Dominic Sessa Learned a Lot Playing Anthony Bourdain. Just Don’t Ask Him to Cook

Taking on the role of Anthony Bourdain means stepping into one of the most beloved legacies in American food culture. Before his death in 2018, Bourdain was the best-selling author of Kitchen Confidential, the host of No Reservations and Parts Unknown, and the closest thing the restaurant world has to a folk hero. For Dominic Sessa, the 23-year-old star of Tony and the breakout of 2023’s Oscar-winning The Holdovers, playing Bourdain was his first real introduction to the man behind the myth.

“He didn’t hold a big place in my life,” Sessa tells W of his knowledge of the chef prior to being cast in the A24 drama, directed by Matt Johnson and in theaters now. “He’s a household name, but aside from watching a few videos on YouTube, I didn’t know much.”

That nescience worked in Sessa’s favor, allowing him to play Bourdain blind. It helps that the film isn’t a proper biopic, instead capturing a transformative summer loosely based on Bourdain’s own writing—when he, at 19 years old, got a gig washing dishes and shucking oysters at a Provincetown seafood joint in 1975. There, Bourdain was initiated into the chaotic, hyper-masculine, and monastic world of kitchens that he would come to symbolize. A pair of mischievous, juvenile line cooks (played by Leo Woodall and Stavros Halkias) are the devils on his shoulder, with Antonio Banderas playing the gentle, patient, and wise angel who teaches Tony to live with integrity.

Like Bourdain, Sessa is a New Jersey kid who was thrown into an intense career at a young age. Bourdain grew up in Leonia and spent his summers at the Shore, while Sessa was born in Cherry Hill and raised in Egg Harbor Township and Ocean City. The actor arrived at Deerfield Academy on a scholarship to play hockey, but a broken femur pushed him into the drama program instead. A casting call for Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers found him and, at 21, made him a Critics Choice winner and BAFTA nominee for his role opposite Paul Giamatti. Up next for Sessa is a crime drama he shot in Spain this summer. But first, he spoke with W about discovering Bourdain by playing him—and, in the process, finding himself.

You’ve said that after The Holdovers, you weren’t sure you wanted to lead a movie right away. What changed?

I’m fascinated by someone who becomes famous when they’re in their 40s, and is so open and unapologetic about the reality of their life and struggles—their everyday, working as a chef in New York, and the way he viewed everything that was happening to him. I felt like getting into movies was kind of thrust upon me, and [as a result], I reject a lot of aspects of it. I don’t try to exist in the world like a celebrity. I try really hard to maintain my integrity in this thing that I’m doing.

The film opens with Bourdain’s line about his younger self—“a spoiled, miserable, narcissistic, self-destructive, and thoughtless young lout.” How did you balance playing someone insufferable enough to earn that description, but so charming that the audience roots for him?

I had to understand those things in myself to make it make sense for the character. I thought a lot about the times in my life where I’ve been a complete asshole: I’ve lied to people and said the worst things, trying to protect my ego. I’ve always hated myself for that. So in preparing for this and thinking about that stuff, [I] got down on myself.

What I had to realize—and something Matt talked a lot to me about—is they’re byproducts. These are reactions to human feelings. As long as you are aware of it and you confront it, then it’s okay to have made mistakes. It’s okay to have been insufferable. The biggest thing is being honest with yourself. That allowed me to understand that this is feeling for him, more than being agitated by him.

What did you do to prepare, in terms of reading Kitchen Confidential or watching his shows?

Matt gave me a copy of Kitchen Confidential right after we met and encouraged me to watch his shows; he sent me specific episodes. But what was most important to me was understanding the characters he described. I can’t go into this movie being a fully formed Bourdain as we recognized him—smoking and tatted up, working the kitchen. So: who are the people that he talks about in his book? The line cooks he writes about that inspire Leo’s character and Stavros’s character, and the chef that he writes about—one of his first chefs in New York City—that really inspired Antonio [Banderas]’s character. A lot of the known Bourdain characteristics are living in Leo [Woodall] and in Antonio. They’re channeling the influences that made the man we got to know later in his life.

There are moments of foreshadowing the darker parts of Bourdain’s later experiences. How did you all think about that aspect of his story on set?

In the first script, there were scenes where Tony was super fucked up, doing drugs in the alleyway, basically ODing—really depressing shit that we immediately got rid of. Because we know the dark sides of those experiences, and he talks about them so openly. But in this movie, we get a sense of the excitement he describes in the kitchen.

So you see Leo shooting heroin on the beach and all of us doing a bunch of coke in the kitchen. We know these are things that are going to be a part of Bourdain’s life, but you get a sense of why it felt so welcome—because it was exciting. And I think seeing before is more valuable in the story we were trying to tell.

What are your kitchen skills like after this experience?

Antonio taught me how to cook a paella—I was in Spain with him a month ago. But no, I haven’t gotten any better at cooking. All I learned how to do was shuck oysters, and I got really good at washing dishes. I was just getting dishes thrown at me and being verbally assaulted by Stavros.

Bourdain already has a cult following. How are you feeling about how the movie might be received by his fans and those who knew him?

It’s exciting to see how many people have been affected by this man, in an extreme, personal way. Whether you think he would appreciate this and it’s a cool story to tell, or you think, “Gosh, he would’ve fucking hated this”—I have no idea. My Anthony Bourdain experience is making this movie, and that’s the way I can relate to this person. I’m grateful for it, on a personal level.