Fresh Off ‘Anora,’ Mikey Madison Chooses Restraint Over Spectacle in Sorkin’s ‘The Social Reckoning’

What comes next after receiving the highest honor in your field? For Mikey Madison, the Best Actress winner behind “Anora,” the answer was both clear and complex. Having built her career on a role driven by explosive emotion, she deliberately sought something opposed to that: a part grounded in restraint, introspection, and pragmatism.

In Aaron Sorkin’s “The Social Reckoning”—the feature companion to David Fincher’s “The Social Network,” which Sorkin penned—that challenge is central to the film. The role also demands portraying a real person, adding another layer of difficulty for Madison. In the movie, she takes on Frances Haugen, a former Facebook engineer and whistleblower whose 2021 leak of Meta internal documents exposed the dark realities of the platform’s dominant algorithm. She appears alongside Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz, portrayed by Jeremy Allen White.

As Madison explains, selecting her first project following an Oscar win was genuinely stressful, but her ambition to expand her range—drawing inspiration from icons like Cate Blanchett and Isabelle Huppert—drove her to accept the challenge. It is no “Star Wars” franchise, but collaborating with Sorkin appears to have sparked something new in Madison (even if she did deviate from the script slightly and studied Haugen’s own memoir during preparation).

The following interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.

IndieWire: In the film, Frances is guided by her sense of morals in the face of really impossible circumstances. Why was that aspect of the character appealing to you?

Mikey Madison: I think it’s incredibly rare—and also very comforting—in this day and age to know there is someone willing to go on the line for the greater good of people she doesn’t even know. She sacrificed so much for a beautiful cause. I’ve fallen into the pocket of playing morally gray characters, which I love and which remain some of my favorites, but I had never played someone quite like this.

There was something pure and compelling about her deep moral integrity. There was nothing self-serving about it. My character is based on the real Frances Haugen, and these are real things the real Frances did. I remember thinking, wow, that’s interesting, I’ve never done anything like that before.

As an audience member, I would get frustrated when Frances was having conversations with Jeff about how much she believes in Facebook and its mission and how she thinks it can be such a force for good, but then she’s showing him proof of all the horrible things the company was doing. But, as you said, that’s real life, it’s not always going to be black and white: “They’re bad and I think that they’re doing bad things.” Did you feel any of those frustrations?

There’s a line in the film where she says something like, “Some people are awkward, some people feel like their best self veiled behind a computer screen,” and she’s talking about herself. I believe what she craves most in life is intimacy and connection, which is why she really believed in what she thought Facebook was supposed to be originally: just connecting people, in its true, purest, earliest form. That’s what she wanted and what she wanted to give to others.

I think she did believe in the company, but she was witnessing things happening that she wasn’t being heard on. In the beginning, she was trying to help the company she worked for, not hurt it, and she says that multiple times. But I believe there is a turning point where she realizes there’s no going back, that she needs to make a serious change if things are to improve, and she does. I wouldn’t call it frustration; it was definitely an internal conflict for my character, like a battle.

What research was most useful for you to really get into Frances’ head?

When I read the script for the first time, I had heard about the Facebook Files and the existence of a whistleblower, but I didn’t know who Frances was. I looked her up and quickly saw there were many big, glaring differences between us. She’s blonde, she has blue eyes, and she’s a bit older. I was like, “OK, I’m prepared for a big transformation. I’ve never done that before, but let’s do it.” When I met Aaron, he very adamantly did not want me to do that, and it took me a while to wrap my head around that idea. I wanted to support Aaron’s vision in the best way I could, and that’s really one of my biggest jobs as an actress.

Obviously, I fell in love with the character on the page, and it was very much a character I built from the ground up, purely from Aaron’s script. Regarding any research, there was so much about the world of tech and social media that I had no relationship to, and I was like, let me try and piece it together and understand this the best I can.

I did read her memoir because … I wanted to try to understand what that might have been like for her in that internal struggle. So I read her memoir, and Aaron was like, “Ugh.” [Laughs] What was most important to me was trying to tell her story with as much integrity and love as possible. Aaron and I really wanted to do that. I hope she feels we did, and I think she does.

Has she seen the film?

She has seen it, yes. I think she’s overall quite happy with it. What really matters most to her is that she has no vanity, you know what I mean? She simply wanted the story told. I think she wanted people to know what was happening more in depth and behind the scenes, and to hopefully open up the conversation for more change, and she really has swung those doors open.

What was exciting for you about taking on the precision of an Aaron Sorkin-penned screenplay? What was maybe a little nerve-wracking?

He has an incredibly singular voice and a specific vision, which I really respect the originality of. People refer to his “Sorkin-isms,” which are pretty incredible and iconic in many ways. As an actor, trying to meld my interpretation of the character with his, at times I felt like I was fighting against my instinct a lot. But I also feel like because Frances is a character who isn’t comfortable existing in herself in present face-to-face situations like this, it only helped. It added a quality of discomfort that I think was a blessing for the character.

But yes, every period, every comma, every space in between each sentence is intentional, and that’s not something I’m used to in any way. However, it was also a good exercise for me as an actor to interpret his dialogue. I joke that Aaron has this internal stopwatch in his head, and after a handful of takes, he’d be like, “We’re picking up steam,” or, “Oh, we’re cooking with gas.” There’s so much information and it’s so dense. To work at the speed at which Aaron’s brain works is not normal for most people.

And you also have all this tech jargon. In the film, Frances gets frustrated with Jeff because he doesn’t speak tech, and she’s constantly having to explain things to him in a way she’s not used to.

Jeremy’s character also represents the audience in a lot of ways. The audience doesn’t really know what we’re talking about, and so I think some questions get answered, but we’re not serving it on a silver platter. Aaron, one of the things I really respect about him and his work is that he knows the audience is intelligent and he’s not reminding them of the story and what’s happening.

What is your relationship with the first film?

I think I was 11 when it came out, so I did not see it then. It probably would’ve gone right over my head! I was watching animated movies and “iCarly.” [Laughs] Since becoming interested in film, I’ve seen it a handful of times and it’s just so damn good. I’m such a huge fan of David Fincher. That screenplay specifically was just very masterful. I found it really interesting that Aaron had the guts to tell another story, but tell it from his lens. And I was really happy to be a part of that, and yeah.

This is your big first film since winning the Oscar for “Anora,” what was it about this film that made you want to do it? For awhile, there was rumors that you were going to do a “Star Wars” movie instead.

I was thinking about that a lot: “What do I want to do next?” It was stressing me out a bit. Mostly, I just want to do work that has a lot of heart. I want to work with interesting people. I want to tell a story with a lot of integrity. I want to do something very different from anything I’ve done before. That could only be healthy for me as an actress.

Ultimately, my biggest goal in life and my biggest dream is just to continue working forever. I look at Cate Blanchett and Isabelle Huppert, and I’m deeply moved by the careers and the filmography they’ve created over multiple decades. That’s my dream. So I wasn’t focused on what’s the next thing going to be and what’s it going to say? It was more just, what do I feel compelled to do? And this just happened to be the next one.

It was a character I found to be quite unorthodox. When I read it, I was like, this almost seems like a role that a man would play. It’s a character with a lot of emotional restraint, a lot. This is not an outwardly emotional character. She’s very nuanced, very specific. She’s very pragmatic. She is not emotional. I’ve played a lot of characters, which I love, who are very bombastic and emotionally volatile. This was something so refined and restrained in a way where I was like, I think it would be a challenge for me as an actress to play with restraint in that way. I wonder if people will understand it, but I also feel like it’s something I need to just try and do.

There’s a scene at the end, where Frances celebrates something by pumping her fist. We see the backstory of that in the film, involving an NBA game, but it made me think of “The Breakfast Club.” Did you think of “The Breakfast Club” when you were doing this?

No, I didn’t! Like I said, Frances is so refined and restrained, the way that she walks and moves through the world, she’s quite uncomfortable. That scene you’re referring to, when she witnesses someone have such outward emotion, she’s like, “Wait, people live like this?” And so she has this, “Fuck yeah, I did it,” heroic moment where she recognizes it and does her version of it.

There’s a part that’s heartwarming. So emotional and cringey, and she is cringey, the character is, and just nerdy and weird. Also, I love a callback like that too, and I think Aaron does it in a very satisfying way. I love that moment. But no, I wasn’t thinking about “The Breakfast Club,” but I love that movie. And I loved Molly Ringwald when I was becoming interested in acting and she was a huge inspiration to me.

Sony will release “The Social Reckoning” in theaters on Friday, October 9.

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