One of the nice things about this year’s awards season is that the awards really got spread around – it wasn’t the same five people winning every single award out there. While I felt sorry for Demi Moore when she lost the Oscar to Mikey Madison, she could console herself with her SAG, Golden Globe and Critics Choice Award, you know? It’s the same with Jesse Eisenberg’s A Real Pain – while he didn’t win the Oscar for Original Screenplay (he lost to Sean Baker for Anora), Eisenberg had already picked up some awards throughout the season, notably a BAFTA and an Independent Spirit Award, as well as WGA nomination. Plus, he literally wrote the script and directed Kieran Culkin in Culkin’s Oscar-winning performance. As it turns out, following the success of A Real Pain, Jesse has “won” something else: Polish citizenship.

Jesse Eisenberg is officially a Polish citizen. The actor, writer and director was granted citizenship by President Andrzej Duda at a ceremony in New York on Tuesday, just days after his film “A Real Pain” won Kieran Culkin an Oscar for best supporting actor.

“I’m so unbelievably honored,” Eisenberg said in a speech at the ceremony (via Radio RAMPA). “This is an honor of a lifetime and something I have been very interested in for two decades.”

Eisenberg drew from his own life in writing “A Real Pain,” which follows two American cousins, played by Eisenberg and Culkin, who take a trip to Poland to honor their late Holocaust survivor grandmother. The idea sprouted after the 2019 death of his great aunt, who fled Poland for the U.S. in 1938. Filming the movie in Poland inspired Eisenberg to apply for citizenship, which is available to those with direct ancestors who were born in the country or lived there after 1920.

“While we were filming this movie in Poland and I was walking the streets and starting to get a little more comfortable in the country, something so obvious occurred to me, which is that my family had lived in this place far longer than we’ve lived in New York,” Eisenberg said. “And of course, the history ended so tragically, but in addition to that tragedy of history was also the tragedy that my family didn’t feel any connection anymore to Poland. And that saddened me and confirmed for me that I really wanted to try to reconnect as much as possible.”

He concluded, “I really hope that tonight and this ceremony and this amazing honor is the first step in me, on behalf of my family, reconnecting to this beautiful country.”

“A Real Pain” also earned an Oscar nomination for Eisenberg’s original screenplay. At the BAFTAs, Eisenberg took home the original screenplay prize in addition to Culkin’s best supporting actor win.

[From Variety]

This is lovely. It sounds like he did apply for citizenship at some point in the past two years, and it sounds like the Polish government offered it to him as some kind of special case post-Oscars? I like how the Polish president waited until after the Oscars too – this actually would have helped Jesse’s Oscar campaign. But it’s obviously an honor, and while the subject matter of A Real Pain is profoundly sad, it’s also a really beautifully shot movie, and they made modern Poland look really pretty. It would not surprise me if the Polish tourism board had noticed a bump in American tourism following A Real Pain’s awards success.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.