Bill Burr Joins The Social Reckoning as Zuckerberg Adviser

Bill Burr will play Charlie Garrigan, a fictionalised Facebook investor turned critic who helps Mark Zuckerberg prepare to testify before Congress, in Aaron Sorkin's film The Social Reckoning, according to Variety.

Jeremy Strong plays Zuckerberg in the film. It is a follow-up to The Social Network, Sorkin's 2010 drama about the founding of Facebook.

Garrigan is not a straight portrait of a real person. Sorkin's version is an insider who made money from the company and then turned against it, brought back to coach its founder through formal questioning by United States lawmakers.

Sorkin offered Burr the part after seeing him on stage. Burr was playing Dave Moss in David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross on Broadway, New York's main theatre district, when Sorkin caught the performance.

The two leads had already crossed paths in the theatre. Burr met Strong when he went to see Strong in the Broadway play An Enemy of the People.

The setting is lockdown. The story follows the Facebook founder during the pandemic as he faces an investigative journalist, a reporter digging into hidden material, and confronts his role in fuelling the 6 January Capitol insurrection.

The wider cast includes Mikey Madison and Jeremy Allen White alongside Burr and Strong, as reported by Variety. Sorkin wrote the original screenplay, according to Sony Pictures, which describes the film as a companion piece to The Social Network, meaning a separate story in the same world rather than a direct sequel, and as a true David and Goliath story.

What makes this stand out is the off-screen dynamic. Sorkin has said Strong treated his co-stars the way he imagines Zuckerberg treats people during the shoot, according to Variety.

White has also spoken bluntly about the subject. In an interview about the film, he criticised Facebook's harmful algorithm, the automated system that decides what posts people see, according to Collider.