Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. It doesn't seem like a road trip buddy comedy and a Holocaust film are two genres that could work together, but writer, director, and actor Jesse Eisenberg was able to walk that delicate tightrope to great acclaim in his new film, A Real Pain. The pair at the center of the film are cousins. David is anxious, shy, solid. He's got a wife and son he loves dearly. He's played by Jesse. Then there's his cousin Benji, played by Kieran Culkin. He's charming and gregarious and emotionally unstable.

The two cousins are on a trip to Poland. Their beloved grandmother survived the Holocaust, and they want to visit her hometown to get a better sense of their family roots. That comes with trauma, but Benji and David have very different approaches to traveling and to socializing, and to life in general. Let's listen to a moment from the film that gives you a sense of how different these cousins are. This is Benji and David on a train in Poland.

David: Yo, we should just buy tickets like normal people.

Benji: There's no time. Come on. We stay moving, we stay light, we stay agile. The conductor's going to come through taking tickets. We tell him we're going to the bathroom.

David: Bathroom. Okay.

Benji: He gets to the back of the train, he's going to start heading towards the front looking for stragglers.

David: Sorry, we're the stragglers?

Benji: Yes. By the time he gets to the front, the train's going to be in the station, and we're home free.

David: This is so [bleep] stupid.

Benji: Man, what's stupid is the corporatization of travel, ensuring that the rich move around the world to propagate their elitist loins, while the poor stay cut off from society.

David: That's great. We can argue Marxism when they're hauling us off to Siberia.

Benji: Siberia's in Russia, Dave.

David: This is ridiculous. Tickets are probably like $12.

Benji: That's the principle of the thing. We shouldn't have to pay for train tickets in Poland. This is our country.

David: No, it's not. It was our country. They kicked us out because they thought we were cheap.

Alison Stewart: A Real Pain has won accolades from critics and viewers alike. Just yesterday, it was nominated by the Writers Guild of America for Best Screenplay. Same for the BAFTAs. When Kieran Culkin won Best Supporting Actor at the Golden Globes, he said in his acceptance speech, "I am here because Jesse Eisenberg wrote an incredible script." The movie is still in theaters now, and starting today, it's available to stream on Hulu. Writer, director, and star of the film, Jesse Eisenberg joins me to discuss. It's really nice to see you.

Jesse Eisenberg: Nice to see you too. Thank you so much, Alison.

Alison Stewart: I heard that you wrote the script initially in e-mails versus using like final draft, which is the software most writers use.

Jesse Eisenberg: Right.

Alison Stewart: How did e-mails help you develop the story?

Jesse Eisenberg: I've written plays and essays for 20 years and I always write in e-mail form because I don't want to ever think of the thing as like going to need to be produced. I want to think of them more as like diary entries. It allows me to just be a little more creatively open-minded than if I were to put it in some program that has-- It feels like it's so presumptuous to put it in one of these scriptwriting programs where it looks like, of course, this would be made. It allows me to not censor myself.

Sometimes the scripts are way too long because I'm not aware of the formatting, but otherwise, it allows me to just write in a way that doesn't censor myself. The only problem is I lose stuff a lot because I'll misplay something or not save something. I'll lose stuff, but it's okay because if something's really great, it stays with you.

Alison Stewart: Oh, that's so interesting. It really opens you up creatively, it sounds like.

Jesse Eisenberg: Yes, but I could also hear my parents saying the fact that you're writing on a computer at all is the least creative thing you could do. Then their parents, of course, used quills. I'm not that far off from regular.

Alison Stewart: From the jump of the film, we learned that David and Benji are really different. They're like really id and superego. What happens in your mind when the id and superego have to get along?

Jesse Eisenberg: [chuckles] Yes, I think about that kind of thing all the time of like, I straddle this weird world because I'm like a performer and I have a extroverted profession, but I'm like so many actors, shy. A lot of actors are shy to the point where they only feel comfortable getting into the skin of another character. There's this strange paradox of them being known publicly and having their intimate personal details displayed in public, while at the same time being incredibly shy private people. I would certainly fall into all of those categories.

I'm constantly just doing battle in my head with the outgoing version of myself versus my instinct, which is to just walk into the corner of the room and face the wall.

Alison Stewart: [laughs] Like it would have been good in a baby girl. She did [crosstalk]

Jesse Eisenberg: Right, Exactly. Yes. Right.

Alison Stewart: When you were thinking about--

Jesse Eisenberg: Sorry, I get the joke. Sorry. Yes, you're right.

Alison Stewart: Have you ever been on a trip with someone where you knew, "I'm just not like this person. I'm traveling with this person that I--"

Jesse Eisenberg: Oh, yes. The first time I left the country was to go with my wife to Venezuela. I was 18 years old, and my wife was like-- My wife comes from a left-wing activist family, and she was curious about the president at the time. Chavez, at the time, he was not seen as that much of a dictator. In fact, he was seen as maybe doing good work for Indigenous groups in Venezuela. I knew nothing. I didn't know where Venezuela was on a map. I didn't know that it was a country but my wife said--

We were starting to date early, and she said, "I'm going there this Christmas, to go on a tour of Venezuela and to go to the Orinoco Delta," which is this place on the water there. "You can come with me or not." I decided, "Cool, I'm going to go with this awesome person." We went there and she was just-- She speaks Spanish too, so that was helpful, but also, she was just like this-- She would meet strangers and talk to them, and she was communicating with Indigenous people and some agreed-upon language, and it was just amazing.

We've traveled around the world together for the last 20 years. She is just so different than me and people love her. I could tell when I walk into a room, no one's really thrilled to have me there. I don't know, I bring in some kind of annoying energy, but I could tell with her, she just lights up a room and she goes into rooms of strangers and different things, and everybody just seems to smile when she walks in.

Alison Stewart: [laughs] You said you come into the room and people do what?

Jesse Eisenberg: I could tell. I don't know what it is or how to control it, but I could tell I kind of bring rooms down. I don't know if I seem cloying or anxious or unsure of myself. I could tell I ruin a lot of rooms I walk into. By contrast, my wife, she walks in late to places, like, unprepared, doesn't know what they're talking about. Everybody just seems to be warm to her. It's kind of this magical thing.

Alison Stewart: You're doing fine in this room.

Jesse Eisenberg: Thank you.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Jesse Eisenberg. He's the writer and director and the star of the new movie A Real Pain. It's available to stream now on Hulu. We meet these two guys, David and Benjamin, at the airport. Benji, excuse me, why did you want to introduce the characters to us this way? In the airport? Ready to go?

Jesse Eisenberg: I was very conscious of making a movie with these heavy themes. They're on a heritage tour of Poland. It's a Holocaust-themed kind of movie. I just wanted the movie to feel as kind of like efficient, accessible, warm, and inviting as possible to try to get away from what I felt was just a very long trend of sanctimonious Holocaust movies that in some ways are telling a story but also kind of punishing the audience for not going through what their characters are going through. I just wanted to get away from that as much as possible.

I was just trying to make an efficient story as accessible that you meet these characters and the clip you just played shows their dialogue and their banter. Feels more like it's on a buddy movie than it feels like it's on some self-important Holocaust tour. I was constantly just trying to figure out how to make this like on the surface appear not shallow, but accessible while also talking about these bigger themes. Characters meet at the airport, we're already on the trip with them as opposed to an older style of movie probably would have set up the characters in their work lives and everything.

The great thing about having audiences that are so comfortable watching movies is they know shortcuts so they can see me walk into an airport with my bag and they already know everything about me. They don't have to understand that I do this job and have this life. Same thing with Kieran's character. The movie is really dissection of Kieran's character and he's really kind of this unknowable kind of guy and he's incredibly charming, but also has depression. It's a great way to introduce him too in public in this big setting.

Alison Stewart: Let's take a listen to how Benji introduces himself and his cousin David to the tour group.

Benji: So Davers and I are cousins. Actually, we were born three weeks apart, which is kind of nuts.

David: Yes.

Benji: A zloty for anyone who can guess which one of us is older. [laughter] Our dads are brothers. We're basically brothers too. Wouldn't you say, Dave? We used to be joined at the hip like [bleep] Katie and Eilish. Remember them?

David: Yes, don't say that.

Benji: Our Grandma Dory, Grandma Dory, she was from here and we've always wanted to see where she came from and see the house that she grew up in.

David: Yes, that's actually why we're leaving the tour a day early. Benji insisted on seeing her little town. They were super close.

Benji: Yes. She was the [bleep] coolest. Right. I've just been, like, in a real funk, I guess, since she died. Just haven't-- Yes, sorry. She was just my favorite person in the world.

James: It's good to remember that's why we're here in a way.

Benji: So thank you, James. Thanks for saying that.

Alison Stewart: There's so much in that clip, just in saying, "Don't say that."

Jesse Eisenberg: Yes. He's talking about these conjoined twins.

Alison Stewart: What did you want that introduction to tell us about Benji and David?

Jesse Eisenberg: Oh, just the way they navigate groups. Like my character is so mortified to even be existing in a group setting because he just feels mired in the shame of his upbringing and his stupid mind. Benji, by contrast, just comes alive in a group, in fact, only comes alive in a group. That's his fuel. It's David's most uncomfortable place to be and they have to introduce themselves. I've been on some of these tours. We went to several countries where I do these group tours and I see, again, it's like, sorry to bring up my great wife, but she's so cool.

She is remembering what everybody says around the group and tying it into her life, but not in a way that's self-indulgent. Then I'm just, like, so deeply uncomfortable with myself that I, in some ways ruin the group dynamic because I'm trying to be respectful of the group. I bring it down because they can sense in me-- I'm sure of it. They can sense in me that I don't have nice energy. Something like that.

Alison Stewart: How did you decide on their names? David and Benji or Benjamin. They have special meaning in Hebrew.

Jesse Eisenberg: Oh, that's so interesting. What is it?

Alison Stewart: I believe David's one's beloved. I believe Benjamin is the son of something.

Jesse Eisenberg: Oh, right. Ibin. Right. Oh, that makes sense. These are characters that I had actually written in two different plays. My first play that I wrote was called The Revisionist, I played a character named David who sneaks weed to Poland and stays with his second cousin. My third play is called The Spoils, where I played a character named Ben, who is kind of like this. These were just characters that I had been toying with in different media. I wrote a short story about these two guys going to Mongolia.

These characters, I put them in the same room together, and then that was the initial nugget for this script was that short story I wrote about these two guys, Benji and David, going to Mongolia together. Then it switched to be this Holocaust tour. My background is acting, obviously, so I'm thinking like an actor all the time.

Alison Stewart: Interesting.

Jesse Eisenberg: I've written many things, but I always have monologues that are discarded that are not in the final products because I'm thinking about the characters so much that I try to get in their voices so much before I actually write dialogue with them. I could put these two guys in any situation. They're on a Holocaust tour, but I could put them in any situation. I knew what their conversation would sound like.

Alison Stewart: Benjamin, son of the right hand.

Jesse Eisenberg: Whoa.

Alison Stewart: Yes.

Jesse Eisenberg: Son of the right hand. That's pretty specific. Oh, okay, got it.

Alison Stewart: What do you think they were like as kids?

Jesse Eisenberg: I think the dynamic you see in the movie was pretty similar to when they were kids, except in its pure form. Now, as adults, we value things like David's stability and everything, but when they're kids, none of that stuff matters. It's just that Benji is incredibly winning and charming, and David's neurotic, as Benji says, "We went to sleepaway camp." He says, "We went to Jewy, sleepaway camp, and I had to hug him to sleep and talk about his sweet mom every night just to get him to go to sleep."

Now David's medicated his OCD away and some of his anxiety, so he has a little more stability in his life. We look at David as an audience as maybe having, like, just a little more normalcy. Benji is still that winning, charming person, but maybe we look at it with a little bit of, like, what's going on underneath.

Alison Stewart: I think the people in the tour group look at him that way.

Jesse Eisenberg: Yes, exactly.

Alison Stewart: At first, like, "Oh, he's so charming." Then when the dinner scene and he leaves the table, everybody's like, "There's so much going on with him."

Jesse Eisenberg: Yes, exactly. It's a love-hate thing. Like, because he's so charming and because he's so feeling, it's impossible to not love him. There's one character in the movie, he doesn't love him, but for the most part, people feel a great sensitivity towards this guy, as do I. I was writing the movie and feeling this. My heart was open to that character. Then in performing it too, even though he's kind of tormenting me for a lot of the movie, my heart was just so wide open to this person because you could see they're a bit of an open wound.

Even though they're incredibly charming and gregarious, when they're sad, they're publicly and profoundly sad.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Jesse Eisenberg. He is the writer, director, and star of the new movie, A Real Pain. It's available to stream now on Hulu. You can see in the movie theater as well. When was the first time that you visited Poland?

Jesse Eisenberg: My wife and I went to Poland in 2008, just kind of like backpacking through. Not on this guided tour that the characters do in the movie. The first thing we did was stay with my cousin Maria, who was a survivor of the war and stayed in Poland. Then the next thing we did was to try to go to the opposite side of the country, the southeastern part of the country, to see this little house in my family lived in up until 1939. It's actually the house that you see in the movie. The characters visit my family's actual house.

Alison Stewart: Wow.

Jesse Eisenberg: It was kind of a weird non-epiphany, actually. We went to this house. It was before Google Maps. It was a struggle to get to this town even, and we finally get to this town and to this little house. I'm standing outside this house and my family lived in up until they were removed and killed. I remember just like not feeling anything. I was just like, "Oh, I'm just standing outside this apartment." It taught me a lot about the reality of trying to connect to your history and to your past in ways that are not satisfying.

It just occurred to me when I was writing this movie that I can kind of capture some of that irony, some of that anticlimactic quality of trying to connect to your past and not finding the connection where you expect it. Not finding the connection in a concentration camp, not finding the connection at the house. Actually finding more of a connection between your own past with your family member, which is what this movie is detailing, me and my cousin. My emotions are all tied up in my personal history with my cousin rather than trying to connect to a three-story apartment building in the southeast of Poland.

Alison Stewart: What was something that you learned about Polish history that you didn't know before?

Jesse Eisenberg: I probably have like an overly sympathetic perspective on Polish history. Poland was torn apart by both sides from the Germans and the Russians. Then prior to that, it was not a country for a very long time. Up until 1918, it was not a country. I also have, again, maybe an outsized sympathy for Poland during the war. The Nazis built their death camps on Polish soil, partly so that they don't have to deal with it. Then the Russians came in and just really screwed the Poles during this uprising of Warsaw in 1944.

The Russians really just ruined them. I've developed a really strong sensitivity towards Polish history that sometimes is in conflict, let's say, with some of my older relatives who look at Poland like, "Oh, they're anti-Semites. Look, that's where--" They were happy that-- This is not my experience at all. The other just weird kind of interesting little anecdote is that we shot at all these places, including concentration camp, and all these memorials. They're all run by these young academic people who graduated with great college degrees and decided to spend their lives and their intellectual capital by working at these sites of horror.

I felt a great indebtedness and gratitude towards the people who again, these would be people in our country who are doing tours of American tragedies and you would say, wow, they're really doing amazing work. That's what these people in Poland are doing with Jewish history.

Alison Stewart: It's interesting because in the movie, Benji has an issue with how academic the tour guide is. I've had that happen before where I've been like, "Excuse me, this is not Afro-Disney. I'm in Africa. Why are you explaining this to me? Stop."

Jesse Eisenberg: Oh, interesting. You've had that feeling.

Alison Stewart: Yes, I don't know what that says, but I had that feeling. I remember in the film, your character wants him to quiet down. Why does he want him to quiet down?

Jesse Eisenberg: Because the way Benji's expressing himself is so caustic. That's the problem. Also because I just would-- It's interesting to hear you say that because you're really nice.

Alison Stewart: I'm a nice person. [laughs]

Jesse Eisenberg: Yes. That was surprising to me because I guess I thought somebody who would do that on a trip. Did you yell at somebody, or you just had this feeling?

Alison Stewart: No, I just had the face.

Jesse Eisenberg: Oh, well, that's why.

Alison Stewart: I just made the face.

Jesse Eisenberg: Okay, got.

Alison Stewart: Seriously, we're going to do this here.

Jesse Eisenberg: Even that face as you're doing it to me now doesn't seem that severe. The interesting thing about Kieran's character is that he's pretty much right. All of his arguments are right but the way he expresses himself is so caustic. The interesting thing that happens after he yells at the tour guide for being too academic is the tour guide comes to him later and says, "You changed my life. No one's ever given me actionable feedback. Now I think I'm going to change the way I do my tours." Kieran's character goes, "Oh, really? What did I say?" He has no recollection.

Alison Stewart: Oh, that's so hard. Before I leave Poland, two things. Did you have to-- I'm sure you had to get permission to film in the camps. Did you have to do anything special to film in the camps?

Jesse Eisenberg: Yes, we filmed in Majdanek, this concentration camp that's like five minutes outside this bustling college town called Lublin. It took a long time to, I use the word negotiate, which is a kind of crass word to talk about, really just kind of connecting with these people who work there and for them to understand that my intentions were good. That I did not want to make a cool, exploitative movie where I'm going to have extras in Nazi uniforms running through their camp.

No, I was trying to make a movie that celebrated the work that they do, which has turned this amazing place of terror into a museum of education.

Alison Stewart: My guest, Jesse Eisenberg, he is the writer, director, and the star of the new movie A Real Pain. You can watch it on Hulu. You can see it in the movie theater as well. Who did you see as Benji before you met Kieran?

Jesse Eisenberg: I was originally going to play that part.

Alison Stewart: Oh, really?

Jesse Eisenberg: Yes. If you read the script, you'll see that's the fun. He's fun, he's like the character you'd want to do in an acting class, because he says everything that's on his mind. When he cries, he's crying in public. When he's yelling, he's yelling in public. It's the fun character. I was going to act in that role and try to cast the character I played, David. One of our producers is the unparalleled Emma Stone. She has a production company, and so she has produced my two movies and is producing my third.

She's an amazing producer. She just said, "I would urge you to not play a character that's so unhinged, spontaneous, while trying to direct." As a director, you're really trying to, like, run a circus. You're accounting for schedules and having to put out little social fires, et cetera. To play this part that Kieran was playing would have been really tough. Kieran was, like, living in the spirit of this. He never rehearsed, he never wanted to talk about it. He memorized his lines the day of, and yet every take, he was brilliant.

I found out towards the end of the movie, he was sleeping two hours a night on his hotel room floor. I think he was just living in the spirit of this character in a way that I think would have been impossible for me. He's so great. He's better than I would have been. I'm so lucky that I was, let's say, demoted by Emma Stone.

Alison Stewart: Was it hard to deal with someone living in the moment, living like Benji, when you're the director?

Jesse Eisenberg: It was hard because I didn't know if he knew his lines. Basically, he has the most dialogue in the movie, and he's supposed to be rapid-fire. Like he and I both normally talk. I didn't know if he knew his lines any day because he would ask me in the morning, "What scene are we doing today?" Which is not a thing you want to hear your actors talk. It's like, I tell him it's the scene I thought of two years ago that I've been living with for two years, and you have five pages of a monologue on a train.

He would say, "Oh, cool, can I see the script?" I'd show him the script. I'm like, "I just can't believe I'm having this conversation." He would memorize it within two minutes, and he'd be word-perfect. Once I realized that this is just the way he works that he's just some kind of unusual genius, then it was a joy to work with him. Then every day felt like, "What is this guy going to do today? I cannot wait to see it." I told him, too. I told him. We had a scene together, and after the scene ended, I said, "I heard all these stories of these lecherous male directors falling in love with their ingenues in the '30s, '40s, the Warner Brothers and stuff like that."

I was like, "I think I feel that for you," because he was doing so good in my thing. I was just like, "You're just so amazing." I just was so grateful.

Alison Stewart: I think you came on the show when your directorial debut was when you finished Saving the World. What did you learn from that experience that was valuable to you on this show?

Jesse Eisenberg: That movie wasn't received as well because I think basically people didn't connect to the characters in a way I assumed they would. The acting was amazing. It starred Julianne Moore and Finn Wolfhard, two of the greatest actors in their generation, their respective generations. I think I had an assumption about how people would perceive the characters that was different than the way they were perceived. It occurred to me that you have to do some-- I don't know if the word is spoon feeding.

You have to do some explication, some clarification that it's okay to love these characters who are flawed. I didn't do that enough with that movie. My background is theater playwriting and you don't have to do that as much in plays because plays are not really about-- audiences don't go to plays as much trying to follow this protagonist and relate to them. Play, it's just a different kind of medium. I didn't do that well enough with that first movie. It taught me a lesson to make it a little more clear that the audience is allowed to love these characters who are not being always their best selves.

Alison Stewart: This movie has been received so warmly.

Jesse Eisenberg: Yes.

Alison Stewart: Congratulations, first of all.

Jesse Eisenberg: Thanks.

Alison Stewart: Yes. How do you balance that with your life, with your kid, with your wife going to the grocery store? In the middle of this movie really blowing up and really affecting people's lives?

Jesse Eisenberg: It's interesting. There's nothing I could do about it now. It's totally done. The onus is upon the distribution company, Searchlight, who is like the best in the world at this kind of stuff, to make sure the movie is received well and seen by all the people who might have an interest in seeing this thing. In terms of it being well received and that being helpful to me, I want to make a movie every year. I'm already doing my next movie. This being well received allows me, I'm sure, to make it like two. You know what I mean?

Alison Stewart: Oh, that's interesting.

Jesse Eisenberg: If they're not well received, then I maybe got to do something else or go back to the drawing board. I know I can make two movies from the success of this one because my movies are small and easy and I write quickly and I could act in them, so it already has actor involved. I know I can get two from this. That's the way I think about it more than, like, how can I rest on today's laurels or something?

Alison Stewart: How has it affected your real life, though, when you go get a cup of coffee?

Jesse Eisenberg: Oh, I've been a known movie actor for, like, 20 years, and the novelty of that wears off so quickly. I think that-- I don't know who said this or something, but it's like everybody wants to be famous until they are. Then it's just like this kind of you meet people on the street and some people are nice and some people it's kind of like you're now 10 minutes late to do something. No one really has interest in my personal life, so I'm okay. I was friends with Kristen Stewart for many years, and she would have helicopters and stuff following her.

Alison Stewart: Poor thing.

Jesse Eisenberg: I don't have any of that kind of stuff. I just have the upside of, like, occasionally I get a free cookie.

Alison Stewart: Is there anything anybody has not asked you about this film yet that you just really want to just shout out? Something that you've been wanting to say.

Jesse Eisenberg: No. Except the thing you brought up earlier, which we talked about a little bit, I just want to reaffirm it, which is that for American Jews listening to this interview, of which there are probably many, many, I wish you would understand what Poland is now and the work that people are doing there to memorialize our history and to turn perhaps the cynical reputation you might feel for Poland to something quite different. My experience was so hopeful and beautiful and wonderful, and the people I met who are working there, non-Jewish Poles, are doing us a great service.

Alison Stewart: The name of the film is A Real Pain. My guest has been Jesse Eisenberg. Thanks for coming to the studio, Jesse.

Jesse Eisenberg: Thanks. Always so nice to talk to you, Alison. Thank you.