Mikey Madison and Jeremy Allen White portray Frances Haugen and Jeff Horwitz in The Social Reckoning, a new film about the pair’s role in bringing alleged problems inside Facebook to public attention.
Haugen worked as a data engineer on Facebook’s Civic Integrity team and believed in the company’s stated mission of connecting people. The film depicts her becoming concerned that user safety was being placed behind financial considerations.
She worked with Wall Street Journal investigative reporter Horwitz on an initial story. After it failed to prompt major change at the company, Haugen agreed to photograph internal documents, contributing to the publication of what became known as the Facebook Files.
Following her departure from Facebook, Haugen identified herself as the source of the documents and secured whistleblower protection after agreeing to testify before the US Senate.
The real Frances Haugen and Mikey Madison
Haugen now lives in Puerto Rico with her husband and daughter. Madison, who plays her in the film, said writer-director Aaron Sorkin did not ask her to alter her appearance for the role, instead encouraging her to build the character from the screenplay.
“When I got the script, I knew about the Facebook Files, but I didn’t know Frances’ name. So I looked her up, and I was like, ‘She’s blonde and has blue eyes. Why does Aaron want me for this?’ And he said, ‘I want you to try and build the character from my script,’” Madison told Time.
She said she also read Haugen’s memoir while preparing for the part. “Of course I read her memoir and tried to do my due diligence because there was so much I didn’t understand,” she said.
Jeremy Allen White plays Jeff Horwitz
The real Horwitz is considerably taller than White, appearing to stand almost a foot above the actor. He no longer works for the Wall Street Journal and is now a reporter at Thomson Reuters.
Horwitz won the Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on the Facebook Files and wrote Broken Code: Inside Facebook and the Fight to Expose Its Toxic Secrets.
White had recently played Bruce Springsteen in Deliver Me From Nowhere and initially considered turning down another role based on a real person. He told The Hollywood Reporter: “I’m really hesitant about playing another real person next. I’d like to do a new story about a character that I can create on my own and not feel handcuffed to other people’s ideas about this person.”
White said Sorkin acknowledged his concerns and gave him scope to study Horwitz while relying on the screenplay’s interpretation of the reporter. “So it was the best of both worlds,” he recalled. “I got to gather a lot of extra information because Jeff is a real person who’s left an imprint in this world, but I also had a tremendous amount of freedom on set.”
