want to be. That’s the wager you have to make. To me, that means, ‘Okay, I put it on the line enough.’”
“The Social Reckoning” is slated to hit theaters on Oct. 9.
