A24’s new film Tony uses Anthony Bourdain’s early years in Provincetown as the backdrop for a coming-of-age story centered on mistakes, ambition, and honesty. The movie follows a young Bourdain as he stumbles through college, then lands in the dish pit of a seafood restaurant, where his confidence quickly gives way to hard lessons about work and truth.
For Dominic Sessa, that world was not entirely unfamiliar. Before becoming known for screen work, he spent summers at Cathy’s 14th Street Bakery in Ocean City, New Jersey, starting at 13 as a dishwasher and gradually learning how to mix dough, cut donuts, fry them, ice them, and make croissants. He also handled early-morning openings on his own, which gave him real kitchen experience long before he stepped into the role of a young Bourdain.
Sessa has said that one bakery mistake stuck with him: he once used the wrong dough mix, watched it swell into a huge mess, and tried to hide it by dumping it outside, only for the dough to expand even more. According to him, the bakery owner’s reaction taught him an important lesson about accountability. In the film, that same idea runs through Bourdain’s story, as the character’s lies to family, employers, and a romantic interest gradually push him toward self-awareness.
The actor’s path also mirrors Bourdain’s in other ways. Bourdain left behind an unsuccessful college experience before eventually entering the Culinary Institute of America and later becoming a major literary and television figure. Sessa, meanwhile, began as a scholarship student at Deerfield Academy, where a skateboarding injury ended his hockey plans and led him to theater. He has said performing changed his life after people told him he was doing something they wished they were brave enough to try. That momentum eventually brought him to Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers and, now, to Tony, directed by Matt Johnson.
Johnson has said Sessa’s background, his relationship to education, and the sudden attention that came with fame all helped make him right for the part. The actor has also developed a real affection for Provincetown during filming, calling it magical and saying he could imagine one day having a beach house there. For a movie about a young man trying to become himself, that sense of place and personal history seems to matter just as much as the food.
Source: bonappetit.com
