Dominic Sessa didn't know how to cook before playing Anthony Bourdain

New film encapsulates the light and looming darkness of Anthony Bourdain Anthony Bourdain's fans felt connected to him in no small part because they consumed most of the chef, author and entertainment personality's life through shows like No Reservations and landmark books like Kitchen Confidential. The "culinary bad boy" never pulled punches, whether he was talking about love, friendship, politics or his endless love and devotion for food. When Bourdain died by suicide in 2018, tributes flooded in from both the culinary and entertainment worlds. Former US president Barack Obama, who dined with Bourdain in a tiny Hanoi restaurant on an episode of Parts Unknown, their table enshrined to this day, said Bourdain taught us about food, "but more importantly, about its ability to bring us together. To make us a little less afraid of the unknown". Eight years later, director and writer Matt Johnson (Blackberry, Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie) was tasked with bringing a previously unseen portion of Bourdain's life to the silver screen — back before the fame, money and celebrity — when he was a trainee chef named Tony. "I've learned that Anthony Bourdain means something extremely specific to each person who loves him," Johnson told The Screen Show's Jason Di Rosso. "I think that because his life was very out in the open … I think it also masked in some way who he was privately, and because of that, I think people are able to connect with him in an extremely personal way that even they can't explain. "So, what will surprise them is probably them being confronted by a different interpretation of him as a young man." Building Bourdain The Bourdain in Tony does not have the familiar grey-haired and lined features; instead, he's a mop-haired, wire-framed teen played by The Holdover's breakout star Dominic Sessa. Set in 1975, Tony is an early slice of Bourdain's quasi-autobiography Kitchen Confidential. Sessa plays the future great as a petulant 19-year-old who runs away from a writing school rejection right into a Cape Cod seafood restaurant under the watchful eye of a leader only known as Chef (Antonio Banderas). Like the novice cook in Tony, Sessa went into production with almost no culinary skills. "It was actually important for me that Dom didn't know how to cook," Johnson said. "I didn't want him to learn because this movie is about a neophyte who really has no idea what he's doing, and that's kind of tough to fake." In a meta twist, it was actually Banderas who showed Sessa the ropes both on screen and off. "[He] was really capable in the kitchen and he actually taught me a lot personally," Sessa said. "I also learned how to shuck oysters, actually. There's a restaurant in Prospect Park called Gertrude's. This guy Eli Sussman is the head chef there, and owns the place. He taught me how to shuck oysters." "Once you become a master oyster shucker, once you really know your way around a kitchen, you're just not quite as awkward, which is really what we wanted him to be," Johnson added. Focusing on the earlier parts of Bourdain's life allowed the production a certain levity, stopping short of the mental health and addiction struggles that eventually consumed the chef. But it was important for Sessa to plant the seeds for what would become the heavy branches laid on Bourdain. "He always kind of had this consistent darkness in him in a way. What I hope people realise watching this movie is that there's a certain time in your life, especially when you're young, where it's critical to sort of address those things," Sessa said. "Maybe for the character in the film, it seems that there's this overwhelming sense of hope but in the end, that's momentary." The food of love A majority of Tony features its subject on the lowest rung of the kitchen hierarchy, taking banter from the more experienced kitchen hands like Stavros (Stavros Halkias). "[Sessa and Johnston] had to figure out how to not piss off every Anthony Bourdain super fan. They hired me to bully Dom for two weeks, and I could do that. It's easy for me to do," Halkias said. Halkias's character is an amalgamation of several kitchen wanderers in the early chapters of Kitchen Confidential, with the comedian and actor pulling on his own life experience to imbue authenticity. "All I had to do was be these guys that I knew. I grew up in Baltimore. My mom was a waitress in Greek restaurants. My dad was a contractor," he said. "I played a lot of sports growing up. I know a locker room. I know a break room. My first job was at a machine shop owned by a Greek guy that made parts for guns. I know what it's like to bust balls and haze people." While the chef's rite of passage is putting Tony through the wringer, Johnson keeps his object of affection Nancy (Emilia Jones) at a tantalising arm's length. While Bourdain keeps the identity of his summer love a secret in Kitchen Confidential, Johnson took liberties to extend the character to encapsulate Bourdain's high school sweetheart and future wife. "It's so interesting that Anthony Bourdain is writing about his life in Kitchen Confidential; here he is with his girlfriend in Provincetown, who he's followed there and will later be his wife for 25 years," Johnson said. "Yet 99 per cent of the text is around these homosocial relationships that he has in these fraternal settings where he is being hazed, bullied, and humiliated into a profession that he didn't even want to be a part of." Johnson says it was no secret Bourdain took "a huge amount of self-worth" from his relationship with women, but eventually it always led him back to food. "[She's] why he went there. It's why he's working in the kitchen, and yet he can't even spend more than five or six uninterrupted minutes with her because it's too much." Tony is in cinemas August 20