Jesse Eisenberg has revealed the emotional toll of filming the 2015 drama The End of the Tour.
The 41-year-old Social Network actor explained in a recent interview that he was so affected by the themes depicted in the film that he found himself constantly crying while shooting scenes, and the director had to ask him to stop.
The End of the Tour sees Eisenberg star as a fictionalised version of writer David Lipsky as he reflects on the five-day period spent interviewing novelist David Foster Wallace (How I Met Your Mother’s Jason Segel) after learning of his death.
Eisenberg explained that his character, David Lipsky, was completely envious of the writer he was interviewing, and conveying that feeling became all-consuming.
“I don’t know if I was going through something in my career at that time or something that, for some reason, just mirrored what was happening in that movie,” he told GQ. “And it just was killing me. I really couldn’t stop crying during the scenes. And then the director told me to stop crying during the scenes.”
He continued: “The character I was playing [Lipsky] was a deeply envious person. He is interviewing a writer that he’s deeply, deeply envious of, and it was very uncomfortable for me and very emotional for me to be in that role.”
“I’m sorry, I’m not asking for sympathy – this is the nature of being an actor – but it just hit me in an incredibly personal way.”
He added that the script material affected him in a way that he “couldn’t even explain to a therapist, which I was probably mistakenly not going to at the time”.
“And I just had these very strong feelings for Jason, the actor, who’s really wonderful in the movie. He’s an imposing person, even, and all these very profound feelings of inadequacies were really eating me alive during that movie.”
Eisenberg added that the short filming schedule – due to budgeting issues – meant that he was required to be immersed in character with Segel without any breaks.
“I was just in this world and it actually felt really… I don’t know what the word is, but it really felt actually quite not healthy for me,” he said. “I was glad when the movie ended, even though it was one of the most creatively inspiring experiences I’ve ever had.”
The film was deemed controversial when it aired, since David Foster Wallace’s estate objected it, as did his high-profile writing colleagues.
At the time, Michael Pietsch, Wallace’s longtime book editor and friend, told the Los Angeles Times of the film: “David would have howled the idea for it out of the room had it been suggested while he was living.”
