David Fincher’s award-winning feature The Social Network is one of the best thriller movies you can find. In the acclaimed movie, there are several memorable moments; however, one scene has been recreated by fans continuously since the film’s release. In an interview with Collider, Andrew Garfield recalled filming the movie’s iconic laptop smashing scene, and how Fincher helped him deliver the standout performance.
Based on Ben Mezrich’s book The Accidental Billionaires, The Social Network tells the intense story about the founding of Facebook and all the gruelling lawsuits that followed it. Andrew Garfield plays Eduardo Luiz Saverin, who, in a final confrontation with Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg), smashes Mark’s computer. The heated scene is a pivotal moment in the movie and has since become viral. Last year Maze Runner actor Dylan O’Brien posted his own recreation of the scene online.
However, it turns out that the famous moment was an intense filming experience. Garfield has shared that the scene took 40 takes, and it was thanks to Fincher’s direction and encouragement that he was able to push through it and leave it “all on the field.”
“Jesse, laptop smash, that day, that long goddamn day, and Fincher being such a good dad that day. He was the perfect sports dad,” Garfield recalls. “He was instilling me with, ‘Keep doing it, and you can keep doing it, believe that you can keep doing… I know I’m going to ask you to do this a lot, and your voice is going to be tired, and your heart is going to be tired, and your body’s going to be exhausted, and I know you’re going to hate me, and that’s okay, because we are going to get it absolutely perfect’.”
The scene from The Social Network where Eduardo tells Mark Zuckerberg he better lawyer up asshole starring me and @dylanobrien pic.twitter.com/XoPj9A7ahU
— reese witherspoon’s tether (@sarahramos) May 21, 2020
“And then at the end, instead of saying, ‘We’re moving on’, I was sat on the floor after take 35, 40 of my closeup of that scene, which you can imagine would have been a lot of screaming and agony,” the actor continued. “And I’m sat on the floor, just wiped, exhausted, thinking we’re probably going to go again another ten times. He just walks up to me, up that corridor from this monitor, and he puts his hand out to me and pulls me up and shakes my hand, and he says, ‘Moving on’. And that was that. So that was a beautiful moment. I felt very gratified. Leaving it all in the field. That was a beautiful day. I loved it.”