Over three decades in stand-up comedy, Bill Burr has gained a reputation for saying, with gruff conviction and political fire, the thing on everyone’s mind. In Aaron Sorkin’s new film “The Social Reckoning,” Burr gets to aim that unfiltered attitude at Mark Zuckerberg.
Burr plays Charlie Garrigan in the follow-up to “The Social Network,” which follows the Facebook founder during the pandemic, as an investigative journalist threatens to lay bare his company’s misdeeds while Zuckerberg, played by Jeremy Strong, grapples with his own role in fueling the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection. Charlie, a Facebook investor-turned-critic, fictionalized for the film, shows the tech titan tough love as he helps him prepare to testify before Congress.
Burr was offered the part after Sorkin saw him in David Mamet’s Broadway production of “Glengarry Glen Ross,” in which the comic played angry salesman Dave Moss. Shortly after that performance, Burr received a call from his agent: Sorkin wanted to pitch him a movie role.
“I thought that was hilarious, because it’s like, ‘Dude, you’re Aaron Sorkin. I’d put up staging in the background with no lines to be in a movie that you’re doing,’” Burr says. “He was so humble, and he was taking the time to pitch me the role like I’m somebody. It made me feel good.”
Your character is fictional, or an amalgamation of figures from Zuckerberg’s past. Was it freeing to not have to tie your performance to a real person, or did that make things more challenging?
It eliminated the steps of me having to try to become a specific person. Although, I have to tell you, I’m still trying to get better at acting, so I would have been up for it if that was on the table. With Charlie and Zuckerberg, so much going on between these two guys. There’s a business relationship, a friendship, a falling out. I’m catching him in the crosshairs right before he goes in front of Congress, and half of the room is just teaching him how to talk to Congress so he doesn’t have to change the damage that he’s doing.
I get to say the thing that everybody is talking around, which is a very stand-up thing. So much of comedy is you just say the thing, and then it releases all of this tension. But unlike a comedy show like I do, where I’m just messing around, this is legit. This is a big problem that Facebook had. So it was definitely challenging in a really fun way.
What was it like acting opposite Jeremy Strong? I imagine his process is unlike some of the scene partners you’ve had in the past.
Well, everybody’s process is different, so it was just working across from another actor that had a different process. But we were all thrown in there together, and it was interesting because we worked six days in a row, so it really felt like we were doing the thing that [Zuckerberg and the crisis PR team] was doing.
Had you met “Jeremy” before the movie wrapped, or were you only dealing with “Zuckerberg”?
I had gone to a Broadway play he did, “An Enemy of the People,” and met him there. But that whole mystique around [Method acting] — you know, they’re playing Winnie the Pooh and they were Winnie the Pooh the whole time. Was that weird? I mean, I don’t need to be playing hacky sack with somebody in between takes. Some people are gregarious and they shoot the breeze with you right up until they say their lines. Other people get quiet. Other people go talk to a wall. At this point, I’ve been doing it long enough.
I wondered if his process helped create that sense of distance and conflict between your characters.
I think the blocking helped make that work — I was way up in the bleachers, and he was down there. That worked. In general, I was very adversarial with everybody in the room. I was interrupting the smooth speak they were giving Zuckerberg. I love all the dialogue Wunmi Mosaku has, where she tells him, “Don’t say humans.” It’s almost like being a defense attorney for an ax murderer, and you know he did it.
All these years making fun of corporations, I’ve secretly always wanted to be in a conference room. How do they talk around the fact that they know there’s lead in their toothpaste? It reminded me of that movie “Zone of Interest.” When the Nazis are talking about the victims, they call them “cargo” or something. They can’t even say what they’re doing. I find that fascinating.
Or like in “Succession,” when a low-level employee is abused they call it “NRPI”: No Real Person Involved.
The thing about these corporations is it’s nameless and faceless. The general public will get mad at a singer or a golfer or a comedian, and it’s like: “All right, buddy. Name the top 10 CEOs.” They can’t do it. But if you’re an individual who hoards hand sanitizer during a pandemic, everybody knows who you are and where you live.
Jeremy Strong as Mark Zuckerberg in “The Social Reckoning”
©Sony Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection
I’ve heard you talk about these “nerds with apps” sort of ruining the country —
Not sort of! They are absolutely doing it. And they’re closing the door behind them and putting a tremendous amount of people out of work. Economically — forget environmentally — they’re leading us to ruin. When it’s just you making the money, how’s somebody going to buy the widget you’re making? Capitalism is great. Unregulated capitalism is frightening.
You said recently that while preparing for a scene in “The Social Reckoning,” you got emotional to the point of tears. What made you so emotional? Did the material hit close to home?
It wasn’t the material. No, that was from being walled off emotionally. This has happened to me throughout my acting career. Occasionally I will get a scene, and if my character feels a feeling that is on the spectrum of vulnerable, I can all of a sudden well up like I’m at a funeral, and I never understood what it was. The way they raised boys to be men, you weren’t allowed to feel any of those feelings, so I have walled those off for so long that I don’t feel those feelings. And when I act, these characters do. So then I have to open the vault to go in there to get disappointed or whatever. And when I open the door, what happens is literally a cry from 40 years ago gets out.
And the scene didn’t call for crying?
I forget what scene it was, but it didn’t call for crying. It’s bizarre. Instead of misdirected anger, it’s like misdirected crying. I had to cry this out by myself in a hotel room, and then the next day I was able to do the scene. I finally figured out why it was happening. When I act, all of a sudden I would just feel alive, and it was because I was opening that door that I had closed off for protection when I was a kid a long time ago.
Were you worried you might not be able to execute the scene?
I was in a sheer panic that I was going to go to set and fall apart, and it would not have made sense. Because some people think if you’re acting and you’re crying, you must be doing a good job. Well, not if it doesn’t call for that. Then it’s weird.
It’s fascinating that acting has had such a therapeutic effect on you.
Yeah, it does. I also have been doing these breathwork massages and have finally gotten rid of 90% of my childhood anger. I can say now that I’m not an angry person. I mean, I still can get angry, but it’s just another emotion. I’m not bringing my entire life experience with it, which is what I used to do. I used to walk around at an eight, and now I start at zero.
It’s like in pickup sports, when everyone’s trying to have a good time and burn some calories, and there’s always that one person bringing Game 7 energy. And you’re like, “Come on, man! I’m not trying to get my knee blown out here. There are no scouts in the stands.” My anger was like that. And getting it all out is something I’m really dedicated to.
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