Tony Director Matt Johnson Gave Star Dominic Sessa An Unconventional Piece Of Advice Before Filming Began [Exclusive]

"I wasn't originally going to make this movie."

That's what "Tony" director Matt Johnson told me during an interview about his new film, which takes place over one impactful summer in the teenaged life of eventual chef, author, and TV personality Anthony Bourdain. It sounds like the casting process was presenting a seemingly unsurmountable hurdle ... until Johnson met with Dominic Sessa, who had a breakout role in 2023 opposite Paul Giamatti in the new Christmas classic, "The Holdovers."

"I met him in New York and we talked for two hours at a restaurant, then we left, and I turned to my producer, Matt Miller, and I said, 'Okay, I think we should shoot this movie with this kid tomorrow. He's ready. Let's just put him on camera,'" Johnson recalled. 

Then the filmmaker shared the unusual piece of advice he gave to his star:

"So many people ask him, 'What did you do to prepare? What are you thinking? How are you trying to be Anthony Bourdain?' and he's doing a really gracious job of answering these questions legitimately. The truth is, he just has it. I made the movie because he's got it. He is it. I literally told him, 'Don't prepare.' I said, 'Please don't learn anything. I want to put you in these situations and see what happens to you.'"

Now, anyone who has seen the excellent "Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie" knows that Johnson has a bit of a trickster persona, so in the moment, I wasn't actually sure if he was caught up in an exaggerated riff, or if he was actually being sincere. After all, some audiences seem to love it when actors perfectly mimic the person they're portraying. But when I asked if he truly told Sessa to not prepare, Johnson leaned forward and replied, "Yes, and that's why the movie works!"

"You are watching a young man deal with these things in the moment because it's just who he is," Johnson continued, laying out his theory of why this particular piece of casting was crucial to the overall success of the movie:

"And it is maybe an awkward answer and maybe it is in some ways less sexy, but that's the truth of what's in this film, is that you're watching a young guy maybe not wrestle with these exact same things, but wrestle with discovering who he is. And he's on camera, he's just been told within the last five years, 'Hey, guess what? You're a movie star now,' and he's trying to be like, 'Okay, so what does that mean?' That's why I was interested in this film. Because Anthony Bourdain, too, was told, 'Your life is changing and it's out of your control, and you better do your best to' — I won't say fake it until you arrive, but 'don't let anybody know that you're s***-scared and you have no idea what's happening to you.'"

That meta quality between the performance the character is one of the best parts of "Tony." Sessa is a hungry young performer (not literally, though this is a solid food movie), and that hunger powerfully dovetails with the overwhelming feeling of "what comes next" that you feel when you're on the cusp of growing up and making meaningful choices about the direction of your life. Most people can't relate to being a world-famous chef, but the feelings this movie depicts are universal — and Johnson was smart enough to harness Sessa's natural energy as a performer and utilize it to give this movie an extra layer that may not have been there otherwise.

"Tony" is in limited theaters now, and opens in wide release on August 21, 2026.