Eisenberg's The Debut Closes London Film Festival With Moore

Jesse Eisenberg closed the London Film Festival on Sunday with a confession about how his new film got its star. He wrote the lead role in the musical comedy The Debut with Julianne Moore in mind, and he told reporters on the red carpet that he considers her the greatest actress in the world.

Moore plays Mona, a shy New Jersey housewife who lands a role in a community theatre musical and finds, in the work of rehearsing, the purpose and the community she had been missing. She told Reuters the character is moving toward something, knowing there is something she needs in her life, and that the thing she finds leads her back to herself and to other people.

The film is Eisenberg's latest as a director, after his BAFTA-winning screenplay for A Real Pain. He wrote the screenplay, directed, and wrote seven original songs for it. The songs belong to the show inside the film, a stage production called Nosy Neighbours, a light-hearted musical with a 1990s feel. The cast includes The Little Mermaid star Halle Bailey.

Paul Giamatti plays Jerry, the director of the community production. Mona's early struggles on stage test his patience, and she answers by taking method acting to an extreme. Eisenberg said Moore's reading of the part let him make a weird movie that still felt grounded, because she is so unusual in the role.

The numbers so far

The Debut arrives with a festival run already behind it. It premiered at Telluride on Sept. 5, played Toronto and New York, competed at San Sebastian, and screened at Zurich, where Moore received the Golden Icon Award. Critics have been kind. Rotten Tomatoes lists the film at 92 percent from 59 reviews, with an average rating of 8.1 out of 10, and Metacritic lists 76 out of 100 from 21 critics.

Audiences get it soon. A24 releases the film in the United States on Dec. 11. Lionsgate releases it in the United Kingdom on Jan. 15, 2027. Before that, it screens as the centerpiece of the Savannah Film Festival on Oct. 27, where Moore will receive an Icon Award.

Sunday night in London was the end of the festival and, for this film, the end of the introductions. From here it has to do what Mona does in the story: go out in front of a paying audience and hold the stage.