Jesse Eisenberg was fine with not meeting Jason Segel before they worked together because they weren't playing "life-long friends".
The two stars appear in the upcoming drama The End of the Tour, which tells the story of Rolling Stone reporter David Lipsky's iconic interview with author David Foster Wallace. Foster Wallace (played by Jason) committed suicide in 2008, and it was after this that Lipsky (portrayed by Jesse) realised he had hours of interviews with the reclusive author which hadn't been published - even though they took place in 1996.
"[Jason] was filming the show that he was on, How I Met Your Mother, up until the day before filming this movie in California. We met once briefly but then we started acting on the first day together. There was no rehearsal, but it was fine. I mean, we were not playing long-time friends," Jesse told comingsoon.net. "Even if we were, we could probably have figured it out. But we were playing people who spent a lot of time figuring each other out and strategising and being curious about the other person, so it seemed to be effective."
Playing a journalist was an interesting experience for Jesse, as he hasn't always got on well during interviews. He completely understands people are just doing their jobs and are working hard to make their stories as exciting as possible, but he can't help feeling he's been unfairly victimised over the years.
So to see what things are like from the other perspective was a breath of fresh air.
"I’ve felt on my side there’s been some antagonism sometimes from journalists, not so much movie stuff, because there’s not so much controversy but with other things I’ve done - playwrighting and stuff, I’ve felt some pushback," he explained. "I had a particularly uncomfortable experience and then I read the script and I thought, 'Oh, how interesting to be able to play that.' To play the journalist who has a seemingly innocuous agenda but is actually harbouring some sort of subversive intent to not only get a good story but to make the other person less than comfortable and confident about their achievements."
