Entertainment

“Tony,” an upcoming biopic about Anthony Bourdain starring Dominic Sessa, was filmed in Cape Cod and the South Shore in 2025.

“Tony,” the upcoming movie about Anthony Bourdain filmed in Massachusetts last summer, is a snapshot of the late celebrity chef’s life, chronicling a formative summer spent working in a Provincetown restaurant.

Directed by Matt Johnson (“BlackBerry”), the film stars Dominic Sessa (“The Holdovers”) as a teenage version of Bourdain, whose first brush with the restaurant world came while working as a dishwasher at the now-closed Flagship Restaurant.

Based on the first trailer for the film released by A24, “Tony” will be an unvarnished look at Bourdain’s wild side. The chef, author, and TV host struggled with addiction throughout his life, and admitted in a 2016 interview that he “should’ve died in [his] 20s.”

Biopics like “Tony” almost always draw critical statements from friends and family for sensationalizing or misrepresenting the subject onscreen. But in a statement shared with The Hollywood Reporter, Bourdain’s estate gave the film its blessing precisely because it doesn’t sand off his sharper edges.

“We chose to support Tony because it is not a standard biopic and doesn’t attempt to summarize a life,” the statement reads. “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,” the statement continued. “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.”

Anthony Bourdain’s Provincetown

Bourdain spoke at length about his time in Provincetown during a 2014 Massachusetts episode of his CNN show, “Parts Unknown.”

“It was here, all the way out at the tip of Cape Cod, Provincetown, Massachusetts, where the pilgrims first landed,” Bourdain said. “And it was where I first landed. 1972, washed in a town with a headful of orange sunshine and a few friends. Provincetown, a wonderland of tolerance, longtime tradition of accepting artists, writers, the badly behaved, the gay, the different. It was paradise.

“The joy that can only come with an absolute certainty that you’re invincible, that none of the choices that you make will have any repercussions or any effect on your later life,” Bourdain continued. “Because we didn’t think about those things. I don’t even know what I thought I was going to be. At that point, I certainly didn’t think I was going to be a cook. I don’t know what I thought I was going to be. I was just, you know, hanging out in a beautiful place.”

One of Bourdain’s companions during the episode was John “Jingles” Yingling, the owner of the still-open Spiritus Pizza. Yingling knew Bourdain as a teenager, and even let Bourdain sleep on top of a walk-up at the restaurant when he had nowhere else to go.

“We all did drugs, acted young and crazy, and Tony was — he was probably a little wilder than some and not as wild as others,” Yingling said in the episode. “But he was always the guy who I always liked.”

‘Tony’ cast, photos, filming locations

Sessa, who plays a young Bourdain, was a student at Deerfield Academy who had no plans to act professionally before being cast as the second lead in Alexander Payne’s “The Holdovers.”

Along with Sessa, “Tony” will feature Emilia Jones (“CODA”) as Nancy, Bourdain’s love interest; Stavros Halkias (“Bugonia”) and Leo Woodall (“The White Lotus”) as fellow restaurant workers; Rich Sommer (“Mad Men”) as Bourdain’s father, Pierre; and Antonio Banderas as Ciro, a chef who takes Bourdain under his wing most likely inspired by the late Ciriaco “Ciro” Cozzi of Ciro & Sal’s.

“Tony” was greenlit by A24 in 2024, and filmed scenes in Provincetown, Dennis, Brockton, and other parts of the Cape and South Shore from May to July 2025.

“Tony” will be released in limited theaters on Aug. 7, before opening nationwide later in August.

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