After Playing ‘Bombastic and Emotionally Volatile’ Roles, Mikey Madison Craved the ‘Restraint’ of ‘The Social Reckoning’

What do you do after you’ve won the top honor in your craft? For “Anora” star — and eventual Best Actress winner — Mikey Madison, the answer was both obvious and tricky. She wanted to do something different. For an actress whose biggest role to date hinged on big emotions, that meant finding a role that was more restrained, more internal, more pragmatic.

In Aaron Sorkin’s “The Social Reckoning” — a follow-up feature to David Fincher’s “The Social Network,” which Sorkin himself wrote — that role wasn’t just on offer, it was at the very center of the film. Oh, and she’s based on a real person, yet another challenge for Madison. In the film, Madison plays Frances Haugen, a former Facebook engineer-turned-whistleblower who facilitated the 2021 leak of Meta internal documents containing the social platform’s secrets, many of them about the nefarious nature of its almighty algorithm. (She works alongside WSJ reporter Jeff Horwitz, played by Jeremy Allen White.)

As Madison explains, picking her first post-Oscar gig definitely stressed her out, but her desire to grow her career and range (a la Cate Blanchett and Isabelle Huppert) helped push her to take on the project. “Star Wars” it is not, but working with Sorkin seems to have sparked something in Madison (even if she did go off-script a bit and read Haugen’s own memoir to prep for the role).

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 just incredibly rare in this day and age — and also very comforting — to know that there is someone who is willing to go on the line for the greater good of people that she doesn’t even know. She sacrificed so much fora beautiful cause. I’ve gotten into this pocket of playing these very morally gray characters, which I also really love and those are some of my favorite characters to play, but I had never played someone quite like this.

There was something very pure and compelling about her deep moral integrity. There wasn’t anything self-serving about it. My character is based off of the real Frances Haugen, and these are all real things that the real Frances did. And I was like, wow, that’s interesting, I’ve never done anything like that before.

‘The Social Reckoning’Leah Gallo

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 think ultimately what she craves most in life is intimacy and connection, and I think that’s why she really believed in what she thought Facebook was supposed to be originally, which was just connecting people and in its true, purest, earliest form. That’s what she wanted and that’s what she wanted to give people too.

I think she did actually believe in the company, but she was seeing things that were happening and she wasn’t being listened to. She was, in the beginning, trying to help the company she was working with, not hurt it, and she says that multiple times. But I think that there’s a turning point at which she realizes there’s no going back from this, she needs to make a serious change if she wants things to get better and she does. I don’t know if I would say it was frustrating, it was definitely an internal conflict that my character was having within herself, 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 I heard about there being a whistleblower, but I didn’t know who Frances was. I looked her up and I very quickly saw there are a lot of very 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 this to be 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 and the idea of it. I wanted to support Aaron’s vision in the best way that 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 that I built from the ground up, purely from Aaron’s script. In terms of any research I did, there was so much about the world of tech and social media that I didn’t have any relationship to, and I was like, let me try and go piece by piece and understand this the best that 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 did read her memoir and Aaron was like, “Ugh.” [Laughs] What was most important for me is that I try and tell her story with as much integrity and love as possible. Aaron and I really wanted to do that. I hope that she also feels that we did that, and I think she does.

Frances Haugen and Mikey Madison attend ‘The Social Reckoning’ world premiere at Regal Union Square on October 04, 2026 in New York CityGetty Images for Sony Pictures E

Has she seen the film?

She has seen the film, yes. I think that she’s overall quite happy with it. I think what really is most important to her is, she really doesn’t have any vanity. You know what I mean? So she really just wanted the story to be told. I think she wanted people to know what was happening more behind the scenes and in depth and open up the conversation hopefully for more change to possibly happen, and she really has swung open those doors.

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 something like that. People refer to his Sorkin-isms, which is pretty incredible and iconic in a lot of ways. As an actor to try and 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 is not comfortable existing in herself in present face-to-face like this, it only helped. It added a quality of uncomfortability that I think was a blessing for the character.

But yes, every period, every comma, every space in between each sentence is intentional and was not something that I’m used to in any way. But it was also a good exercise for me as an actor to try and 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 like, “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 to be 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, 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.

On the set of ‘The Social Reckoning’Leah Gallo

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 to just continue working forever. I look at Cate Blanchett and Isabelle Huppert, and I’m deeply moved by the careers and the filmography that 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 that 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.

‘Anora’Neon

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.