Interview: Jesse Eisenberg on WWII feature ‘Resistance’

Mention the name Marcel Marceau and it immediately conjures up the image of the master of mime – white face, striped jersey, and the brilliant ability to conjure up pictures out of thin air.  But he has another, lesser-known, story and one that shows him in a totally different light.

Jonathan Jakubowicz’s Resistance takes us back to Marceau’s earlier years during World War II, when he joined the French Resistance and helped save the lives of hundreds of Jewish children.  Playing him is Oscar-nominated actor Jesse Eisenberg, who admits that Marceau’s wartime story was an eye-opener for him.  He spent months learning the art of mime for the role, something he confesses didn’t come naturally but that ultimately won the approval of his mother, who was originally a children’s entertainer.

Speaking during the lockdown, he talks about the effect of the current situation on mental health as well as the wide range of characters he’s played during his career. And he doesn’t rule out the possibility of returning to perhaps the most controversial of them all – a certain Lex Luthor.

Read the interview in full below.

Whereabouts are you at the moment because obviously, you’re in lockdown like the rest of us?

Yeah, I’m in southern Indiana, which is like, let’s say five hours south of Chicago? That’s our closest big city.

So how are you coping with the current situation then?

I’m doing great. I have a son so I [have been able to] spend some time with him, you know, all day long and I’ve been volunteering every day at this domestic violence shelter in town. I’m doing it in a way that is not putting anybody at risk and,so I’m able to get help out, and be useful. It kind of gives me a sense of purpose as well as doing something good and helping other people.

So I saw the video that you did recently for the child MIND Institute, and you talked about sort of helping on a voluntary basis as part of that in terms of helping with anxiety?

I know no other magic bullet besides exercise, than helping people who are in need to be a kind of hit on tour as a kind of relief of any kind of anxiety. I can think of nothing as helpful.

I guess at the moment, it must be a bit harder to do that though, in the current circumstances, which is sad really.

For me, I’ve never had a more concentrated period of volunteer work, actually – because the shelter where I work is next to a major university, and because a lot of the students have left, the shelter has lost their volunteer base. So they’re actually pretty understaffed. So, for me, this has been – I’ve never done more kind of volunteer work than I’m doing right now. It’s something I love and so for me, it’s been a kind of a very active period.

It’s a hugely positive experience then?

Yeah, I mean, you know, as an actor you wind up with several months of the year off anyway. Even kind of prolific actor will have like weeks or months off at a time, and if you don’t find some healthy outlet, I imagine you can go crazy. Luckily I married somebody who spends seven days a week doing nonprofit work and I have easy access.

And he kind of keeps your feet on the ground as well, which I guess when you’re an actor and involved in work that is all to do with the imagination, that must be important?

Yeah, certainly. And also, you know, actors are lauded for, you know, often at times, very little effort. And so, if you can’t find some way to kind of connect your efforts to some of the kind of, let’s say, public compliments you unduly receive, it could be destabilising.

Let’s talk about the film. I’ve got to say congratulations to you on both Resistance and indeed Vivarium as well, which we had released just as the pandemic started, which was kind of appropriate really. But I gather you filmed both of them back to back?

Yeah, I guess so. Vivarium was in Ireland, and Resistance was in the Czech Republic and Germany. So, yeah, I was just kind of in Europe for six months. And yeah, Vivarium was, as you said was kind of like, unintentionally, you know, prescient, you know, about a couple of stuck in their house and can’t leave and are kind of going crazy, and the movie is kind of abstract enough for I think, people to take it in different ways, but I think certainly people are filtering it now through just this, you know, incredibly strange experience of being stuck at home.

And then Resistance was obviously a period piece, but it was like going back in time. They closed down huge town squares in Prague and turn them into Nazi-occupied France, and it was just this kind of this transportation into that time period.

So they’re both very emotionally demanding roles but in very, very different ways. I wonder what that was like for you as an actor doing two roles like that back to back.

I would say anytime as an actor that you get the opportunity to play, you know, something that has some kind of intensity you relish it as opposed to just a more kind of casual role. You know, when you’re studying as young actor in acting school, you, you primarily are, you know, training with the most dramatic work. That’s the kind of stuff you seek out as an adult too. To do a movie about World War Two as a young Jewish person who lost family during the war in the same area where Marceau’s family comes from –  because Marcel Marceau and I have very similar roots in southeastern Poland – it just felt that much more impactful emotionally. I had grown up with stories of my family who died during the war as well as those who survived and this movie was, just in that way, so resonant for me. And for my family as well.

So there’s a real personal connection for you with this particular project then.

Yeah, more so than most. I grew up with a mother who was a birthday party clown. And so she used to wake up in the morning and paint her face like Marcel Marceau and perform for children. I flew my parents out to come see me perform the ending scene of the movie where Marcel was performing for General Patton’s troops, and he’s wearing the, you know, the makeup and dressed in that way. And my parents were watching the performance live. My dad lost a lot of family in the war. So I think, you know, for me and for my parents as well it t was like a really special project.

And did you read what’s in mind get to your mum’s seal of approval?

Yeah, because that at that point in both my training and in the story of Marceau, he was at his best, and so yeah, she thought it was just great. Luckily, she is not a mime. I would call what she did like kind of a cousin of mine, you know, in the sense that she was like a clown and so, there’s an overlap, maybe there’s a rivalry but yeah, she immediately approved.

So before you actually made the film, how much did you know about Marcel Marceau and this particular time of his life in particular?

I was shocked to learn that he was Jewish and even more shocked to learn that, just because his name doesn’t sound Jewish, of course, it’s not his real name. [I was] even more shocked to learn that he did this heroic work during the war because when you think of war heroes, a mime is not the first thing – not the first image that pops into your head. So I knew nothing. What I loved about the story was that it’s really a story of a reluctant hero, a guy who is a fledgling artist who is desperate to perfect his craft, who is kind of reluctantly pulled into helping others and only through helping those kids to become the artists that we know. I just love that part of the story.

And there’s lots of been written about him and lots of footage on him, but most if not all of that must be from after the war. So how did you go about researching the part?

I have this incredible mime teacher who not only studied with Marceau for years but has become a chronicler of his life. So my teacher had pictures and video that no one else had  – some from his youth, some from the age that I was playing him at. I would watch a lot of video and interviews and you know, he had a certain kind of confidence that I would attribute to a French kind of confidence. I was trying to employ some of that in the role because he and I are very similar. I write my own plays and he was creating his own theatre performances, and yet we’re also people who are hidden during the war and me to a much lesser extent, through my wife’s work, are kind of asked to use our performance to, on a volunteer basis to kind of like help those in need – again his to a much greater extent than me. So I can kind of like understand what he might have been thinking and how he probably initially felt that getting involved with these children is going to somehow compromise his artistry. And one of the really beautiful things he discovers in the movie is not only does his work with these children, not compromise his work, but it actually enriches it.

So you talked about learning mime for the role. Have you ever done it before? Or was this completely new territory for you?

I took some body movement classes in acting school like every kid is required to do, but no, nothing like formal mime. I studied for about six months before we were filming. And then while we were filming, I studied with a different teacher, a Prague-based mime. I had, altogether, probably nine months of mime training and I just loved it. As an actor, you’re, you’re such a dilettante. You know, you’ve learned something for three weeks, and then never see it again. But with this movie, because I had to be so proficient, I really got to spend a lot of time learning and it’s something that hopefully will be a part of my life in a way.

So, you took to it quite easily then?

No, no, no. I’m the least graceful person you could imagine. But what I was told was, like, from what I was told, that Marcel was not naturally graceful either – he kind of had to develop it.  I was working with his students and my teacher said, ‘you actually have the exact same body type as Marcel – you would have been very similar’. You know, what Marcel was doing was not like, always physically perfect, even though he was an incredibly gifted mime. What he was so great at was telling these stories which involved a lot more, I would say, acting – similar to that thing I do with your face and you know, with your emotions. Rather than just a kind of dance performance.

So you’ve done a huge variety of roles. When you look at your career so far from Mark Zuckerberg to Columbus in Zombieland – you’ve been the voice of blue in Rio, you’ve been in Vivarium, which we’ve talked about, and now your Marcel Marceau.  You never seem to do the same thing twice, which I think is what makes you so incredibly watchable. How much of that is deliberate on your part or are you just blessed with incredibly good luck?

I am always surprised by the roles I’m sent to play. They’re never the same roles as I would think to write for myself. So I would call that luck. The only kind of thing I avoid are just things that seem like they’re kind of making fun of the character a bit. I don’t know how to articulate it. You just know it when you see it, which is like that the character is somehow a joke to the writer. I get sent that stuff too because I do comedy and I’m a self-deprecating person. But, you know, there’s a fine line between being self-deprecating and being kind of the butt of a joke in a movie. That’s the only thing I really kind of like avoid. And then, you know, with during a movie like Marcel Marceau, you know, he a Jewish artist, so in a way, I’m got much in common with him. But because of the context of the movie, it seems like something that’s totally different than the normal stuff I do. I have far more in common with Marcel more so than I do with like, the character that you mentioned in Zombieland, for example. Even in a movie like resistance, where I’m playing a character that actually seems so different, actually has so much and biographically in common.

Is there a role that you’ve always dreamed of playing? That hasn’t come your way yet?

No, I did this play like four years ago that I wrote and I performed that part more than I’ve done anything else, and that was probably the most exhilarating experience, just because it was so demanding every night. But no, in terms of that other stuff, in terms of getting to do certain movie roles, no, I couldn’t even try to imagine something better than having done some of the roles I’ve gotten to play.

And of course, one role that I’ve not mentioned yet is Lex Luthor. Are we going to see you play him again?

Oh, I mean, I loved being in that world and everything, but I have no idea because it’s up to you know, how many toys are sold. I mean it’s like it’s this huge corporate thing that has very little to do with my desire to play it, which would be high.

So what can we expect to see you in next given that everything sort of a little bit on hiatus at the moment?

Yeah, I don’t know. I’m supposed to be directing this movie. We’re supposed to start October 1st.

Wow. Is that is that your first one?

Yeah, yeah. And yeah, it’s was going incredibly well. The best company was making it and Julianne Moore and Finn Wolfhard. were acting in it. And so now we’re just kind of waiting for an opening.

Does it have a title?

Yes, it’s called When You Finish Saving The World, and it’s actually based on an audiobook I wrote that’s coming out next month to Audible, and so we’re really excited to do it. But you know, like everything else right now, just kind of waiting for, you know…

It must be great working with Julianne and Finn, though.

Oh yeah, I mean, I’m just incredibly lucky, you know, to make a first movie with people like that. But I just hope it materialises at some point.

I’m sure it will. Was directing something that you always wanted to do as well as acting?

No, I always have written but I haven’t directed the plays that I have written. With a movie, on this scale, it doesn’t require like it doesn’t require technical expertise I don’t have. A lot of times, you know, if you write a kind of very intimate personal movie, you’ve already directed because, you know, it requires like that kind of consistency, and it doesn’t require a technical skill set.

So I guess in a way, it’s another personal project but in a different way to Resistance.

Exactly. Resistance was something that, if I was not involved in his movie, I probably would have never known about, in terms o knowing about our Marceau’s life. So, if I wasn’t acting, I would just be trying to make my own things, but being an actor gives me insight into these worlds that I just have would have never heard about because it requires other people to have passion for something that I don’t know about.

Resistance is released on digital on 19 June.