In Jesse Eisenberg’s moving comedy-drama “A Real Pain,” a pair of American Jewish cousins embark on a Holocaust tour through Poland in remembrance of their late grandmother. By the end, they’ve been fundamentally changed by their experience. The film picked up Oscar nominations for original screenplay and Kieran Culkin’s supporting performance.
This is Eisenberg’s second outing as a feature filmmaker, and the first he also performed in. In the movie, he plays a distinctly “Eisenberg-ian” character: a well-to-do, high-strung introvert named David Kaplan. But he’d originally intended to play David’s unhinged, alluring cousin Benji, an unpredictable loner who unravels over the course of the film.
The Kaplan cousins have been marinating in Eisenberg’s mind for some time; he originally envisioned “A Real Pain” as an adaptation of his 2017 short story “Mongolia,” a tale of two college buddies who go on a trip to reunite with an old friend. Prototypes of David and Benji also exist in his theatrical work.
Off the Cuff With Kieran Culkin Eisenberg ultimately heeded the advice of his producers (Emma Stone among them), who discouraged him from playing such a volatile character while also managing a set. The part of Benji instead went to “Succession” Emmy winner Culkin, whom Eisenberg cast based on a recommendation from his sister even though he’d never seen any of the actor’s previous work. The filmmaker didn’t even have him audition beforehand.
The gambit paid off: Culkin delivers a wild, instinctive performance that comes from a place of buried agony. Here, Eisenberg discusses finding the delicate balance between writing, directing, and acting.
How do you bring a script to life through performance, particularly when it’s one you wrote yourself?
My background is in playwriting, and I would always act in the plays that I’d written. Early on, people would say that some of the characters I played were unlikable. And I remember reading some notices about my plays where they attributed that unlikability to me, Jesse, personally. And my thought always was: But wait, I also wrote the likable people! When I’m writing a script, I am every single character—because my background is as an actor, where you’re trained to try to understand your character even if they’re the villain.
“A Real Pain” is as much about the dialogue as the silences in between. Did you write moments like that into the screenplay?
I think about it a lot, because I’m conscious of pacing the movie in such a way that the emotion sneaks up on you. I prefer that you get to know these people in a way that feels comfortable and accessible, and then they start to surprise you. When you meet Kieran’s character in the beginning, he just seems like an affable, charming guy. But by the end, [you realize that this is] a man who’s suffering.
Also, I’m a fast-paced person—the way I speak, the way I write. That gives me the advantage of having the quiet moments hit that much harder, since they’re unexpected.
Was it difficult for you to find the balance between what the audience discovers about Benji over the course of the film and how much you, as the screenwriter, already knew?
I was writing from David’s [point of view] as he was trying to figure Benji out. I wasn’t particularly conscious of how the audience learned more about Benji. And my hope is that by the end of the movie, the audience, like David, realizes: You know what? I don’t think I’ll ever understand this person fully, but we have to accept him for who he is.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
This story originally appeared in the Jan. 30 issue of Backstage Magazine.
