While shooting A Real Pain, Kieran Culkin didn’t love being told where to sit. This sort of direction had become unfamiliar for the Emmy- and Golden Globe winning actor, after four seasons of the freewheeling, improvisational methods on HBO’s Succession. Here, in the story of estranged cousins reuniting for a trip to Poland to honor their grandmother, Culkin found himself adapting to the relatively exacting rhythms of his director, Jesse Eisenberg—who just so happened to be his co-star as well. “It was tough because actors aren’t supposed to note other actors, and it was very awkward for me to be doing a scene with him and…go,’“Oh God, he’s switched hats, he’s wearing the director hat now,’” Culkin said. “That took a moment for me.”
Last week, Culkin shared this and other insights alongside Vanity Fair’s David Canfield and Richard Lawson at the SCAD Savannah Film Festival, joining the Little Gold Men podcast’s first live show of this awards season. For his wiry, affecting performance as the adrift Benji, Culkin is stirring strong Oscar buzz this fall and has already nabbed a Gotham Award nomination. Acquired by Searchlight out of Sundance, A Real Pain is coming off of a robust opening in limited release this past weekend, and as one of the most acclaimed films on the circuit right now, it’s primed to continue building momentum over the next two months.
And lucky us, because Culkin is never anything but himself in conversation—candid, unpredictable, sharply funny—even amid the buzz of campaigning. On stage before a sold-out audience, the actor reflected on his struggles to leave Succession behind, the cult phenomenon of Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, his upcoming return to Broadway, and much more. Above, you can listen to the full episode; read on below for excerpts from their conversation with Culkin.
On how Eisenberg cast him in A Real Pain:
It must’ve been bizarre: He cast me without auditioning me or without seeing a single thing that I was in. And he acts like this is a totally normal thing. I mean, I found out after the fact he’s seen Home Alone, but I don’t think I got the part based on wetting the bed when I was seven, allegedly.
He’s like, “Well, I met you before.” And I’m like, “You met me twice in passing. That is not how you cast somebody. How did you know?” He must’ve been terrified on the first day that I was going to suck or something.
On Eisenberg’s style as a director:
Somebody asked recently if it made me feel like I want to direct, which I don’t. I don’t have that thing in me, but I get why the question is asked. We’re about the same age, we’ve been acting for a very long time. This made me look at it and the way he did it and go, “Well, okay, I don’t want to, but if I did, I would want to do it the way he did it.” He was very much in charge. It’s his movie, but he really leaned on all the departments and everybody there—and not just the heads of departments. He would ask somebody in one department what they thought of the shot, even though it has nothing to do with what it is they do. There was this feeling of, “We’re all making a movie. It’s his movie, but we’re all making his movie.” It was really nice to feel like there was that collaboration, that our opinion was heard.
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