Aaron Sorkin Reveals the Legal Edits He Had to Make for The Social Reckoning (and Why Trump Is Never Named)
The writer-director discusses Mark Zuckerberg, reshoots, lawyers, Mikey Madison, and whether Meta can be redeemed.
By Rebecca Ford
September 29, 2026
Aaron Sorkin is adjusting to the light, metaphorically speaking. The Oscar-winning writer-director has been in dark editing rooms for the past nine months, finishing up his new film, The Social Reckoning. “It’s actually a lot like coming into the sunlight after you’ve been in a movie theater for the afternoon,” he tells me. “It’s a little bit blinding.”
He admits he’s more anxious for this release than he’s been for any of his other directorial efforts, which include 2017’s Molly’s Game, 2020’s The Trial of the Chicago 7, and 2021’s Being the Ricardos. “I thought I had maxed out in terms of nervousness, but it turned out there was another gear,” he says. “Usually by this point you’ve done a whole bunch of test screenings for a wide swath of audience. You have a sense of how the audience is going to react to a movie, but very few people have seen the film, and so I don’t know what’s going to happen next.”
The Social Reckoning, which hits theaters October 9, is a companion piece to 2010’s The Social Network. Sorkin, who won the best-original-screenplay Oscar for The Social Network, returns to the world of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg (this time played by Jeremy Strong), now centering the story on whistleblower Frances Haugen (Mikey Madison), who leaked internal Facebook documents to Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz (Jeremy Allen White) that alleged that the company’s algorithms amplified political division, among other offenses.
Sorkin, whether as a writer or a writer-director, is known for his razor-sharp, rapid-fire dialogue and his examination of social and political ideals. In The Social Reckoning, he takes on the polarization of America and Facebook’s alleged role in the rise of extremist viewpoints. He also reckons with, once again, Zuckerberg, as social media’s power and influence have only grown in the 16 years since The Social Network was released. Here, he reveals Haugen’s reaction to the film, what he had to change for legal reasons, and why Trump’s name is never uttered in the film.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
Vanity Fair: Why didn’t you do more test screenings for this one?
Aaron Sorkin: The studio had a real concern about secrecy around this movie. And even the small tests that we did, ordinarily you’d go out someplace, you’d go to Phoenix, Arizona; Columbus, Ohio. These were test screenings with 70 people on the studio lot, all of them Sony employees. It is not a great polling sample.
You did reshoots even after the trailer came out. Why?
[Sony Pictures chairman and CEO] Tom Rothman just offered, “If there’s anything you could go back and rewrite or reshoot, would you do it?” And I said, “Yeah, I would go back and rewrite and reshoot the whole thing. I always want to do that.” But realistically, there were two scenes I wanted to rewrite and another I wanted to reshoot and another I just wanted to add. And so he opened the checkbook and gave us three days of shooting.
So that wasn’t because of a reaction to the trailer? This was already planned?
No, we weren’t correcting anything. There are two kinds of reshoots that are done: One is the “Oh, we’re in trouble. We need to reshoot this.” And that usually happens on $150 million superhero movies. The other kinds of reshoots are “Oh, we really like this movie. It’s good. Let’s make it better.”
This movie is Mikey Madison’s first role after winning the Oscar for Anora. Why was she the right person to play Frances?
There’s one moment in Anora. It’s when the Russian bodyguard has gagged her and the director, Sean Baker, just cuts to a tight shot of her eyes staring at the bodyguard who’s just gagged her. And it was powerful and funny and it made me love the rest of the performance that much more. There are some things that an actor can’t act—there are certain things they can’t fake. They can’t pretend to be smart and they can’t pretend to be funny. And Mikey is both of those things. And there’s an honesty to her that’s very winning.
Has Frances seen the movie?
Yes, we screened it for her just a couple of weeks ago. That was a scary two hours for me. Fortunately, she really loved it.
Did she come to set?
No. I didn’t want Mikey to have to play Frances in front of Frances or Jeremy Allen White to have to play Jeff in front of Jeff. She stayed away from the set. They both did.
You told me you joined Facebook when you were researching this one.
I was on Facebook for the period that I was writing The Social Network, and then I was on Facebook again for the period that I was writing, and I think maybe shooting the movie. I can’t remember. At some point, my assistant pulled the plug on it.
Because it’s addictive.
It is. In my case, on my first day back on Facebook now, Facebook 2.0, because, wow, was it different back in 2009 when I was writing The Social Network. But the first thing that came up in my feed happened to be a picture of a dachshund. I like dachshunds, so I thought, Well, okay, you got to start training the algorithm. And I liked it. And from that point forward, all Facebook was for me was pictures of dachshunds. My entire Facebook experience is just pictures of dachshunds.
You’re a dachshund extremist now.
Right, I’ve been radicalized.
Sony hired an outside legal firm for this specific film. What didn’t you get to include that you wish you could have explored?
Under ordinary circumstances, the studio will do a thorough legal vet of the script. These were extraordinary circumstances. They decided to hire outside counsel just to handle this movie. There were a couple of things in my original draft: In the second-to-last scene, the scene ends with Teddy—Billy Magnussen—saying, “I don’t know what the fuck that girl thinks she’s doing.” That line was originally, “I don’t know what that bitch thinks she’s doing.” And the lawyer said, “Unless you can show me that at one point a senior Facebook executive referred to an ex-employee as a bitch, you can’t do that.” So it was that.
So only little details.
I’ll tell you a big one, but I just want to be careful about how I do this. Of the people I spoke to a lot: There’s Frances, Jeff, and a man named Roger McNamee. He was a big early investor in Facebook and became a kind of consigliere to Mark until they had a big falling out over the direction of the company. Roger published an op-ed and a book called Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe. Originally, it was made clear to me that I couldn’t call Bill Burr’s character Roger McNamee, not because there was going to be a problem with Roger, who was on board, but because there might be a problem with Facebook and the situation that I have Mark and Bill Burr’s character in the movie. So that character had to become inspired by Roger McNamee, which is what it is now.
The January 6 riot is a part of the story. I noticed Trump’s name is never used in the film. Was that intentional?
I want to be clear: I was never asked to do that, to not mention Trump by name. I turned in the script and a day or two later met with Tom Rothman, who was full speed ahead on it. And I promised him, unprovoked, that we would not see any Trump signage, no
“Make America Great Again.” The movie is about Facebook’s role and the rise of divisiveness, extremism, and hyper-partisanship in the country. It is not a red-blue thing, even though, obviously, it will be felt that way.
Do you have any idea what the solution is to fix the divisiveness that’s explored in the film?
Honestly, I’m really starting to think that, for answers to that question that you’re asking, we need to consult cult experts. You hear people say, “It’s a cult. It’s a cult.” And I think what they’re saying is it’s like a cult, and I believe that. I know that cult experts and mental health experts have been trying to get our attention for a while. Maybe the answer is just the right leader, but I have a hunch that’s only the answer in West Wing world.
Is it just coincidence that AI boiled over as this film is coming out for release, or was that on your mind while you were writing?
No, it wasn’t. First of all, you know how technologically illiterate I am, right? I’ve written these movies, but it takes me five minutes in the morning to find the power button on my laptop. You’re talking to the wrong guy about AI. But when I think about AI—and we just got this warning last week that it’s going to kill all of us in 10 years, so everything else we’re talking about might be moot—but when I think about it in terms of what I do, filmmaking and television, I am optimistic because I think that ultimately the audience is going to reject it. I think if you were driving along in your car listening to the song “Imagine,” the John Lennon song, and you were told that it wasn’t written by John Lennon, it was written by AI, it was written by a machine, I think you would suddenly find the song kind of silly.
We have a relationship with art that’s illogical, and I think we’re going to find out that when you walk into a movie theater, see a movie, you may not know the name of the person who wrote it, the name of the person who directed it, but it matters to you that it was a person.
Do you think there’s redemption for Mark Zuckerberg and Meta?
At one point, Bill Burr’s character says, “Change a one to a zero or a zero to a one. Just do it.” Yes, Meta can redeem itself. Become what it was supposed to be: a force for good and connecting people. Sorry to keep quoting the movie, but Mark says at the end of the argument, “This is a business, Charlie. You know why we don’t fact-check ads: because we don’t have to.” Make them have to. The responsibility is with the laws—pass laws.
What’s a movie that’s not being made that you would love to see in the world?
I’d like to see Hollywood make movies where the press are the heroes. The low level of trust in traditional news sources is dangerous, and I think film and television can help.
Many of your films point out an injustice or an ethical issue in society or politics. Do you consider yourself an activist in that way?
No. I know activists and I’m not an activist beyond writing a check once in a while. This bank robber Willie Sutton was asked, “Why do you rob banks?” And he said, “That’s where the money is.” These areas that you’re talking about, for me, are where the stories are that sort of suit my writing style, which is a little romantic and a little idealistic. It’s just that’s where the stories are, and I really like telling stories.