Before Anthony Bourdain became a writer, chef, travel host, and one of the great modern chroniclers of appetite, labor, pleasure, and restlessness, he was still just a young man trying to figure out what kind of life could hold him. A24’s “Tony” looks back to that earlier chapter, with Dominic Sessa playing Bourdain at 19 during a formative summer in Provincetown, Massachusetts, in 1975.
The film comes from Matt Johnson, the filmmaker behind “BlackBerry,” and centers on the period when Bourdain found his way into a restaurant kitchen and began moving toward the life that would eventually lead to “Kitchen Confidential,” “No Reservations,” and “Parts Unknown.” Johnson directs from a screenplay by Johnson, Matthew Miller, Todd Bartels, and Lou Howe.
The cast includes Antonio Banderas as Ciro, the restaurant owner who hires Tony; Leo Woodall as Sal; Emilia Jones as Nancy, Tony’s love interest; and Stavros Halkias as Dimitri, a restaurant worker and Tony’s friend. Monica Raymund and Rich Sommer also appear.
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Johnson told EW that he was drawn to this stretch of Bourdain’s life because it left room for interpretation rather than a checklist-style biopic.
“Those two chapters of Kitchen Confidential read like ‘Genesis’ to me,” Johnson said. “So little happens, but the margins are packed. It meant the cast, and I could investigate this man’s origin together, knowing only where he would end up 20 years later.”
For Johnson, Sessa was not just a casting choice but a collaborator. The director said he first met the actor over lunch in New York, and the conversation quickly helped shape the film’s direction.
“I had lunch with Dominic in New York with my producer, and within an hour we were writing what would become the screenplay of the movie together,” Johnson said. “[They are] both from Jersey, both sent to private school, but didn’t fit in, both restless and searching. I knew if a scene was working when Dom said, ‘Seems right,’ and I knew it wasn’t when he said, ‘Why would I say this?’ More than any movie I’ve ever made, this film was a partnership with an actor. He is in every shot of the movie, and carries the entire story on his hunched shoulders.”
Sessa, who broke through opposite Paul Giamatti in “The Holdovers,” said Bourdain’s curiosity was central to how he approached the role.
“Bourdain never wanted to feel like the smartest guy in the room. He had an unwavering desire to learn as much as he could from the world and the people around him,” Sessa said. “The rules by which he lived his life were the result of feeling a responsibility towards the people that surrounded him in the kitchen at a young age, as well as messing things up…a lot.”
The estate of Anthony Bourdain has also supported the film, emphasizing that “Tony” is not designed as a cradle-to-grave summary. In a statement, the estate described it as “an interpretation” of one transformative summer, adding that the film honors Bourdain’s “complexity, his intellectual appetite, and his conviction.”
That narrower focus may be the smart play. Bourdain’s public image became so vivid that any attempt to explain all of him risks flattening what made him compelling in the first place. “Tony” appears to be looking at the raw material instead: the kitchen, the friends, the mistakes, the curiosity, and the first shape of a life still years away from becoming legend.
A24 releases “Tony” in August 2026. Watch the trailer below.
