A note from Wild Card host Rachel Martin: I appreciate Jesse Eisenberg not just because he's really good at acting, but because he helps me raise my kids. That may sound unnecessarily provocative, but here's what I mean: Eisenberg tends to play male characters with deep interior lives. Characters who spend a lot of time feeling things like anxiety, fear, insecurity. They are also big hearted and kind. And on screen, we see Eisenberg's characters trying to find their place in a world where men are expected to flatten their vulnerabilities and all of their emotions to fit into some antiquated definition of masculinity.
What does this have to do with my kids? Well, I've got two boys, they're 10 and 12, and I very much want for them to turn into young men who are comfortable living through every one of their emotions. And maybe I'm giving Hollywood too much power in my life, but it feels affirming as a parent to see these kinds of male characters on screen.
Cases in point: The Squid and the Whale, The Art of Self-Defense, the show Fleishman is in Trouble. And of course the movie that's getting a ton of accolades right now — including a best original screenplay and supporting actor nomination at the Oscars — A Real Pain, which Eisenberg wrote and directed. He also co-stars in the film alongside Kieran Culkin.
This Wild Card interview has been edited for length and clarity. Host Rachel Martin asks guests randomly-selected questions from a deck of cards. Tap play above to listen to the full podcast, or read an excerpt below.
Question 1: What's a moment when you remember being brave as a teenager?
Jesse Eisenberg: Well, so in my senior year of high school, I kind of came into my own a little bit. I grew up in New Jersey, and in my senior year of high school, I transferred to a performing arts high school in New York City. And it was like I just became, like, an adult overnight going there. But the bravest thing I did was probably cut school one day to go see a Broadway matinee of Judgment at Nuremberg — which maybe tells you enough about me to understand my full personality.
My friends and I — we were planning it like a heist at math class in the morning, like, "Yeah, cool I'm gonna meet you at lunch and I think we can get student tickets for the last row mezzanine." So our big transgression in high school was going to see a Broadway matinee.
I'm sure it would have been the kind of thing if our teachers caught us, they'd be like, "Oh my God, you sweet nerds. Of course. Go. That's great. I'm giving you an A anyway."
Question 2: Has ambition ever led you astray?
Eisenberg: I mean, yeah, I think about it all the time. In an attempt for me to stay busy and active I sometimes will push for my things to be done sometimes, even if they're premature. But I will say, I'm not naturally an ambitious person for myself, but I really am quite a worried person about failing. And so it creates an ambition in me by necessity to just try to stay busy at all times.
Rachel Martin: How have you managed that fear of failure? Because that's inevitable. I mean you've had them, right?
Eisenberg: Yeah. I've had far more failures than successes. And my father is a sweet person. He's a teacher and has such sweet perspectives on my life. So, like, with this movie, A Real Pain, it's doing well and everything and, you know, there's a feeling inside of me that this should be the norm and like, "I'm a failure if this is not the norm."
And my dad has kind of a 60,000-foot view or 30,000-foot view – depending on your airline – of what this means. And he tells me things like, "If you have two of these in your career, that's a cool thing." A really successful career to have in the arts is to have, like, let's say two movies that you make that are regarded this nicely.
And so that puts things in perspective, because what it tells me is that this should not be expected to be the norm. And then my friend Jim tells me all the time that if you want a career in the arts, success is basically staying active and busy. The successes are not the one or two things that spike.
Question 3: What is your best defense against despair?
Eisenberg: I married a woman who has the same values as me. I mean, she's a far better person — she teaches disability social justice and awareness in public schools. And her mom ran a domestic violence shelter for 35 years. So she comes from this kind of world.
And I'm preoccupied with privilege versus struggle and meaning versus emptiness, etc. But the interesting thing that occurs to me, though, is that my wife – she just does something about it. She always just says, "OK, so what are you going to do about it?"
So if I'm, like, feeling miserable, she's like, "OK, so what are you going to do about it?" Or I'm like, "I feel so bad about what happened to my friend." She always is just like, "Oh, let's call him now and try to get him a job. Oh, you know what? I can call my friend. She actually knows somebody who just lost their job here. Maybe they can talk. Maybe they can work together." There's not an instinct in her to wallow in it or to, like, make it about herself.
I make it about myself. "Oh God, I feel so guilty." She's not even aware that she's doing something different than me. It's just the way she's wired. And so I look to her all the time, and we've been together forever.
Martin: I think it's so lovely that you found each other.
Eisenberg: Oh, I'm lucky. I'm lucky. Because I'm not wired for anything good. She's wired to do all this good stuff.
Martin: That's not true. I've known you for an hour, and Jesse Eisenberg I don't think you're wired to do nothing good.
Eisenberg: No, no, no. I'm a thoughtful person, but it doesn't lead to, like, you know, benevolent action. She's just, like, she's less contemplative than me. She's just very active and has a good heart.
Copyright 2025 NPR
