A24 has released the first trailer for the Anthony Bourdain biopic, Tony — and the late author and TV personality’s estate has also endorsed the upcoming feature film.
The estate issued a statement laying out their reasoning.
“We chose to support Tony because it is not a standard biopic and doesn’t attempt to summarize a life,” the statement said, per The Hollywood Reporter. “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.”
The message added, “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 zeroes in on a single summer, depicting a 19-year-old Bourdain taking a key early job in a Cape Cod kitchen. Dominic Sessa plays the future food-and-travel icon, and the trailer wastes no time establishing the character's self-image.
"I'm actually not a fucking cook, I'm a writer," Sessa's Bourdain declares in the footage.
Antonio Banderas, Emilia Jones, and Leo Woodall round out the cast.
Bourdain, who died by suicide at the age of 61 in 2018, was extremely up front about how impactful this period of his life was, including in his 2000 memoir Kitchen Confidential. In the book, he writes about his very first kitchen job (as a dishwasher) in 1972 at Provincetown, MA’s Flagship (now-closed, and called “The Dreadnaught” in Kitchen Confidential).
