For most actors, playing a real person in a biopic comes with an unrealistic amount of pressure.
But because Matt Johnson decided to focus on just one summer in 19-year-old Anthony Bourdain‘s life — long before the famed chef-turned-writer ever wrote “Kitchen Confidential” or became a household name — “Tony” star Dominic Sessa had a wide-open canvas.
“I personally find it more interesting when you can reveal to the audience something that is not really known or hasn’t been focused on at all. Even for the biggest fans of Bourdain, they feel like they’re seeing something new here,” Sessa tells Variety. “It is fascinating and impressive, to an extent, to see actors and set designers recreate really iconic moments in history to an uncanny level. It’s something that people admire, I think it’s cool and can appreciate that. But I was grateful that we had the freedom to [instead] put a lot of our own stories into this.”
Set in 1975, “Tony” is more coming-of-age hangout movie than traditional biopic. It follows Anthony Bourdain, who simply goes by Tony at the time, as he follows his older school crush, Nancy (Emilia Jones) to Provincetown, Mass., lying about winning a writing fellowship. He spends his summer there and, in a desperate effort to find a roof over his head, stumbles into the local kitchen of a seasoned seafood chef (Antonio Banderas). It’s a summer that changes Tony’s life forever as he meets the erratic Sal (Leo Woodwall) and other folks in the kitchen.
