Sony Pictures

Mikey Madison and Jeremy Allen White portray real people in the new movie The Social Reckoning and you might be wondering what they look like in real life.

The actors take on the roles of Frances Haugen and Jeff Horwitz, who worked together to expose what was allegedly happening behind-the-scenes at Facebook.

Frances Haugen was a data engineer on Facebook’s Civic Integrity team and truly believed in the company’s mission of connecting people, something her character in the movie brings up many times. When she discovered that the safety of users was being looked over in favor of making money, she decided to work with Wall Street Journal investigative reporter Jeff Horwitz on a story to expose everything. After their first article, didn’t lead to any massive change at the company, Frances agreed to photograph internal documents, leading to the release of The Facebook Files.

After leaving the company, Frances decided to come forward as the source of the documents and gained whistleblower protection by agreeing to testify in front of the U.S. Senate.

The real Frances Haugen with actress Mikey Madison

The real Frances Haugen is pictured on the left alongside Oscar-winning actress Mikey Madison, who plays her in the movie. After leaving Facebook and being involved in the leak of the Facebook Files, she permanently moved to Puerto Rico, where she now lives with her husband and daughter.

While writer-director Aaron Sorkin did not want her to change her looks for the role, the character was still built off of Frances‘ true story.

Mikey told Time, “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.’ But of course I read her memoir and tried to do my due diligence because there was so much I didn’t understand. I don’t have a personal relationship with social media at all.”

READ MORE: Why Frances always wore gloves throughout the movie

Credit: Getty

Jeremy Allen White and the real Jeff Horwitz

In reality, the real Jeff Horwitz is much taller than Jeremy Allen White and appears to stand nearly a foot taller.

The real Jeff no longer works at the Wall Street Journal and is now a reporter at Thomson Reuters. He won the Pulitzer Prize for his work exposing the Facebook Files and wrote the book Broken Code: Inside Facebook and the Fight to Expose Its Toxic Secrets.

Jeremy almost turned down the project because he wasn’t ready to play another real person after just portraying Bruce Springsteen in Deliver Me From Nowhere.

“I shared with [Aaron], ‘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,’” he told THR.

“Aaron heard me and immediately spoke to my hesitation, saying, ‘Look, I understand you had to play Bruce that way.’ He was already speaking to Jeremy Strong about playing Zuckerberg, and he said, ‘Mark Zuckerberg is a very public person like Bruce, and people already have ideas of each person. They know how they move and how they speak. They already have their own interpretations,’” Jeremy said.

“While Jeff and Frances are public people to an extent, you’re right that the majority of people do not know who they are. So Aaron just said, ‘Look, read as much as you want, watch videos, listen to his voice and do all the work you want. But at the end of the day, this is my version of Jeff. This is my story. I want you to use the text in my script,’” he recalled. “So it was the best of both worlds. 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.”

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