“Richard Ayoade, who’s like my favourite director of all time,” says Eisenberg, who worked with Ayoade on The Double, and may or may not have used him as considerable inspiration for the character of James, “would always tell me that when the characters are experiencing a lot of emotions explicitly, it can take away from the experience because it unburdens the audience from sitting with something. He explained that to me many, many times when I was overacting in his movie.”
Every day is 24 hours of panic to just get out the door’: Jesse Eisenberg on self-indulgence, candid aunts and his Oscar-tipped Holocaust comedy
The writer-director of A Real Pain and co-stars Kieran Culkin, Jennifer Grey and Will Sharpe talk about being overcome by generational trauma while making Oscar season’s funniest film