Justin Timberlake sings "The Social Network": "The script was its own song, really." | Interviews
There is an irony, then, to be found in Timberlake playing the role of Sean Parker, the mercurial founder of Napster, in David Fincher's "The Social Network," one of this year's Academy Award front-runners. The movie is based on the story of Mark Zuckerberg, who launched Facebook as a Harvard undergraduate and soon saw it become a phenomenon. The real Parker had a similar experience with Napster, and materialized in Zuckerberg's life as a Svengali of the fast lane.
"The Social Network" is on all the lists of Oscar contenders, and Timberlake is often mentioned as a best supporting actor candidate. Justin Timberlake? The perennial Trending Topic on Twitter? Yes, and why not? In one of the best films of the year, he provides a crucial performance, and he does it with confidence, bravado and heedless energy. It's acting. It is also perhaps like nothing many Timberlake watchers expected, but there you have it: Many performers have talents we never see, because they stay within the parameters of their early fame.
For Timberlake, fame was not launched at the Actor's Studio or at Julliard, but on "Star Search," when he was 11. That led to stardom of sorts on the Mickey Mouse Club, and then big time when he became the lead singer of 'N Sync. Then he went solo and started winning Grammys and going platinum, and -- well, nothing at that point could have predicted his casting as Sean Parker in "The Social Network."
Parker is a difficult role. Mark Zuckerberg is played by Jesse Eisenberg as a super-intelligent geek who likes to bash people in conversation. Parker sees him and raises him. This requires an actor with a lot of confidence and agility. Eisenberg, at 27, is very experienced. Timberlake, at 29, is new to the front ranks of feature films, with all due respect to "The Love Guru" and "Black Snake Moan." Yet he embodies the Parker role and sells it persuasively. His Parker is a devious manipulator with a private agenda and an instinct for personal openings. He's a spellbinder. The choice of Timberlake is not only good casting by David Fincher and his casting director, Laray Mayfield, but good casting out of left field.
The Zuckerberg-Parker exchanges are often in a rapid-fire tempo that evokes screwball comedies. I asked if that took a lot of rehearsal.
"Our rehearsal process was, in fact, all talking," he said. "We never once got up from the table. We would go through the scene, just reading it. Then David Fincher, [writer] Aaron Sorkin and the actors who were in the scene would just sit and talk about what our characters were looking to accomplish in each moment.
"For a character like Sean, who was so brilliantly constructed by Aaron, the overall goal was intact. His most convincing trait, as a value for me (and not without irony), was just how literally convincing he could be to a guy like Mark. And when you have the opportunity to do a large number of takes like David likes to do, the dialogue becomes such a part of you. It makes it easier to rattle off a few pages of poetry. Yes, I just referred to Aaron's dialogue as poetry."
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