Dominic Sessa, the 23-year-old breakout star of The Holdovers, plays a young Anthony Bourdain in the new biopic Tony. The film is set during one summer in 1975, when Bourdain was 19 and living in the coastal resort of Provincetown, Massachusetts. There, he fell in love, scrubbed pans in a seafood restaurant and caught the cooking bug that would define his career.
Bourdain later described Provincetown as a perfect getaway for a rootless young man with sensualist inclinations.
Sessa, who is from New Jersey, has appeared in five films, two of them set in the 1970s. His first film was The Holdovers, Alexander Payne's 2023 comedy-drama, in which he played Angus Tully, a student forced to spend Christmas at school with his teacher and the cook. Tony is described as his biggest role yet.
Sessa has said he would like to stay in the 70s, and with this film he returns to the decade.