A Real Pain's Kieran Culkin said awards talk "never even crossed my mind"
The Succession star won the Best Supporting Actor prize at the Golden Globe Awards last night.
Last night (Sunday 5th January), Kieran Culkin won the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Jesse Eisenberg's comedy-drama A Real Pain – putting him in prime spot to possibly land an Oscar later in the year too.
The film – which follows two mismatched Jewish cousins as they take a trip to Poland to trace their family's pre-war roots – has been well-received ever since it debuted at last year's Sundance Film Festival, but according to Culkin, the possibility of awards was the last thing on his mind when he first agreed to take on the role.
"[Awards are a] nice bonus," he exclusively told RadioTimes.com when asked about his nomination back in December.
"I guess that was not something that even crossed my mind for the slightest bit when we were making this movie."
Eisenberg added: "No, it was a tiny movie. Tiny, tiny, tiny movie. His [Culkin's] agent said to him, like, 'You could do this movie, but the best thing that will happen to it is it might get accepted to Sundance.' And she's right."
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"She was saying, at best, it'll get into Sundance. And, like, 20 people will see it, and then that's it," Culkin agreed. "And that's sort of what I thought!"
Luckily, the film has struck a chord, with audiences so far responding especially well to the dynamic between Culkin and Eisenberg's characters as they both bicker and bond following a period of estrangement.
Read more:
- Jesse Eisenberg on A Real Pain and why blockbusters can be "boring"
- Bill Skarsgård, Nosferatu and the "allure of destruction": 'Ultimately it annihilates you'
The two actors share brilliant chemistry throughout and the relationship between the characters feels incredibly real, but Culkin revealed that he actually did very little to prepare for the role ahead of arriving on set.
"We didn't know each other," he said of his prior relationship with Eisenberg. "I showed up the day before shooting.
"To me, it was all right there in the script. Like, honestly, 15/20 pages into reading the script, I went, 'I completely understand their history, their dynamic. I get it. I can actually see this relationship.'
"So I just wanted to get in there and do it. And... [Eisenberg was] not familiar with my work, I'm familiar with [his]. So I kind of had an idea of, like, how this would work. And it was... I think we opened our mouths and started on the first day [and it worked]!"
A Real Pain is released in UK cinemas on Wednesday 8th January 2025.
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Authors
Patrick Cremona is the Senior Film Writer at Radio Times, and looks after all the latest film releases both in cinemas and on streaming. He has been with the website since October 2019, and in that time has interviewed a host of big name stars and reviewed a diverse range of movies.
