Jesse Eisenberg, who says he reconnected with his family’s Polish roots while filming A Real Pain in the country, was granted Polish citizenship yesterday by President Andrzej Duda.
“While we were filming this movie in Poland and I was walking the streets and starting to get a little more comfortable in the country, something so obvious occurred to me, which is that my family had lived in this place far longer than we’ve lived in New York,” Eisenberg said at the ceremony in New York.
Watch his speech, via Radio RAMPA, below.
“And of course, the history ended so tragically,” he continued, “but in addition to that tragedy of history is also the tragedy that my family didn’t feel any connection anymore to Poland, and that saddened me and confirmed for me that I really wanted to try to reconnect as much as possible. And I really hope that tonight in this ceremony and this amazing honor is the first step for me and my family to reconnect with this beautiful country.”
A Real Pain, which Eisenberg wrote, directed and starred in (along with Kieran Culkin, who won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar Sunday), chronicles the journey of two American cousins who set out for Poland to honor, and learn more about, their recently deceased grandmother, a Holocaust survivor. Eisenberg’s screenplay was nominated for an Oscar.
Eisenberg applied for Polish citizenship after filming there. Poland allows citizenship for those whose direct ancestors were born there or lived there after 1920.
“I’m so unbelievably honored,” Eisenberg said in a speech at the ceremony (via Radio RAMPA). “This is an honor of a lifetime and something I have been very interested in for two decades.”
Eisenberg has said that his real-life inspiration behind A Real Pain was his great aunt Doris, who died at 106 in 2019. While she left Poland for the U.S. in 1938, other Eisenberg family members perished in the Holocaust.
