While giving his all to his The Social Reckoning portrayal of Mark Zuckerberg, Jeremy Strong reached out to the Meta CEO and Facebook co-founder.
The Oscar nominee recently revealed that he emailed Zuckerberg to assure him he takes the “responsibility very seriously,” noting that the tech mogul responded. Strong would not reveal the details of Zuckerberg’s email.
“I wrote to him—I’m probably going to give Sony an aneurysm—I sent him an email,” Strong told GQ. “Just to say that I take this responsibility very seriously, and the veracity of it seriously, and I’m approaching it with respect.”
After The Social Network (2010) recounted Zuckerberg’s creation of Facebook and the controversy that ensued, screenwriter Aaron Sorkin returned to write and direct the upcoming sequel, which premieres Oct. 9, focusing on a 2021 document leak that exposed harm Facebook caused on society.
Noting that “it’s crazy to take this on at all,” Strong explained of the role, “Listen, I know that he is a reviled person and not a popular person in our culture, but I do not think you should have an actor playing him who wants to set out to condemn him.”
“It feels incredibly fraught to talk about the movie, to talk about Mark and being the person who is playing Mark and representing Mark in a sense to the world and to posterity; I feel an enormous sense of weight and responsibility,” added Strong. “And listen, my job is to understand and defend his point of view and fight his fight.”
In The Social Reckoning, Facebook engineer Frances Haugen (Mikey Madison) goes to Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz (Jeremy Allen White) with the social media platform’s most guarded secrets. Bill Burr, Wunmi Mosaku, Billy Magnussen and Betty Gilpin also star.
