When The New York Times reporter Taffy Brodesser-Akner wrote her first novel, Fleishman está en apuros, she did not imagine that her protagonist, a hepatologist going through a bitter divorce, would be played in the television adaptation by Oscar nominee Jesse Eisenberg. It seems as if the role had been written especially for him, who shone as Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network and who has been so efficient working with masters like Noah Baumbach or Woody Allen, but who has also embodied Lex Luthor, a hunter of zombies, and Marcel Marceau. This actor perfectly reflects the cultured middle-class New Yorker. In the series that arrives today on Disney, Eisenberg is a recently separated man who discovers the goodness and bitterness of his new singleness while he has to take care of his children in the inexplicable absence of his ex, played by Claire Danes.
What attracted you to the story?
The series felt like something very specific culturally, humorously, and dramatically, but at the same time it evoked something similar to what happened to me when I read the book, because it felt like something that was very familiar to me. Fleishman está en apuros reflects a world in which I grew up, but at the same time it is also accessible to anyone who grew up in completely different circumstances. This, for me, is the beauty of the series and also of the book.
How complicated was it to transfer the character from the novel to the small screen?
The interesting thing for me and for Claire Danes is that our characters are seen from each other’s perspective. When we see Claire from my perspective, she seems tremendously ambitious, vengeful, and neglectful, and when the series switches perspectives and you see me from her perspective, as a viewer you have the same feelings about me. And that’s why one of the most interesting challenges we faced was to modulate as actors how evil or heroic we were in those scenes. We had to show our kindness and sympathy from one look, and show a more distant and cold version when the perspective was that of the other. Sometimes we had to shoot the same scene from different perspectives and we had to make small changes to create that effect.
How did you and Claire Danes prepare for the shared scenes?
These characters have a lot of discussions, but it’s really one of them. Probably, like in any other flirting relationship, you have the same discussion again in different ways and using different words under different circumstances. One of the cool things we did in rehearsals was write a diary from our character’s perspective, and then the directors would ask us what we loved about the other person or what we hated the most. And suddenly we started to see strange overlaps. In my case, I wrote that I loved her ambition and the way she never needed to apologize, or that she wasn’t neurotic like Toby is, and that I found that very attractive. And at the same time, that was her downfall, because what I initially found so attractive was what ended up turning her into the monster in the relationship because it was like she couldn’t escape her own ambition.
What was it like shooting all those sex scenes?
strange I would prefer to say that they were euphoric moments, but in reality they are technical situations that occur with other people who also feel that it is a very strange thing. The sex scenes, at least in my experience, are incredibly awkward even though the result is that it looks fun.
