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January 2, 2026·30 min·2 clips

Kim Masters reveals her grandparents were killed at Majdanek, the concentration camp featured in Jesse Eisenberg's film.

Jesse Eisenberg starts with Polish citizenship and whether it makes him think about leaving the United States. His answer is that staying engaged feels more useful than trying to get out. That gives the interview its shape. A Real Pain is treated as a film trying to make room for grief, family memory, and comedy without sanding any of it down. Kim Masters keeps one hand on the business side. She links the film's emotional material to the less romantic problem of getting an independent feature made, financed, and understood. Eisenberg describes unusually patient support from Emma Stone: she read his essays, came to his plays, sent screenshots of lines she liked, and backed his scripts through her producing work. He is careful about that point. Her fame helped less than her taste and producing sense. He says she understands scripts, production, and marketing in a practical way. The money still had to come from elsewhere. Her company could develop and produce the project, but it could not simply fund the movie. That meant outside investors had to believe in a script whose comedy could mislead people before the ache underneath showed up. The interview lands on a hard, familiar problem: a personal movie still has to survive the business of being explained. Masters wraps by noting Eisenberg as writer, director, and co-star, and that A Real Pain is streaming on Hulu.

As heard by us

A thoughtful Business interview on A Real Pain, Jesse Eisenberg's moral unease, and the practical work behind a hard-to-classify independent film.

The Business spends this episode with Jesse Eisenberg on A Real Pain, and the conversation is strongest when it stays close to the film's uneasy balance of grief, family memory, and comedy. Kim Masters draws out Eisenberg on Polish citizenship, whether leaving the U.S.

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Want a clear-eyed look at how a personal indie movie gets made and financed?

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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