Over three decades in stand-up comedy, Bill Burr has gained a reputation for saying, with gruff conviction and political fire, the thing on everyone’s mind. In Aaron Sorkin’s new film “The Social Reckoning,” Burr gets to aim that unfiltered attitude at Mark Zuckerberg. Burr plays Charlie Garrigan in the follow-up to “The Social Network,” which follows the Facebook founder during the pandemic, as an investigative journalist threatens to lay bare his company’s misdeeds while Zuckerberg, played by Jeremy Strong, grapples with his own role in fueling the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection.
Charlie, a Facebook investor-turned-critic, fictionalized for the film, shows the tech titan tough love as he helps him prepare to testify before Congress. Burr was offered the part after Sorkin saw him in David Mamet’s Broadway production of “Glengarry Glen Ross,” in which the comic played angry salesman Dave Moss. Shortly after that performance, Burr received a call from his agent: Sorkin wanted to pitch him a movie role.
I’d put up staging in the background with no lines to be in a movie that you’re doing,’” Burr says. It made me feel good.” It eliminated the steps of me having to try to become a specific person. Although, I have to tell you, I’m still trying to get better at acting, so I would have been up for it if that was on the table.
With Charlie and Zuckerberg, so much going on between these two guys. There’s a business relationship, a friendship, a falling out. I’m catching him in the crosshairs right before he goes in front of Congress, and half of the room is just teaching him how to talk to Congress so he doesn’t have to change the damage that he’s doing.
I get to say the thing that everybody is talking around, which is a very stand-up thing. So much of comedy is you just say the thing, and then it releases all of this tension. But unlike a comedy show like I do, where I’m just messing around, this is legit.
This is a big problem that Facebook had. So it was definitely challenging in a really fun way. Well, everybody’s process is different, so it was just working across from another actor that had a different process.
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