Jeremy Strong reveals email he sent to Mark Zuckerberg before playing him in a movie
Stepping into Mark Zuckerberg's shoes is no easy feat when playing him in a biopic, but when those shoes have been worn by Jesse Eisenberg and earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor, there's even more pressure.
We've already seen Jeremy Strong flex his acting chops in HBO's Succession, although taking over from Eisenberg is a whole different challenge. Eisenberg has explained why he's not reprising his role from David Fincher's The Social Network and claimed he's "grown into something else.” This has left the door open for Strong to take his place.
Although some were initially unconvinced by the recast, Strong's impressive transformation physically and vocally has won plenty of critics over. One of those potential skeptics might be Mark Zuckerberg himself, with Strong revealing how he reached out for the tech mogul’s blessing.
What did Jeremy Strong say to Mark Zuckerberg?
It's important to remember that The Social Reckoning isn't a direct sequel to The Social Network, and is instead a companion piece, as writer Aaron Sorkin is promoted to director.
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The Social Reckoning charts a different period of Facebook's somewhat troubled timeline, this time focusing on the 2021 whistleblower leak by Frances Haugen.
Haugen is played by Anora's Mikey Madison, while The Bear's Jeremy Allen White portrays The Wall Street Journal's Jeff Horwitz. Horowitz released Haugen's testimony on Facebook's internal harms as part of the publication's The Facebook Files.
Although Zuckerberg wasn't actually called forward to give Congressional testimony in the aftermath, The Social Reckoning includes a dramatized version of him preparing for that eventuality.
In a candid interview with GQ, Strong revealed what it was like stepping up to play Zuckerberg and how he got in touch with the social media billionaire.
"I wrote to him—I’m probably going to give Sony an aneurysm—I sent him an email,” said Strong. "Just to say that I take this responsibility very seriously, and the veracity of it seriously, and I’m approaching it with respect.'
Although Strong wouldn't reveal what Zuckerberg wrote back, he confirms he got a response. He added that even if Zuckerberg had extended a mythical invite to hang out at the Meta offices for research, he probably wouldn't have accepted.
For the actor, he maintains it's easier to do his job by watching and reading from an objective distance.
What did Mark Zuckerberg say about The Social Network?
With GQ saying The Social Reckoning features a "seemingly even-less-likable Mark Zuckerberg" than in The Social Network, it'll be interesting to see what Zuck has to say. While he never directly criticized Eisenberg's portrayal of him, he called out Fincher's Oscar-winning film and claimed that it presented his motivations for starting the platform as a way to pick up women.
In the first public Q&A at Facebook's Californian headquarters, Zuckerberg admitted he found the movie 'hurtful': "I think the reality is that writing code and then building a product and building a company is not a glamorous enough thing to make a movie about, so you can imagine that a lot of this stuff they had to embellish or make up...They just kind of made up a bunch of stuff that I found kind of hurtful."
He returned to this idea in a 2025 interview with The Colin and Samir Show, again slamming The Social Network as he vented: "It was weird, man. They got all these very specific details of what I was wearing, or these specific things correct, but then the whole narrative arc around my motivations and all this stuff were like, completely wrong."
Eisenberg and Zuckerberg famously crossed paths when the latter delivered an opening monologue during a 2011 episode of Saturday Night Live. When asked what he thought of The Social Network, Zuckerberg said, "Interesting," as Eisenberg replied, "Interesting? I'll take it!"
The two shook hands and seem to have remained cordial since, probably because Eisenberg won't play him again. Let's wait and see what Zuckerberg has to say about Strong's takedown of him when The Social Reckoning releases on October 9.