Sorkin on Strong: Method Acting as Method Casting

Aaron Sorkin, promoting "The Social Reckoning," says he wasn't shocked that Jeremy Strong didn't tell him about an email Strong wrote to Mark Zuckerberg — because Strong stayed in character as the Meta founder and CEO throughout the production. Sorkin's line about it lands exactly where you'd expect from the man who wrote "The Social Network": he described Strong treating his co-stars "the way he imagines Mark Zuckerberg treats people."

Optimist: that's the whole point. If you've cast an actor to play a man whose defining trait is treating people instrumentally, having him actually behave that way on set is just... rehearsal.

Skeptic: Or it's a production where everyone else is doing a job and one person has made the job about himself. There's a version of this story where the co-stars are the ones paying for the performance.

Optimist: Sorkin says he wasn't shocked. That's not a complaint — that's a director who knew what he was buying.

Skeptic: Directors knowing what they bought is how a lot of bad set experiences get explained after the fact.