A Real Pain’s awards season success is ‘completely unexpected’, Kieran Culkin says

A Real Pain stars Kieran Culkin and Jesse Eisenberg on the film’s awards show recognition

A Real Pain was not made with awards season in mind, so for it to have gotten the recognition that it has is something of a surprise, actors Kieran Culkin and Jesse Eisenberg tell Yahoo UK.

The heartfelt family drama was written and directed by Eisenberg, and it follows cousins David (Eisenberg) and Benji (Culkin) as they travel to Poland as part of a Holocaust tour group in order to visit their late grandmother’s family home before it was taken by the Nazis. The prolific film has been celebrated for its brilliant storytelling and has earned nods for both Eisenberg and Culkin, the latter of whom has now won Best Supporting Actor at the 2025 Golden Globes.

Speaking with Yahoo UK before the Golden Globes took place, the pair spoke of how “surprising” it has been to see A Real Pain be received so well since it premiered at Sundance Film Festival in January 2024.

“This movie was made not in the entertainment industry,” Eisenberg admits. “It was made by a very small company for a very small budget in Poland, and so this was not the kind of movie that was thought to be on any of these lists when we were making it. In fact, it wasn’t on the list of anything that would ever be released, let alone be nominated.

“So it’s all been a surprise, which is the way you want it, you don’t want to make the movie that’s like the big thing and you’re expecting it to get an Oscar next year and then it gets forgotten. This is great, but it’s all surprising.”

Culkin concurred with his co-star, adding that he “thought this would be for us” rather than a film with Oscars glory in mind: “We’d make it, I would see it, maybe some of my family would see it and that’s it. I didn’t think anybody would have gone to see it. So it’s all been completely unexpected.”

A Real Pain’s strength comes from the friendship and brotherly bond that David and Benji share, which is a reflection of the natural chemistry that Eisenberg and Culkin have in real life. The pair seem perfect scene partners so it is a surprise then that they’ve never worked together before now, though Eisenberg’s decision to cast Culkin was made in a rather unpredictable way.

“Kieran and I met at this audition in 2008 for this movie Adventureland, and he came into this audition for a movie that I was already cast in and took over the room, started attacking me in the room and was really, really, really funny and cool.

“[He] didn’t get the part but… it’s hard to describe, but when I was trying to cast this and my sister mentioned Kieran what swept back in my unconscious was this guy who did exactly what Benji does in this movie.

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“In this movie I pay for the trip, I plan the trip, I have stability and he comes in and torments me and takes over the room in the way he did in this audition. So I was like ‘oh, yeah, I already had this relationship in my life’.”

Culkin is quick to add, though, that Eisenberg only remembered the Adventureland audition a few months earlier —after they had shot and premiered the film— because he had mentioned it. He said: “This guy didn’t audition me, nor has he seen any of my work ever.”

Eisenberg adds: “This image of you in my head was like, ‘Oh yeah, that was that guy that I had this relationship with’. Actually it was a great audition that day, little did you know.”

“Yea, didn’t get that part but twenty years later or however long it was [I got this one],” Culkin jokes.

What made Culkin say yes to the film, regardless of Eisenberg’s lack of knowledge of his filmography, was The Social Network star’s skills as a writer: “It’s such an incredibly tight and wonderful script that I feel I read it and said yes to it right away.

“And it was about a year later, a little more than a year later, that we were shooting it and I remember re-reading it and going ‘yea, this is exactly what it was’, I could have not touched it until we got there on the day. I had no questions about it, it was like I just want to go in there and do it.”

“I just didn’t want to think about it so much because it was so concise and it was brilliantly written,” the Succession star adds. “I just wanted to go in there and do it so there wasn’t a lot of nerves, Benji is not the kind of guy who would have nerves. I think he just jumps right in without thinking, so I just wanted to go in and do it that way and I was just excited to get in there.”

The experience of making the film was much like the story itself, like they were on a tour of their own. Eisenberg called it an “amazing” experience to film in Poland in this way: “Kieran was there as an actor the day before, and so he was on this tour everyday because the movie was on a tour everyday. He had such an unusual [experience].”

“I only got to experience Poland the way Benji did, on this tour,” Culkin adds. “Otherwise I was just in a hotel room or traveling to the next town so that’s the Poland I saw: what’s in the movie. As opposed to [Jesse] who was there a long time.”

“I was there for a long time, but I was writing the movie during the pandemic,” Eisenberg says. “I couldn’t go to Poland for a research trip so I was just on Google Street View going block by block seeing what these characters would see, and it helped me write the script, figuring out what they would be passing.

“So it felt like I had known these streets like the back of my hand and on a map, and also in person. It was a dream, truly, to actually be there.”

A Real Pain premiers in UK cinemas on Wednesday, 8 January.