You couldn’t imagine a more ideal setting for “The Debut” than Alice Tully Hall on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, where it had its New York premiere Wednesday evening as part of the New York Film Festival.
The third feature film from writer-director Jesse Eisenberg, and follow-up to his Oscar-winning “A Real Pain,” is set in 1990 and follows Mona Friedman (Julianne Moore), a timid, browbeaten housewife in Central Jersey who disrupts her mind-numbing routine by auditioning for the role of the janitor in a community theater production of the musical “Nosy Neighbors.” There, she finds community among her castmates (Halle Bailey and Colton Ryan among them) and clashes with her imperious director (the inimitable Paul Giamatti), as she falls deeper and deeper into character. Eisenberg’s film garnered considerable laughs — and applause — from the theater-going crowd at its starry NYFF screening that saw Eisenberg, the cast, producer Emma Stone and even Claire Danes in attendance.
Eisenberg was born in Queens and grew up in East Brunswick, New Jersey, and said during a post-screening Q&A that he modeled Mona’s journey after “the community that I found” doing local theater, where “the shows were always secondary to the backstage family.”
“I’ve done community theater where the talent is just as good as Broadway talent, but they don’t feel this personal ambition to be center stage,” he explained, making it “so much sweeter than what we do.”
But Eisenberg confessed that the “tonally odd” film is, first and foremost, a monument to Moore, who also starred in Eisenberg’s directorial debut. He wrote the role specifically for her and sang the Oscar-winning actress’s praises to the New York crowd.
“If you didn’t know that beforehand, I imagine you can tell that now,” he offered. “Has there ever been a more perfect performance?”
Moore, who is getting plenty of Oscar buzz for her no-holds-barred performance, said she wanted to do another musical after “Dear Evan Hansen,” an experience she “loved” because it was “scary and fun.” She also was attracted to the script and the idea of inhabiting Eisenberg.
“I am in effect his avatar, and the fact that he put his experience in a middle-aged woman’s body is extraordinary,” Moore attested.
She continued: “This is a person who doesn’t feel like they fit into their life and is on the brink of change… What does it mean to step into something just because you have this desire? And where do you go from there?”
Moore said that Eisenberg’s script made Mona relatable to everyone since it “actualized this very human feeling of wanting something and not knowing what it is.”
