Three Mark Zuckerbergs, Three Surprisingly Different Men
Jeremy Strong in “The Social Reckoning,” Jesse Eisenberg in “The Social Network” and the real Meta executive are all playing parts. But only one has changed his approach.
By 2010, the year Jesse Eisenberg played the Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg in “The Social Network,” the real Zuckerberg had made only a modest number of public appearances. The first was in 2004, when the 19-year-old executive talked to CNBC about what was then called TheFacebook. In the video he’s composed and articulate, explaining his site’s purpose to an audience that largely wouldn’t have used it, since at the time it was open only to students at select colleges. He maintains direct eye contact. His head moves slightly; his body not at all. His lines sound rehearsed, as if he had practiced a script before this big opening performance.
His body language had barely changed by the time the movie was released six years later. In an interview with Diane Sawyer, his eyes have the same fixed quality. Seated onstage at an advertising conference, his body remains still while he gesticulates with his arms.
The real Zuckerberg’s appearance is a performance from a not particularly gifted actor, though nobody expects a coding genius to be an entertainer. His mannerisms barely shifted as he became more famous. That blankness made it easy for actors to project onto him — Eisenberg, but also Jeremy Strong, who plays him as a seething, embattled middle-aged executive in the new follow-up, “The Social Reckoning.” By now it has become clear just how much of Zuckerberg’s real persona has been an act.
But that was not yet the Zuckerberg we saw in “The Social Network.” As portrayed by Eisenberg, he was a different kind of guy. The general public wasn’t all that familiar with him yet, so Eisenberg didn’t need to do an impression. He had free rein to play the executive as an idea: a smug, insolent teenager secretly desperate for connection.
Thus the Zuckerberg of “The Social Network” is a motormouth, twitchy, brilliant, a brat. He’s a force in perpetual motion, tossing staccato zingers at his opponents and skirting the rules and hierarchies that govern stodgy Harvard. When he comes to rest, it’s to gather energy to strike again. In a scene in which he’s called before a Harvard disciplinary board, his foot taps rapidly, not with nerves so much as pent-up energy, and his eyes dart around the room.
