Aaron Sorkin was witness to Jeremy Strong‘s “immersive” acting style while shooting The Social Reckoning.
In the writer and director’s recent follow-up to The Social Network, the Succession actor takes over the role of Mark Zuckerberg from Jesse Eisenberg. While speaking with The New Yorker staff editor Tyler Foggatt at the 2026 New Yorker Festival on Sunday (Oct. 25), Sorkin described Strong as “a very immersive actor.”
“He’s not a nut. He’s not crazy,” Sorkin insisted. “He, of course, understands when he’s making a movie that he’s making a movie. He sees the crew and the cameras and everything. He just—he is a guy who studied at the knee of Daniel Day-Lewis for several years after studying at Yale. And I—I don’t think it’s the way he likes to work. I think it’s the only way he knows how to. I think it’s the only way he knows how to do it.”
Specifically, Sorkin said that from his very first day on set—which was “about a week or two into shooting”—he “only heard” Strong “speak as” Zuckerberg, “using Mark’s voice, walking as Mark, [and] dressed as Mark.”
“It wasn’t until his last day of shooting, after his last shot, I called cut, checked the gate, and he just walked right up to me and in his own voice said, ‘If I had been playing Jeff [Horowitz], I’d have been defending Jeff,’” he added.
Sorkin also confirmed what Strong had told The New Yorker Editor David Remnick on The New Yorker Radio Hour, that Strong would send him emails as the Facebook founder.
“Yes, he would send me emails all the time defending a particular position of Mark’s,” he shared.
However, Sorkin experienced even more of Strong’s acting approach about “a month or two” after wrapping The Social Reckoning. He received a call from Strong, who was shooting The Boys from Brazil, in which he plays a “Polish Nazi-hunter.”
“He called me a month or two after we wrapped just to tell me, ‘If you look at the third take on this setup, I think I was better than’— that kind of thing. But without any introduction, without any preamble, he was talking to me as a Polish Nazi-hunter,” he recalled, as the audience laughed. “I was just supposed to understand. He has a wife and a couple of young kids at home, and I don’t know what life is like.”
The Social Reckoning is in theaters now.
