{"id":738788,"date":"2026-08-15T11:44:13","date_gmt":"2026-08-15T11:44:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/738788\/"},"modified":"2026-08-15T11:44:13","modified_gmt":"2026-08-15T11:44:13","slug":"dominic-sessa-on-the-hellraising-that-led-him-to-playing-anthony-bourdain-the-cops-were-not-too-fond-of-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/738788\/","title":{"rendered":"Dominic Sessa on the hellraising that led him to playing Anthony Bourdain: \u2018The cops were not too fond of us\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

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We know what Anthony Bourdain<\/a> became. We know his travel shows and his butch foodie magnetism<\/a>. We know that his brusque yet vaguely proselytising quotes have become the equivalent of a Che Guevara T-shirt for gastropub walls. But his beginnings are less clear, if once summed up by Bourdain himself with trademark crackle: \u201cI treated the world as my ashtray. I spent most of my waking hours drinking, smoking pot, scheming and doing my best to amuse, outrage, impress and penetrate anyone silly enough to find me entertaining. I was \u2013 to be frank \u2013 a spoiled, miserable, narcissistic, self-destructive and thoughtless young lout, badly in need of a good ass-kicking.\u201d<\/p>\n

He was, for want of a more succinct term, sort of a f***-up. So when you\u2019re in need of a guy to play said f***-up in a film about his life<\/a>, it helps to find someone who\u2019s been there and done that. Enter Dominic Sessa: star of the bittersweet Christmas comedy The Holdovers<\/a>, a Bafta nominee, and the most polite and well-behaved former f***-up you could possibly ask for.<\/p>\n

\u201cGrowing up, my only concerns were when I was gonna nap, how my friends and I were gonna get alcohol, how we were gonna get the fake IDs we needed to buy alcohol, and what part of the beach we were gonna drink it on,\u201d Sessa laughs, 23 going on 60, with the Almost Famous curls and rotary phone face to prove it. Sessa\u2019s hellion years were less than a decade ago \u2013 quite annoyingly, he wasn\u2019t even alive when 9\/11 happened \u2013 but he makes them sound positively sepia-toned. He grew up an adolescent beach bum just outside Atlantic City, New Jersey: a kind of rinky-dink Vegas full of rundown casinos where he\u2019d play table games with his buddies and swear, officer, that he was of legal age. \u201cThe cops were not too fond of us,\u201d he jokes.<\/p>\n

His history as a hellraiser is more or less all he had in common with Anthony Bourdain when he was approached to play him in Tony. He knew only his name, and little of his life. He was sceptical about a biopic. \u201cI didn\u2019t feel like it was something I could do, or was comfortable doing,\u201d he says. But Tony, from director Matt Johnson<\/a>, isn\u2019t your average biopic. It doesn\u2019t chart the highs and lows of Bourdain\u2019s entire life story, but instead a single summer he spent in Provincetown, Massachusetts, in 1975, where his love of culinary excellence first came into view. It\u2019s an aperitif, if you will, with Bourdain depicted as a bright if insecure 19-year-old harbouring dreams of writing a bestseller. He pretends to be enrolled in an elite creative writing programme while, in fact, working as a dishwasher at a crumbling beachfront restaurant.<\/p>\n

\"MentorMentor and mentee: Antonio Banderas and Sessa in \u2018Tony\u2019 (A24)<\/p>\n

Inspired by two early chapters in Bourdain\u2019s celebrated 2000 memoir Kitchen Confidential, it introduces love interests and mentor figures, and lightly fictionalises Bourdain\u2019s formative experiences with girls, food and hard drugs. \u201cWe had so much agency and creative freedom,\u201d Sessa says. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t want to watch an Anthony Bourdain movie where you\u2019re being constantly reminded in every single frame that this is about Anthony Bourdain. Unlike a lot of biopics, you\u2019re able to get really lost in the story.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s true that there\u2019s an unhurried wistfulness to Tony, like watching the sunset with a pack of Lucky Strikes in hand. Antonio Banderas is a gentle pleasure as the restaurateur who gives Bourdain his first shot, and Sessa is wonderful, capturing that sullen, sexy sensitivity that always made Bourdain so compelling. You don\u2019t think once about how his story ended, which is sort of the point. Bourdain died by suicide in 2018, in a French hotel room while he was filming an episode of his travelogue programme Parts Unknown. It was a terrible end to a life defined by grit and curiosity, and Tony skirts it entirely. There\u2019s not even a pre-credits epitaph describing the turns his journey took.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think Matt and I discussed it maybe once, early on,\u201d Sessa says. \u201cBut neither of us could really relate to it. We couldn\u2019t understand what it feels like to be in that place. How could that possibly inform anything for us? Neither of us would want to think about going to a place like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Inspiration:Inspiration: the real Anthony Bourdain in 2002 (Getty)<\/p>\n

Still, he seems unsure whether leaving it out completely was the correct choice. \u201cI can\u2019t say it informed what I was doing performance-wise,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s something that I grappled with. And I still kind of think about it.\u201d He remembers shooting the final scenes of the movie, \u201cwhere we\u2019re ending this story on a hopeful moment, where things look as if they\u2019re gonna be awesome and there\u2019s so much potential\u2026\u201d He trails off. \u201cObviously we all know that, actually, it was this tragic ending that ultimately happened.\u201d<\/p>\n

It led to one of the biggest lessons he took from being inside Bourdain\u2019s head for a few months. \u201cIt\u2019s made me look at life in a different way,\u201d he explains. \u201cI can\u2019t let myself get caught up in these highs, because you can be in a great spot one day and then the next day things can seem terrible. It gave me a sort of release that I\u2019ve never had before giving a performance, or being on a set. You don\u2019t know if the movie you\u2019re making could end up being f***ing terrible, even if you have a great time doing it. So I\u2019m just gonna have a good time while I\u2019m here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sessa is at home in New York, surrounded by the spoils of nascent celebrity. He\u2019s wearing a trucker hat from a film he\u2019s just made in Barcelona, where he plays a race car driver. Behind him is a helmet, and a classic Nomex driving suit hanging from a coat rack. \u201cI got to drive these old dirt rally cars and shoot a bunch of guns,\u201d he smiles. The dude is enjoying himself, and three years removed from a Holdovers press cycle defined by his agog expression while sitting on the front row at Herm\u00e8s shows and speaking to excited journalists, he\u2019s used to the rat race. \u201cDon\u2019t take this the wrong way, but I was more excited about doing a bunch of interviews back then,\u201d he says. \u201cLike, this is sick \u2013 people want to talk to me? But now it\u2019s just sorta work.\u201d<\/p>\n

He\u2019s kind enough to still indulge questions about his start in the business, if only because he probably knows it\u2019s a bit mad. How it went down is that his years of teen hellraising eventually caught up with him. He was nearly kicked out of school, and felt awful about it. He applied for a scholarship to a Massachusetts boarding school called Deerfield Academy, and remembers holding his hands up to his chequered past in the initial interview.<\/p>\n

Like Bourdain, I was constantly lying and masking. I didn\u2019t know what I was doing half the time. But on the other side of that was nirvana<\/p>\n

\u201cI led with, \u2018I\u2019m a f***-up\u2019, basically,\u201d he says. \u201cI told them, \u2018This is what I did. This is the trouble I got into. I almost got kicked out of my last school, but I think I could be a great member of the community.\u2019 That was my pitch. I wanted things to be hard for myself, because I knew I was gonna come out of it being the best possible version of me.\u201d He got in, and struggled. \u201cLike Bourdain, I was constantly lying and masking. I didn\u2019t know what I was doing half the time. But on the other side of that was nirvana.\u201d<\/p>\n

And then something crazy happened: the Oscar-winning filmmaker Alexander Payne, of Nebraska, Sideways and Election fame, held an open casting call for The Holdovers, which was using Deerfield Academy as a shooting location. Payne needed somebody who could play the young, moody foil to Paul Giamatti\u2019s irascible classics teacher, and Sessa fit the bill. It helped that he seemed a bit out of time, too \u2013 like Tony, The Holdovers is set in the Seventies. \u201cEven before I started acting, I really romanticised that time period,\u201d he says. \u201cI mean, I\u2019ve had sideburns since I was in high school.\u201d<\/p>\n

Does he feel older than his years? \u201cNot really, although people definitely look at me like I\u2019m someone from the Seventies. People say my face looks like I\u2019m from the Seventies; my hair. I just find [that era] exciting. And doing a movie set then is like the closest you can get to time travelling.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sessa enrolled in acting school at Carnegie Mellon University after he finished filming The Holdovers, but didn\u2019t tell any of his classmates that he\u2019d spent the past winter working with stars. \u201cI didn\u2019t really know how to explain it,\u201d he says. \u201cI also didn\u2019t know if I was gonna be terrible in it.\u201d He chuckles. \u201cEventually it started coming out. I\u2019d get messages from my classmates being, like, \u2018Dude, I saw you in a f***ing movie trailer \u2013 what the f***?!\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Sessa,Sessa, Paul Giamatti and Da\u2019Vine Joy Randolph in \u2018The Holdovers\u2019 (Universal)<\/p>\n

Time moved quickly after that. The Holdovers was a critical and commercial smash, earning five Oscar nominations and winning one for Sessa\u2019s co-star Da\u2019Vine Joy Randolph. Sessa was nominated for a Bafta and won the Breakthrough Performance prize at the Independent Spirit Awards. He starred alongside Michelle Pfeiffer in last year\u2019s festive comedy Oh. What. Fun., and played a young illusionist in the blockbuster Now You See Me: Now You Don\u2019t. He ended up dropping out of Carnegie Mellon, and seems to surprise himself when he realises that this summer would\u2019ve been his graduation.<\/p>\n

I tell Sessa that The Holdovers is probably the closest Hollywood has come to making a perennial Christmas classic in recent years \u2013 do he and his family revisit it come the festive season? \u201cNot at all,\u201d he laughs. \u201cThat\u2019d be kind of weird, wouldn\u2019t it?\u201d He doesn\u2019t plan to watch it again for a very long time. \u201cLike when I\u2019m older or have kids one day, then I might show them what I looked like as my younger self.\u201d<\/p>\n

Once he gets old enough to be nostalgic, in other words \u2013 and his age finally catches up to that face of his.<\/p>\n

\u2018Tony\u2019 is in cinemas<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":738789,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6491,96,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-738788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/738788","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=738788"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/738788\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/738789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=738788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=738788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=738788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}