Kieran Culkin and Jesse Eisenberg: A Real Pain

Moderator Annette Insdorf interviews Jesse Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin about their new film, A Real Pain, including clips.

Jesse Eisenberg is an Academy Award-nominated actor as well as an acclaimed playwright and author. His film credits include Roger Dodger, The Squid and the Whale, The Social Network, Now You See Me, Café Society, Justice League, and Sasquatch Sunset.

Kieran Culkin is best known as Roman Roy in Succession, for which he received the 2023 Emmy Award as Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series, as well as the Golden Globe. He has starred in such indie hits as Igby Goes Down and The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys.

A Real Pain is a compelling road trip through parts of Poland that represent "heritage tours" for Jewish descendants. Eisenberg fully inhabits the character David — uptight and controlling — who is taking the trip with his cousin Benji (Culkin), a man-child who is gregarious to the point of embarrassing. As Manohla Dargis wrote in The New York Times, “a touching, beautifully acted, laugh-laced drama about two cousins — played by a brilliant Kieran Culkin and Jesse Eisenberg, who also wrote and directed — on a trip to Poland. An exploration of family, faith, loss and the enduring trauma of the Holocaust, the movie is a knockout.””