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‘The Debut’s’ Julianne Moore, 65, and Paul Giamatti, 59, on the Characters They Can’t Shake

The stars talked about appearing in Jesse Eisenberg’s new dark comedy musical, which premiered last week at the Toronto International Film Festival

Tyler Coates,

AARP

Published September 18, 2026

Jesse Eisenberg, Julianne Moore and Paul Giamatti posing together at Toronto International Film Festival

Director Jesse Eisenberg and co-stars Julianne Moore and Paul Giamatti attend the screening of 'The Debut' at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) in Toronto, Canada on September 13, 2026.

Reynaud Julien/APS-Medias/ABACA/Shutterstock

Acting is messy business, but community theater is gold: That’s the takeaway from a conversation with Julianne Moore, 65, and Paul Giamatti, 59, who co-star in the new film, The Debut, written and directed by Jesse Eisenberg. Moore plays Mona Friedman, a soft-spoken and unassuming New Jersey housewife who leaps out of her comfort zone to audition for a community theater musical production, only to find her greatest foe in Jerry (Giamatti), the play’s domineering director who will stop at nearly nothing to get the best performance out of Mona he possibly can.

Julianne Moore in a scene from The Debut

In 'The Debut,' Moore plays Mona Friedman, an unassuming housewife with a bit part in a community theater production, who ends up waging war against her domineering director, played by Giamatti. The film opens nationwide on Christmas Day, 2026.

Courtesy of A24 Films

The pair joined Eisenberg onstage at the Toronto International Film Festival to chat about the film, which made its international premiere there. Having worked with Moore on 2022’s When You Finish Saving the World, Eisenberg had the actress in mind to play the character inspired by his own experience as a budding performer: “It’s an autobiographical movie, but — this is pretentious to even use this word — told through my muse, because I wrote this for her and only her.”

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For veterans Moore and Giamatti, the opportunity to perform in Eisenberg’s movie made the project an easy yes. “This was one of the best scripts I have ever, ever read,” said Moore, an endorsement cosigned by Giamatti.

The three shared their experiences with community theater; Eisenberg, who also stars in the film as a bit player in its hilarious musical-within-a-movie, admitted that the character of Mona is surprisingly autobiographical. Especially as Mona, in search of her character in the musical, evolves into the biggest diva in the cast in pursuit of making more of her persona — onstage and off.

“When I was 6 years old, I was very shy and nervous, and I felt invisible,” said Eisenberg. “Then I started doing community theater … and it suddenly felt like I was on this alien planet of nice things. And then what happened was I took it so seriously [and] I took it too far.”

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For Moore and Giamatti, The Debut was a chance to not only celebrate their shared love for theater and performance but also poke fun at the acting process. “It just takes over your whole lived experience,” Moore said of her craft. “You bring it home. You don’t think you’re dressing like your character, but maybe you are. You might adopt some mannerisms, some speech patterns. It just creeps into your life.”

The actors joked when audience members asked about how their roles in The Debut reflect some of their more memorable film performances. “Broken, depressive men?” Giamatti quipped when asked how Jerry compares with his characters in 2004’s Sideways and 2023’s The Holdovers. “I always follow the script, and [Jesse’s] script is so specific. It tells you absolutely everything you’re supposed to say and exactly how you’re supposed to do it. I try not to be the same depressive, broken, middle-aged man all the time, but I am a depressive, broken, middle-aged man. What do you want out of me?”

“Paul has the broken, middle-aged man, and I have these housewives,” said Moore, referring to her past performances in 1995’s Safe and 2002’s The Hours. “We have these characters that we just drag along behind us and keep trying to shake, but they cling to us and just keep coming back.”

But the appeal of Mona, Moore added, is not that she’s another housewife; rather, it’s the way her world expands through the story. “She’s just a regular person … who finds meaning and community for the first time in her life, and that to me is so moving,” Moore said. “She could be someone you see every day. She’s me, she’s Paul, she’s Jesse — we’re the people who wandered [into a theater] and found a path into our lives by trying out for the play.”

Tyler Coates is an entertainment journalist whose work has been featured in The Hollywood Reporter, Los Angeles Times, Wired, and Esquire. He lives in Los Angeles.

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