‘Tony’ Star Dominic Sessa on How Being a ‘Liar’ Helped Him Portray Anthony Bourdain and Why the Film Foreshadows His Later Struggles

By Matt Minton

Matt Minton

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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.”

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