Jesse Eisenberg is having a bit of a moment. Fresh off his 2025 Oscar nomination for Best Screenplay for A Real Pain, the multi-hyphenate has been making his rounds on late night talk shows. During his Friday night appearance on Real Time with Bill Maher, the conversation turned to another kind of “real pain”: the societal migraine caused by the tech oligarchy, including Facebook founder and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, whom Eisenberg portrayed in the 2010 film The Social Network.
“I see Zuckerberg now at the inauguration, and he’s right at the seat of power,” Maher said, alluding to tech billionaires like Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and Elon Musk being given VIP treatment at major political events. Maher then cheekily pointed out that Eisenberg had played not just Zuckerberg, but also Lex Luthor in Batman v Superman, asking if his portrayal of the “tech bro” supervillain archetype came from personal feelings.
“I look at it from a very specific perspective, which is, just like, if you’re so rich and powerful, why are you not just spending your days doing good things for the world?” Eisenberg mused, invoking his wife, Anna Strout, and her activist roots. Strout’s mother founded a nonprofit to support survivors of domestic violence, and the couple are still volunteers. With that lens, Eisenberg finds the priorities of tech titans confounding. “You’re taking privacy away, hurting marginalized people. I can’t even understand that.”
His critique gains even more weight when you consider the staggering wealth of people like Zuckerberg, whose current net worth is approximately $217.7 billion. To put that into perspective, Zuckerberg could quite literally eradicate global hunger, which is estimated to cost $40 billion annually by the World Food Program USA, for five years and still have $17.7 billion left — and that’s not including the interest he’d earn along the way, mind you. Yet, instead of making bold moves to solve world crises, Zuckerberg seems more focused on continued to accumulate power.
And while Eisenberg criticized tech greed on Maher’s couch, Musk was busy igniting international outrage. The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention, named after Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term “genocide,” and known for its expertise in analyzing patterns and early warning signs of atrocity crimes, issued a Red Flag Alert for Genocide in the United States following Musk’s Nazi salute on Inauguration Day. Days later, Musk made virtual appearance at a rally for Germany’s far-right AfD party. Musk continues to embody the reckless poster boy of unchecked power. Meanwhile, Bezos and Zuckerberg remain more focused on clout and contracts than on meaningful corporate responsibility.
This wasn’t the first time Eisenberg criticized the ethics of billionaires, either. On Tuesday’s Fresh Air with NPR’s Terry Gross, Eisenberg expressed sadness at Meta’s decision to end fact-checking on Facebook and Instagram. “Now that the platform is so powerful… I guess I feel a little bit sad. Why is this the path you’re taking?”
So while he may have played the quintessential “tech bro” over a decade ago, but in 2025, Eisenberg’s making it clear that power means nothing without purpose — and that’s a role worth rooting for.
Before you go, click here to see celebrities who were born into billionaire families. 
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