The new film Tony covers a sliver of the late celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain's life, loosely based on the early chapters of his memoir Kitchen Confidential.
The 2000 book that made Bourdain a star reveals, with heavy doses of sardonic humor, the raw chaos that unfolds in restaurant kitchens. Bourdain describes his younger self as "a spoiled, miserable, narcissistic, self-destructive and thoughtless young lout badly in need of a good ass kicking."
The lanky Dominic Sessa, who stars as the 19-year-old Bourdain, said he didn't know much about Bourdain before taking the role.
"It's such a specific time in his life that's not documented fully," Sessa told Morning Edition host Michel Martin. "We were able to tell and express a lot of our own stories and I think that was really attractive."
In the film, Tony chases a love interest, Nancy, to Provincetown, Massachusetts on Cape Cod. He does not get selected for a prestigious writing fellowship but flees to Provincetown under the guise that he had won. He initially struggles with direction, acting like a jerk to the people around him.
Eventually, he becomes a more sympathetic character, gradually gaining more skills in the kitchen and developing a genuine love for cooking.
Sessa did not initially think he'd become an actor. He pursued hockey until he broke his leg, which led him to pursue theater and later audition for The Holdovers, his film debut.
"I made a choice to kind of do something that I knew was going to be hard and I knew I was going to be uncomfortable and it was going to be completely different," Sessa said. "But in that, I found something that I actually had power in and I felt I had control with. In this movie, the character Tony starts to develop a sense of self-control and self-awareness and direction. So, I was able to relate in that way."
Sessa said he's learned a lot from mentors like Paul Giamatti (The Holdovers) and Antonio Banderas, who plays the restaurant's head chef in Tony.
"I think when you're like a teenager in your early twenties and you're on movie sets, you can get easily corrupted," Sessa said. "They treat you like you're made of glass sometimes and sometimes you need to get your ass kicked."
Bourdain died by suicide in 2018 while filming an upcoming episode of his CNN travel series, Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown, in the French town of Kaysersberg.
A24, which produced Tony, is a financial supporter of NPR.
Olivia Hampton edited the broadcast and digital versions of this story.
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