Jesse Eisenberg was a big fan of Modern Family when it aired, but apparently not so much of seeing himself in it.
"He did an episode of Modern Family, because he was a fan of the show," Jesse Tyler Ferguson recalled on a recent episode of his Dinner's On Me podcast. Eisenberg guest-starred on a 2014 episode of the ABC comedy. "He's like, I really wanna watch this episode, but will you cut out my scenes? So we sent him the episode he was in with his scenes cut out, so he could watch it."
Ferguson's guest on the podcast, Alexander Skarsgard, brought up Eisenberg in the first place, after he was asked if he ever watched his own work.
"I'm not like Jesse Eisenberg who doesn't want to watch," the Big Little Lies actor responded,
Later, Skarsgard talked about his experience teaming up with Eisenberg, his costar in 2018 thriller The Hummingbird Project.
"I did a movie with Jesse, and I adore him, and it was an incredible experience," Skarsgard said. "But at the premiere, he would be like, 'We do the red carpet, walk in, introduce the movie, get the hell out of there, and then come back two hours later."
The men noted that when Eisenberg directs a movie in which he stars, such as last year's A Real Pain, he doesn't have much of a choice.
Eisenberg is an Oscar-nominated actor — for best actor in 2010's The Social Network — and made his Modern Family debut on the season 5 episode "Under Pressure." He played Asher, an environmentalist who's a neighbor of Ferguson's Mitch and Eric Stonestreet's Cam.
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And he's spoken out before about being sensitive to the feedback he gets for his performances.
"I was in this Batman movie and the Batman movie was so poorly received, and I was so poorly received," Eisenberg said on the Armchair Expert podcast in December of his role as villain Lex Luthor in 2016's Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. "I've never said this before, and it's kind of embarrassing to admit, but I genuinely think it actually hurt my career in a real way because I was poorly received in something so public."
He's done several projects since then, of course, including writing, directing, and starring in A Real Pain, which resulted in his Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay and for which costar Kieran Culkin won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor.
Listen to the full podcast episode with Skarsgard and Ferguson below.
Entertainment Weekly has reached out to Eisenberg.