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Tony director explains why he had no interest in making "cradle-to-grave" Anthony Bourdain biopic
The Holdovers star Dominic Sessa plays the late chef and author in this new film from writer/director Matt Johnson.
- Patrick Cremona
Published: Wednesday, 12 August 2026 at 12:28 pm
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The late celebrity chef and writer Anthony Bourdain has become the latest big name to get the biopic treatment, with the new movie Tony arriving in UK cinemas on Friday 14 August.
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The film sees The Holdovers star Dominic Sessa playing the popular figure, but it doesn't stick too closely to the familiar beats of the genre – more closely resembling a coming-of-age tale than a traditional biopic.
Helmed by Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie writer/director Matt Johnson, the film hones in on one particular summer in Bourdain's life, when he was a young, slightly arrogant teenager forging his path in the world and still a long way from any sort of fame.
Dominic Sessa and Leo Woodall in Tony A24
"I don't know if I'd be able to make a cradle-to-grave biopic about anybody," Johnson told Radio Times in an exclusive interview, when asked why he decided to take this approach.
"Mostly because I'm so interested in the perspective of individuals at critical moments of their life that I would get lost if this movie jumped between decades."
Addressing why he chose the summer of 1975 in particular to focus on, he added that "there was no rhyme or reason to it."
"My interest is in actors, and I was interested in Dom," he explained. "And I thought, 'What do he and I agree on? Let's just make the movie on that-a kind of shared biographical experience that he and I both had, and coincidentally also shared in some ways with Anthony Bourdain.
"It was not by design as much as you'd think," he continued. "It was just what I was curious about."
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Asked if he read the entirety of Bourdain's acclaimed best-selling memoir Kitchen Confidential to prepare for the role or just honed in on the parts directly relevant to the movie, Sessa said that Johnson had given him a copy of the book on their first meeting.
"I read it pretty immediately after meeting with him," he said. "Thinking about this movie and what it could be. But then in relationship to the script, there was, like, five chapters that [were relevant].
"[Johnson] gave us a little booklet of a collection of chapters that were really specific to what we were trying to recreate in the movie. One of them being Bigfoot, the one about the chef he talks about that inspired Antonio [Banderas]'s character."
Of course, given this is a film where food takes on a prominent role, it's no surprise that there are some excellent cooking scenes throughout – which many viewers will find reminiscent of those in recently concluded TV hit The Bear.
But according to Johnson, working out how to shoot these scenes wasn't actually towards the top of his priorities.
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"Believe it or not, the preparation of the food was something I intentionally tried to create as... I won't say an afterthought, but I wanted to make it so that the focus was on the fraternity between the people doing it," he explained.
"These people working in a kitchen or working in an auto plant or working in a small town store building... I wanted it to be a flat hierarchy of homosocial relationships where you were only going to get credit based on how well you could present yourself to the group."
He continued: "And so the creation of food, that's what they were doing, but I don't think that anybody in that kitchen – other than Antonio Banderas and by the end Dominic – really thought what they were doing was art, and that was important to me.
"I wanted to try to give that sense to the audience that Anthony Bourdain liked this place irrespective of what food was coming out to the customers.
"What he liked about it was the feeling that he had of being in a hot, sweaty place with a major time commitment, where it was like you need to get this done right now, and nobody was going to hold his hand."
We awarded Tony 4-stars in our Radio Times review, calling it "a moving, charming, well-performed summer film with a commendably light touch" and adding that it was "a far cry better than a more traditional biographical film about Bourdain's life and career might have been."
Tony releases in UK cinemas on 14 August.
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Authors
Patrick CremonaSenior Film Writer
Patrick Cremona is the Senior Film Writer at Radio Times, and looks after all the latest film releases both in cinemas and on streaming. He has been with the website since October 2019, and in that time has interviewed a host of big name stars and reviewed a diverse range of movies.
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