Jersey Shore’s Dominic Sessa may play Anthony Bourdain in upcoming movie
'The Holdovers' star is in talks to play the celebrity chef and travel show host who grew up in Leonia, NJ.
Anthony Bourdain famously said, “To know Jersey, is to love her.”
It is, therefore, a pleasant surprise to see Bourdain’s fellow Jerseyan Dominic Sessa’s name in the running to play the celebrity chef and travel show host in the forthcoming biopic Tony.
As Deadline first reported on Monday, Star Thrower Entertainment, the production company behind films like The Post and King Richard, is teaming up with A24 to produce the film. The producers are trying to rope in BlackBerry director Matt Johnson to direct.
While there are no details on which period of Bourdain’s life the film will focus on, it has been announced that Lou Howe and Todd Bartels will write the screenplay.
Bourdain was born in New York in 1956, but grew up in Leonia, N.J. He graduated from Englewood, N.J.’s Dwight-Englewood School before moving to Poughkeepsie, N.Y., where he attended Vassar College for two years. Bourdain, who died by suicide in 2018, wrote extensively on food and culture, and hosted several food and travel series including Travel Channel’s No Reservations and CNN’s Parts Unknown.
While his life has previously been the focus of filmmaker Morgan Neville’s 2021 documentary Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain, Tony will be the first narrative film to be based on Bourdain’s life.
The documentary premiered at Tribeca Film Festival and drew criticism over Neville’s decision to use an AI model of Bourdain’s voice to narrate the film.
Dominic Sessa, who made his debut in last year’s much-feted The Holdovers, was born in Cherry Hill. Growing up in South Jersey’s Egg Harbor Township and Ocean City, Sessa went to Alder Avenue Middle School before attending Deerfield Academy in Deerfield, Mass.
His boarding school experience came in handy for the role of Angus Tully, a boarding school student who ends up spending the holidays on campus with his curmudgeonly classics teacher Paul Hunham (played by Paul Giamatti, who was nominated for a best actor Oscar) and the cafeteria manager Mary Lamb (played by Philly’s own Da’Vine Joy Randolph, who won her first Oscar as best supporting actress for the role.)
Sessa, a current Carnegie Mellon School of Drama student, will next appear on Stephanie Laing’s Tow and Michael Showalter’s Christmas film, Oh. What. Fun.
No details on Tony’s release have been announced.