Dominic Sessa on Playing a Young, Lying Bourdain
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- "Tony" is a Matt Johnson–directed film set in 1975 that follows 19-year-old Anthony Bourdain to Provincetown, where he lies about winning a writing fellowship to follow his crush Nancy (Emilia Jones) and ends up kitchen-bound under a chef played by Antonio Banderas.
- Dominic Sessa, who had his breakout in Alexander Payne's 2023 "The Holdovers," said he was initially skeptical of the role because he expected a full Bourdain biography, but came around after meeting Johnson and realizing the script focused on the pre-fame summer, giving him room to fictionalize.
- Sessa told Variety he keyed into the character's dishonesty by drawing on his own high-school experience of "putting it on or being an imposter" among wealthier classmates, which he said justified playing Bourdain in a way that isn't "super likable, at least not at first."
- "Tony" is the first fictional biopic about Bourdain, distinct from the 2021 documentary "Roadrunner"; Sessa said the production relied on limited footage and personal accounts from people who knew Bourdain in the '70s, including the Luster Brothers of Ciro & Sal's, who corrected at least one scene — the hot-iron-pan burn — because Bourdain had a habit of making stories sound more interesting.
- Antonio Banderas became a mentor figure to the young cast on set, with Sessa calling him the oldest and most energetic member of the group; Banderas owns eight restaurants in Málaga, Spain, and improvised alongside Leo Woodall's oyster-shucking and a crew member who made roughly 20 lobster rolls a day.
- The film culminates in a beach scene where Tony realizes how food connects people, a realization Sessa described as the seed of Bourdain's lifelong search for genuine human connection through cuisine — and the movie foreshadows the chef-turned-host's later battles with drug addiction and mental health.
Why it matters: For Sessa, "Tony" is a step up from ensemble supporting work in "The Holdovers" to his first lead; for Bourdain's legacy, the film uses the years before "Kitchen Confidential" and the Emmy-winning CNN run to hint at the addiction and mental-health struggles that defined his later life, which Sessa said were difficult to separate from the performance during prep.
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