With ‘A Real Pain,’ Jesse Eisenberg May Have Inspired Kieran Culkin to Direct: ‘If I Did, I Would Want to Do it the Way He Did It’

Though they play diametrically opposed cousins in the recently released film “A Real Pain,” Kieran Culkin and Jesse Eisenberg may be more like-minded in their sensibilities than people might think. Taking part in a live chat for Vanity Fair’s “Little Gold Men” podcast at SCAD Savannah Film Festival, Culkin discussed his appreciation for Eisenberg’s directing style and how it made stepping behind the lens a more approachable possibility for him.

“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, OK, I don’t want to, but if I did, I would want to do it the way he did it,'” said Culkin. “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.”

Despite this freedom to contribute, Culkin did realize he was trying help Eisenberg’s vision come to life and not trying to add new elements or instincts in the way he would on “Succession.”

“[On ‘Succession’] we were given that freedom to talk over each other and just throw shit at the wall and see what happened. It was so much fun. I was scared going into a movie with a filmmaker who wrote it and was directing it,” Culkin said to the crowd at SCAD. “It’s his one vision, and to know that I’m now just doing that — we’re not all making this thing, we’re making his. I was a little bit afraid of coverage and pickup shots and fucking T marks and shit that I had been used to doing my whole life, [but] that we weren’t doing anymore on our show.”

And speaking of facing fears, Culkin is returning to Broadway this spring after an absence of over a decade for a new revival of David Mamet’s “Glengarry Glen Ross.” He co-stars alongside “Better Call Saul” leads Bob Odenkirk and Michael McKean, as well as comedian Bill Burr, and while he used to find working in theater “so freeing,” he now finds it somewhat “restricting.”

“Once I figure out the blocking and everything, now I’m just doing the same thing eight times a week — and I’m terrified of what that is,” said Culkin. “I don’t think I’m ever excited going into a job. It’s just terror.”

“A Real Pain” is now in theaters, released by Searchlight Pictures.