Jesse Eisenberg is shedding some light on the internal turmoil that he felt while filming the 2015 drama, The End of the Tour.
The actor explained in a recent GQ video that he was “glad” when the film wrapped because it took a serious toll on his mental health. Directed by James Ponsoldt, The End of the Tour sees Eisenberg play a fictionalized version of writer David Lipsky as he reminisces over his time spent interviewing fellow novelist David Foster Wallace (Jason Segel) after learning of his death.
“The character I was playing [Lipsky] was a deeply envious person. He is interviewing a writer that he’s deeply, deeply envious of, and it was very uncomfortable for me and very emotional for me to be in that role,” Eisenberg said. “I’m sorry, I’m not asking for sympathy — this is the nature of being an actor — but it just hit me in an incredibly personal way.”
Jesse Eisenberg and Jason Segel in ‘The End of the Tour’. A24
He couldn’t pinpoint what specifically led him to have such a strong reaction to the material, though.
“I don’t know if I was going through something in my career at that time or something that, for some reason, just mirrored what was happening in that movie. And it just was killing me,” Eisenberg said. “I really couldn’t stop crying during the scenes. And then the director told me to stop crying during the scenes.”
But he couldn’t help it. “It was hitting me in an emotional way that I couldn’t explain even to a therapist, which I was probably mistakenly not going to at the time,” he continued. “And I just had these very strong feelings for Jason, the actor, who’s really wonderful in the movie. He’s an imposing person, even, and all these very profound feelings of inadequacies were really eating me alive during that movie.”
Eisenberg also noted that his situation likely wasn’t helped by the fact that the film was shot on a small budget and an extremely tight schedule that required him and Segel to be immersed in their characters for long hours at a time without any breaks.
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“I was just in this world and it actually felt really… I don’t know what the word is, but it really felt actually quite not healthy for me,” he said. “I was glad when the movie ended, even though it was one of the most creatively inspiring experiences I’ve ever had.”
Still, despite its effect on him, Eisenberg noted that The End of the Tour has gone on to become one of the films that he loves the most.
“The relationship I had with James Ponsoldt was one of the highlights of my life, as well as the relationship with Jason Segel,” he said. “It felt like we were really on the same team.”
Watch Eisenberg discuss The End of the Tour — and his roles in films like Zombieland, Adventureland, and Now You See Me — in the clip above.
