Dominic Sessa Is Young Bourdain in A24’s ‘Tony’ Trailer

The first trailer for Tony, A24’s upcoming biopic about the late Anthony Bourdain, dropped Tuesday — and it looks like nothing you’d expect from a standard celebrity life story. The Holdovers breakout Dominic Sessa plays a 19-year-old Bourdain in the summer of 1975, a period so lightly documented that even the people closest to him admit it remains something of a mystery.

That’s exactly the point.

The trailer opens with Sessa’s Bourdain full of the kind of confidence that precedes humiliation. “I’m about to get this huge writing fellowship,” he tells his love interest Nancy (Emilia Jones) — right before the committee calls to say they’ve “decided to go with another student.” What follows is a portrait of a young man ricocheting between ambition and disaster: getting into fights, punching walls, thrown out of bars, and eventually landing a job at a Massachusetts restaurant more out of desperation than any culinary calling. “I’m actually not a fucking cook,” Sessa clarifies in one of the trailer’s best moments. “I’m a writer. But I said I know how to cook.”

Antonio Banderas plays Ciro, a Brazilian-born restaurateur who takes the flailing young Tony under his wing. Banderas is playing a composite character drawn from real figures in Bourdain’s life — and according to reports, he walked off set smelling like a kitchen every single day, which feels very on-brand for this particular story. The cast also includes Leo Woodall (The White Lotus) and comedian Stavros Halkias as Bourdain’s coworkers, Dagmara Domińczyk (Succession), Rich Sommer (The Devil Wears Prada), and Monica Raymund (Chicago Fire).

The film is directed by Matt Johnson, who made the acclaimed 2023 tech biopic BlackBerry and also co-created the cult mockumentary franchise Nirvana the Band the Show. Johnson co-wrote the script with Matthew Miller, Todd Bartels, and Lou Howe, drawing heavily from two chapters of Bourdain’s seminal 2000 memoir Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly. “Those two chapters of Kitchen Confidential read like ‘Genesis’ to me,” Johnson told Entertainment Weekly. “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.”

Sessa, for his part, has clearly done the work. “Bourdain never wanted to feel like the smartest guy in the room,” the actor said ahead of the trailer’s release. “He had an unwavering desire to learn as much as he could from the world and the people around him. 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’s Blessing — and Why It Matters

The Bourdain estate’s decision to publicly support Tony carries real weight, especially given the complicated history of posthumous Bourdain projects. The 2021 documentary Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain became mired in controversy after director Morgan Neville revealed he’d used artificial intelligence to recreate Bourdain’s voice at three points in the film — without consulting the estate. Bourdain’s ex-wife and executor Ottavia Busia made clear on social media that she had not been informed, writing: “I certainly was NOT the one who said Tony would have been cool with that.” Neville’s response at the time — “we can have a documentary-ethics panel about it later” — did not exactly smooth things over.

Tony is a different story. The estate released a full statement on Tuesday alongside the trailer, and the language is notably warm.

“Anthony Bourdain’s legacy is meaningful to millions of people,” the statement reads. “He was a man who valued authenticity above all else and would have been both moved and baffled by the world’s curiosity about his life. We chose to support Tony because it is not a standard biopic and doesn’t attempt to summarize a life. Guided by the vision of director Matt Johnson, the film depicts one transformative summer in 1975 in Provincetown, Massachusetts. It is an interpretation, as that part of Tony’s life will always remain somewhat unknown. We appreciate the portrayal of Tony’s complexity, his intellectual appetite and his conviction — qualities that eventually took him around the globe and endeared him to so many. We hope this film serves as a reminder that every journey has a start, and that audiences see the beginnings of the man who taught us how to be better explorers on our own paths.”

The film also has a self-awareness baked into its DNA that sets it apart from the usual cradle-to-casket biopic formula. In the trailer, Sessa’s Bourdain himself identifies the proceedings as a “coming of age” story; when Jones’s Nancy asks if he’s a good guy or a bad guy, the film doesn’t rush to answer. It’s a small moment, but it signals that Johnson is doing something more intentional here than hitting Wikipedia bullet points and calling it a day.

The Internet Is Already Divided

Bourdain was famously opinionated — he despised Yelp reviews, loathed “artisanal” price-gouging, shared a meal with Hezbollah, and swore he’d never dine with Donald Trump. It’s fitting that a film about him would land with similarly polarized energy.

On X, reactions swung wildly. One user declared, “Get the f*** out this looks so good!!!” Another called it “unbelievably bad.” A third speculated that Bourdain himself “would’ve skewered this as a bit in a Parts Unknown episode while extolling the virtues of 1950s Vietnamese Lesbian Film Noir” — which, honestly, is not an unfair guess. Over on Reddit, the trailer thread spun off into debates about Sessa, Johnson’s directing instincts, and whether the film would just be another predictable story of “future celeb struggles, then makes good.” One user cut to the chase and called it “The Bear-dain.”

The trailer does lean into the aesthetic — 1970s Cape Cod grime, punk rock on the soundtrack (Television and Spoon’s “Wild”), kitchen chaos, and a young man who clearly has more talent than discipline. One standout scene has Bourdain pitching the head chef on a new special: “Every Friday, something fancy but not pretentious, something sexy, makes you wanna fuck, you know, something only you can do.” Banderas’s knowing smile in response says more about Bourdain’s potential than any voiceover could.

Bourdain, who won six Emmy Awards for No Reservations and Parts Unknown and whose writing inspired the 2006 Bradley Cooper TV series Kitchen Confidential, died by suicide on June 8, 2018, at age 61. He was found unresponsive in his hotel room in Strasbourg, France, where he’d been filming Parts Unknown. His friend and fellow chef Eric Ripert made the discovery.

Tony opens in theaters in August 2026.

If you or someone you know may be struggling with suicidal thoughts, you can call or text 988 any time, day or night. Crisis Text Line also provides free, 24/7 confidential support — text 741741.