“I was – to be frank – a spoiled, miserable, narcissistic, self-destructive and thoughtless young lout, and badly in need of a good ass-kicking.”
These words, featured in Anthony Bourdain’s autobiographical bestseller “Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly,” became the skeleton key with which co-writer/director Matt Johnson unlocked the culinary icon. His new film “Tony” stars Dominic Sessa as the titular cook in a period of time before he picked up the apron — specifically, the aforementioned era when he needed to get his ass kicked (and don’t worry, he does). The quote is featured on the poster, in the trailer and in the film itself.
So did Sessa ever have a summer like that himself?
“I think last summer,” he told TheWrap with a laugh ahead of the release of “Tony,” which is now playing in limited release before expanding later this month.
“Even before starting this movie, I was so stressed out and trying to see the world in a very specific way that was not necessarily good, I guess. I was not easy to be around. I was just not myself. This movie and Matt were definitely the thing that kind of was a wakeup call for me at a really important time.”
Johnson and Sessa (alongside Johnson’s co-writers Matthew Miller, Todd Bartels and Lou Howe) take an interesting approach in telling the story of Bourdain: They decide not to really tell it at all. Rather than showing any of his life as a celebrity chef or world traveler, the film focuses entirely on a single summer in Cape Cod, delving into his life’s parts unknown and avoiding the “womb to tomb” approach that has made many a celebrity biopic feel perfunctory at best.
“I think that movie would be ridiculous,” Sessa laughed. “Neither of us could relate to what this guy ultimately became and what people recognize him as. I can’t relate to being this chef with an ear piercing and traveling the world and filming a TV show and writing books. None of that is relatable to me … Matt and I admire how this person kind of became the sort of prophet and icon that he is, but we can relate to feeling this way as a young man.”
“Matt and I got really lucky in life, getting the opportunity to do the thing that we love to do the most — acting as a job, and him getting to make movies. It’s such a privilege to be doing this,” he continued. “We couldn’t help to think about what were the things and the people that we met and the decisions that we made as angry, insecure, asshole young guys that sort of helped us find a sense of self-awareness and truth and take risks that ultimately helped us find these passions that we’re that we’re exercising now.”
Improv in Cape Cod
Sessa and Johnson spent roughly 25 shooting days on the film in Cape Cod, with about five days spent in Provincetown. In the film, Anthony (simply referred to as “Tony”) journeys there to chase a girl, Nancy (Emilia Jones), only to find himself broke and alone upon his arrival.
“(Matt) just asked me a lot about myself and my past, certain mentors that I had in my life, people that played a big role in my growing up. We talked a lot about our relationship with our moms and girlfriends and things like that,” Sessa said of their early conversations. “He had a script for ‘Tony,’ and it kind of felt inspired by what was there, the things we were talking about — just kind of make a movie that was expressing a lot of my own and his own history through this character in this kind of fictionalized story based on the few accounts and specific details we have of what kind of was happening in Provincetown at the time.”
With nowhere else to turn, Tony ends up taking a dishwashing job at a restaurant owned by a man known only as “Chef” (Antonio Banderas). Though he begrudgingly takes the gig at first, he soon learns under Chef’s tutelage — a relationship Sessa said reflected his and Banderas’ own. These themes of friendship and mentorship, of rebelling against adulthood and learning when to grow up, appear in much of Johnson’s work.
“I was always just kind of watching what (Banderas) was doing and taking it in,” Sessa said. “The scenes that we’re doing in the kitchen, he’s legitimately teaching me how to cook this stuff. I really respected how his process didn’t get in the way of anything that anybody else was doing. He was just open to receiving me and my character.”
Sessa said Johnson brought a loose, improvisational style to these restaurant-based scenes, which often saw him acting against Leo Woodall, Stavros Halkias and Michael Jibrin. Halkias in particular brings his comedic chops to the screen, riffing and improvising in a scene-stealing performance.
“Matt, similar to the style of his other movies, just kind of had two camera ops doing a handheld situation, and they had zoom lenses, and we could kind of just be in the kitchen as we were. Stavros could go wherever he wanted and do, say whatever came to his mind,” Sessa said. “Matt would just stay really close on me and just want me to watch and kind of take it in and really try to communicate to the audience what’s going through my mind as I’m seeing stuff for the first time.”
“I mean, I guess we had a script,” he laughed. “But a lot of that, especially Stavros’ stuff, was improv on the fly, him just saying s–t.”
This process is similar to a lot of Johnson’s other work, including “Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie,” his largely improvised instant cult classic that released earlier in 2026 (Jay McCarrol, Johnson’s lifelong friend and “Nirvanna” co-star, composed the score for “Tony”). But this improv marks a big change from Sessa’s breakout project, “The Holdovers,” penned and directed by the more meticulous scribe Alexander Payne.
That comes with some pros and cons. While Sessa said that having the freedom to rework and cut dialogue on the fly with Johnson was “a relief,” he also noted that acting with so much improv requires him to be in a different headspace than when he needed to be word-perfect.
“You don’t have to think as much, I guess, when you’re trying to stay word-for-word. You don’t have the stress of trying to come up with something better,” he said. “But Matt, he wrote the role so much in my voice and the way I talk and my cadence, so most of it going in was pretty solid for me.”
“It changed my life”
Sessa, who grew up in a one-story house in Ocean City, spoke about the summers in his life that “Tony” reminds him of — years he would go out drinking before early-morning bakery shifts, just so he could go to sleep at 10 a.m. and do it all again. “I went through a lot of phases really early on,” he said, hanging out with 18- and 19-year-old friends when he was just 15.
“I still think about that, why I was always trying to be around older people and sort of pretend to be older and demand some level of respect that I hadn’t earned yet. Lying to myself.”
Sessa may not relate to the legendary chef that Anthony Bourdain became. He wasn’t even all that familiar with Bourdain beyond his status as a household name before the film. But he can certainly relate to the follies of youth exhibited in the first few chapters of “Kitchen Confidential.” That was a part he needed to play — and both he and Johnson knew it.
“I know Matt talks about how it was just a perfect time for me and him to be making this movie, but really, it was such a wakeup call. I’m doing these scenes and I’m telling the story and every day I’m like, ‘Oh, f–k, like this was literally me a month ago. It’s how I acted two weeks ago about something,’” Sessa said. “It was tough to have that look in the mirror every day doing this movie, but I’m so grateful for it. It changed my life. I know that that was important to Matt too. He wanted me to come out of this movie being a better person.”
“Tony” released in limited theaters on Aug. 7 before expanding nationwide on Aug. 21.
