Living with Kieran Culkin: On ‘Real Pain,’ the “Terror” After ‘Success’ and His Next Big Role
While shooting A real pain, Kieran Culkin Doesn’t like being shown where to sit. This direction has become unfamiliar to the Emmy and Golden Globe-winning actor, after four seasons of adopting freewheeling, improvisational methods on HBO. Inheritance. Here, in this story of estranged cousins reunited on a trip to Poland to honor their grandmother, Culkin finds himself adapting to a relatively precise rhythm. of his director, Jesse Eisenberg—who happened to be his co-star. “It was difficult because actors weren’t allowed to pay attention to other actors, and it was very awkward for me to do a scene with him and…go,’ “Oh my God, he changed his hat, now he He’s wearing his director’s hat,’ ” Culkin said. “That took me a bit of time.”
Last week, Culkin shared this and other details along with Vanity fair‘S David Canfield And Richard Lawson at the SCAD Savannah Film Festival, participating Little golden boys the podcast’s first live show this awards season. With his toughness and affecting performance as the lost Benji, Culkin is stirring up strong Oscar buzz this fall and has already earned a Gotham Award nomination. Acquired by Searchlight out of Sundance, A real pain Coming off a strong opening in limited release this past weekend and as one of the most acclaimed films out today, it is expected to continue to build momentum over the next two months.
And lucky for us, because Culkin is never anything but himself in conversation — candid, unpredictable, wildly funny — even amid the noise of the campaign. On stage before a sold-out audience, the actor reflected on his struggle to leave Inheritance behind, the cult phenomenon Scott Pilgrim vs The World, His upcoming return to Broadwayand much more. Above, you can listen to the entire episode; Read below for excerpts from their conversation with Culkin.
About how Eisenberg cast him in A real pain:
It must have been strange: He cast me without auditioning me or seeing anything about me. And he acts like this is a completely normal thing. I mean, I found out after he saw it at home alonebut I don’t think I got the role based on wetting the bed when I was seven, supposedly.
He said, “Well, I’ve seen you before.” And I said, “By chance you have met me twice. That’s not how you choose someone. How do you know?” He must have been scared the first day because I was going to suck or something.
About Eisenberg’s directing style:
Someone recently asked if that made me feel like directing, but I don’t. I don’t have that in me, but I understand why this question was asked. We’re 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 say, “Well, okay, I don’t want to, but if I wanted to, I’d want to do it the way he did it.” He’s in charge of a lot. It’s his movie, but he really relies on all the departments and people in them — not just the department heads. He’ll ask someone in the department what they think about the scene, even though it has nothing to do with the work they do. It felt like “We’re all making a movie. It was his movie, but we were all making his movie.” It’s nice to feel like there’s that collaboration, that our opinions are heard.
