How A Family Member’s Suggestion Led Jesse Eisenberg to Casting Kieran Culkin in ‘A Real Pain’

After making his big screenwriting and directorial debut with 2022’s When You Finish Saving the World, actor Jesse Eisenberg has now followed up with his sophomore project, A Real Pain. This, this time, he takes on the additional task of co-starring in the film.

In A Real Pain, Eisenberg plays David, a tightly wound character who, alongside his manic and unfiltered cousin Benji — played by Kieran Culkin — embarks on a pilgrimage to Poland following the death of his grandmother, a Holocaust survivor. Life choices, family dynamics and generational trauma bubble up to the surface as each handles those in vastly different ways.

The film, which was released in theaters on Nov. 1, made its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January, where it was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize and won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award.

At a recent press conference attended by Casting Networks, Eisenberg revealed the idea for the film stemmed from a personal trip he took to Poland with his wife in 2008, where he sought to explore his ancestry. Despite visiting the house where his family lived until 1939, Eisenberg said he struggled to feel “something profound” and wondered why he didn’t feel an immediate connection to his family’s history.

“That stayed with me for a long time, and when I started writing, all those feelings flooded back,” Eisenberg explained. “Why did I have such a disconnect to the painful history that my family that had been through? This movie was in some ways an exploration of me trying to understand my own modern life in relation to the trauma that my family experienced.”

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Insights: Lessons from Jesse Eisenberg

• Be receptive to suggestions from others when considering roles or casting. This openness can lead to unexpected and potentially perfect casting choices.
• When portraying complex characters, finding the right balance in performance is crucial. Actors should aim for authenticity without veering into extremes.
• The rapport between actors can enhance the promotion of the film. Actors should consider maintaining their on-screen relationships in public appearances to deepen audience engagement with the film and its characters.

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Eisenberg’s approach to writing the script was to create a character-driven road trip that allows the audience to explore foreign landscapes alongside the protagonists. The cousins start their journey as part of a tour group, which includes performances by Jennifer Grey and Will Sharpe, setting the stage for their evolving relationship amidst the backdrop of a foreign country.

When it came to casting, Eisenberg had specific actors in mind for certain roles, starting with himself. “With my character, it’s based on the same kind of difficulties I have in my life,” he noted. “The character has OCD and general anxiety disorder – kind of run-of-the-mill stuff I deal with, and medicate. He’s also thinking about his own problems in relation to his family’s tragic history.”

One role was written specifically for his friend Dan Oreskes, known for his work in Law & Order: Organized Crime. Oreskes plays Mark, a member of the tour group with a dismissive attitude towards Benji. Another tour group member, Eloge, is based on a real person with the same name, but portrayed in the film by Kurt Egyiawan (House of the Dragon).

“The real Eloge is a survivor of the Rwandan genocide and converted to Judaism,” said Eisenberg. “He allowed me to use his story and to represent him on film as a character. He also helped me cast Kurt Egyiawan.”

Photo Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2024 Searchlight Pictures All Rights Reserved.However, casting Cullkin as Benji was his sister’s idea. He recalled having written a scene where all the characters in the tour group were goaded by Benji to take pictures of a big monument. That evening, Eisenberg was visiting with his sister and asked if he could show her what he’d written that day.

“She read it, and said there is only one person on the planet who could play this role, and it’s Kieran Culkin,” recalled the actor. “Even though I wasn’t so familiar with his work, I met him a few times, and he just struck me as this incredibly charming, very comfortable with himself, loveable person who also clearly is encumbered with a little bit of sadness and pain. His emotions are on the surface.”

Eisenberg sent Culkin the script, with a letter, and the duo spoke on the phone. Culkin agreed to star in the film, but by the time the cameras began to roll a year later, the actor no longer wanted to do it. He had just wrapped the final season of the hit show Succession and had not had much of a break over the past five years. Suddenly the idea of going to Poland for the shoot and leaving his family behind was no longer appealing.

“He would go read the script again to see if maybe he could find some holes in it,” Eisenberg explained. “He said he watched my first movie and tried to see if he could hate it.  But he liked my first movie, and he continued to like this script. He told his wife, ‘I’m so sorry, but we’re going to Poland.’”

Photo Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures, © 2024 Searchlight Pictures All Rights Reserved.The actor-filmmaker said he feels “indebted” to Culkin for taking on the part, noting that the Succession star brought so much to the role of Benji which, as Eisenberg describes, could have gone wrong in another actor’s hands: one notch to more comedic would have crossed the role over to absurdity; one notch to melodramatic would have lost the spirit of the character. Culkin was able to find that sweet spot and was recently rewarded with a nomination for Outstanding Supporting Performance by the Gotham Independent Film Awards. (Winners will be announced December 2.)

Today, the dynamic between Eisenberg and Culkin continues to reflect their characters’ relationship. “We do press together and he kind of grabs my face when we’re doing pictures,” Eisenberg noted. “We kind of live in that world a little bit. I think partly because we both really liked our roles, and we feel comfortable in that dynamic, even though it’s fiction.”

Photo Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2024 Searchlight Pictures All Rights Reserved.Thinking about joining Casting Networks? Sign up for a free trial today!

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