At an early screening of
The Social Reckoning, Aaron Sorkin’s follow-up to
The Social Network, I thought I knew what I was in for. Jeremy Strong is playing Mark Zuckerberg, taking over from Jesse Eisenberg. But when the film started, it was at least 30 minutes before the Zuckerberg character appeared onscreen.
Instead, the main character of
The Social Reckoning is Frances Haugen, the whistleblower who helped the
Wall Street Journal publish its series the Facebook Files, showing how the company failed to address known issues like how Facebook could be used to incite violence in developing countries and how Instagram
harmed the mental health of teen and tween girls.
We see Mikey Madison—in her first major role since winning the Oscar for
Anora—as Haugen, become increasingly disillusioned with Facebook, going from a true believer in its mission to connect the world to skeptical the company will ever sacrifice any profits for the sake of humanity. Alongside Jeremy Allen White as
WSJ journalist Jeff Horwitz, she goes public.
Zuckerberg, instead, is a side character who we see preparing for Congressional testimony and in his bunker of an office. If Eisenberg’s Zuckerberg was a striver desperate to prove himself and gain social acceptance, Strong’s is years into life as a powerful, isolated billionaire.
That’s how Haugen views him; she joined us after the screening for a Q&A and we followed up for another interview too. Haugen worked at Facebook between 2019 and 2021, following a career across Silicon Valley at Google, Pinterest, and Yelp. What is it like for Haugen that the much-anticipated sequel to the
Social Network is in fact about her? “As much as it is about my whistleblowing, I think it is a wonderful scene of life to help people understand how unique the circumstances are around [Zuckerberg’s] existence, given he is one of the most powerful people having as little checks and balances on him as he does,” she told me. “I’m grateful that they do depict him as well because it’s important for the public to understand.”
One character we
don’t see onscreen is Sheryl Sandberg. She left her role as COO of Facebook in 2022 and was very much still involved during the period depicted in the film. Instead, the movie’s Zuckerberg is surrounded by composite characters of advisors.
Sorkin’s take on Facebook culminates in the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol. The film’s view of Facebook’s harms on the world is focused on the U.S. Meanwhile, the real Sandberg was dealing with other problems. “She’s the one who had to deal with Myanmar, she’s the one who had to deal with Sri Lanka,” Haugen says. “By not having Sheryl [in the film], there’s not a natural conduit for exposing the issues that happened outside the U.S.”
The movie is opening as Meta deals with the impact of many of these issues today. In August, the company reached
an $18 billion settlement over Facebook and Instagram’s harms to children’s mental health.
Since blowing the whistle on Facebook, Haugen has testified in the U.S., U.K., and in front of the European Parliament, founded a nonprofit, and published a memoir. Recently, she’s been working to support whistleblowers at AI companies.
She views the current surge of Hollywood interest in these stories as a sign of where society is today. In addition to
The Social Reckoning, there’s
the forthcoming
Artificial, where Andrew Garfield plays Sam Altman, and the procedural
Cupertino about how people have been harmed by big tech.
“When
The Social Network came out, it was an end cap to an era of the internet. We got our first algorithmic feed around when the movie came out,” she says. Now, today’s projects are “a symbol of how hungry people are right now to try to gain any insight how to navigate this period of change in our society.”
The Social Reckoning is in theaters today.
Emma Hinchliffeemma.hinchliffe@fortune.comThe Most Powerful Women Daily newsletter is Fortune’
s daily briefing for and about the women leading the business world. 
