Are Chef and Nancy in “Tony” Based on Real People? How the Characters in “Tony” Compare to the People in Anthony Bourdain’s Life
Are Chef and Nancy in “Tony” Based on Real People? How the Characters in “Tony” Compare to the People in Anthony Bourdain’s Life
Chiara KimFri, August 7, 2026 at 5:33 PM UTC
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Dominic Sessa and Emilia Jones star in ‘Tony’Credit: Seacia Pavao/A24 -
A24’s Tony, starring Dominic Sessa, premieres in select theaters on Aug. 7 and expands nationwide on Aug. 21
The biopic explores Anthony Bourdain’s early life in Provincetown, Mass. based on his memoir Kitchen Confidential
The film features Antonio Banderas, Leo Woodall and more, who represent figures in the culinary icon’s young life, along with Emilia Jones, who plays Bourdain’s ex-wife Nancy
Part of Anthony Bourdain‘s life story is coming to screens.
A24’s biopic Tony, featuring Dominic Sessa as a 19-year-old version of the acclaimed chef and writer, takes inspiration from the opening chapters of Bourdain’s memoir Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly.
The film, which releases in limited theaters on Aug. 7 and expands nationwide on Aug. 21, delves into Bourdain’s life in Provincetown, Mass. as a teenager in the 1970s, when he first stumbled into the restaurant industry.
Sessa’s Bourdain goes to P-town to impress a girl named Nancy (Emilia Jones). Penniless, he takes a dishwashing job at a local seafood spot alongside characters like Chef (Antonio Banderas) and Sal, a cook played by Leo Woodall.
While the film draws upon Bourdain’s real-life experiences from Kitchen Confidential, it carves its own path into understanding the chef’s early life. The estate of the chef, who died in 2018, approved of the upcoming film.
“We chose to support Tony because it is not a standard biopic and doesn’t attempt to summarize a life,” his estate said in a statement, per The Hollywood Reporter. “It is an interpretation, as that part of Tony’s life will always remain somewhat unknown.”
So, are the characters in Tony based on real people? Here’s everything to know about the characters in the film.
Anthony Bourdain (“Tony”)
Sessa (right) portrays a young Anthony Bourdain in ‘Tony’Credit: Seacia Pavao/A24
Played by The Holdovers star Dominic Sessa, 23, Tony is a 19-year-old version of Bourdain, inspired by his summers in Provincetown depicted in Kitchen Confidential.
Before he was the world traveler, food writer and chef who showed audiences the behind-the-scenes of the restaurant industry, along with lesser-known cuisines through Food Network’s A Cook’s Tour and CNN’s Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown, Bourdain was a teenager who worked as a dishwasher in Provincetown at the Flagship, the restaurant at the center of the film.
In a cast conversation with A24, director Matt Johnson said the film tells the story of Bourdain’s life from age 15 to 25 “amalgamated” to the summer of 1975.
“It’s a sort of origin story in a way,” Sessa told PEOPLE in November 2025. “I’m playing Bourdain sort of, you know ‘75, ‘76, that era, when he was working there in the summers.”
The character and film take inspiration from a famous passage in Kitchen Confidential when Bourdain described his 19-year-old self as “a spoiled, miserable, narcissistic, self-destructive and thoughtless young lout, and badly in need of a good ass-kicking.”
‘Tony’ draws inspiration from Bourdain’s memoir ‘Kitchen Confidential’Credit: Owen Hoffmann/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images
Johnson told PEOPLE the film spotlights a young Bourdain in search of direction, rather than the culinary skills he later became known for. “So much of it is about him kind of presenting a false front” to impress others, Johnson said.
The director and Sessa noted that this portrayal of a young Bourdain is far from the well-loved personality people came to know later in his life.
“We were looking at his adult persona almost as an antidote to his young identity,” Johnson said. “It was easier for us to understand that the place that he gets to must come from an almost inverted relationship with hyper honesty, always being on time, super dedicated focus.”
Eric Ripert, the celebrated French chef and longtime friend of Bourdain’s who appears in the film, told PEOPLE that “the Tony that I met at the time was obviously very different than the Tony that is in the movie” due to the growth he had in his later years.
“He decides to be serious after having, summer of drugs, rock and roll and, and everything — sex, I guess,” he said. He added that the Bourdain he knew was “very methodical and very clean and very organized” in the kitchen, along with being humble, talented and charismatic.
“However, I appreciated the fact that they portrayed Anthony being a young man searching to find himself and ending up in a kitchen,” he said.
Chef
Banderas plays Chef, a mentor to Tony in the filmCredit: Bob Gruen
Played by Antonio Banderas, Chef is a fictionalized tough, no-nonsense chef who is a mentor to Tony in the film.
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According to Johnson, Chef is a symbol for the organization of cooking that Bourdain was drawn to, per a cast conversation with A24.
“Through this relationship, Tony begins to truly learn how to cook,” Banderas said at the 2025 Torino Film Festival, per Variety. “So the film is not just about cuisine or culinary techniques; it’s about his life, his identity, and his way of being — shaped by this unique mentor.”
Banderas described Chef as “a man from Brazil who works in the United States and has traveled the world.”
“My character studied at the finest institutions, graduating from the best gastronomy schools, yet he always remained an outsider,” he added. “He created his own restaurant outside the traditional world of elite chefs, developing his own dishes with ingredients accessible to ordinary communities — simple food for everyday people.”
Nancy
Emilia Jones plays Nancy, Bourdain’s real-life high-school sweetheartCredit: Seacia Pavao/A24
Emilia Jones plays Tony’s love interest, Nancy. The character represents Bourdain’s real-life high school sweetheart and ex-wife, Nancy Putkoski, whom he married in 1985 and divorced in 2005.
In the film and in real life, Nancy worked at a local pizza spot in Provincetown.
The actual restaurant, Spiritus Pizza, posted about the film on Instagram, writing, “Tony was a friend of the pizza fam back in those days… Tony’s girlfriend at the time, who later became his first wife, Nancy Putkoski, worked as a counter girl at Spiritus. And Tony spent that first summer sleeping above our walk in.”
Also in the film, Sessa noted, are scenes of Tony cooking for Nancy.
Sal
Leo Woodall (right) plays a cook named Sal in ‘Tony’Credit: Seacia Pavao/A24
Leo Woodall plays a cook in the Flagship’s kitchen that shows Tony the partying lifestyle of the culinary world. Johnson revealed in the A24 cast conversation that Woodall’s character is based on a man in Kitchen Confidential named Dimitri.
“He was like, ‘Oh, this is the coolest guy I’ve ever met in my life,’” Johnson says of Bourdain’s description of Dimitri.
However, as Woodall notes in the video, Sal is also a representation of all the people Tony worked with in the kitchen.
“He is a character that represents everything that Bourdain thought was cool about Provincetown or about working in kitchens,” Johnson agreed.
The New York Times reported that Bourdain and the kitchen crew once watched a chef have an intimate encounter with a bride who was a customer, which he later said was the moment that made him want to become a chef. Woodall portrays this moment in the film.
Stavros
Played by Stavros Halkias, Stavros is another member of the kitchen where Tony works. Halkias said on Late Night with Seth Meyers that he plays “the lobster roll guy” in the film.
“That was my station,” he explained. In one scene, he makes fun of Tony for saying he can cook, then asks for his help plating lobster rolls, giving him a scalding pan that burns Tony’s hand.
Johnson said in the A24 conversation that he told Stavros the character’s role was to make fun of Sessa’s Tony. The character seems to be fictionalized.
Culinary Institute of America Instructor
Eric Ripert plays an instructor at the Culinary Institute of AmericaCredit: Bob Gruen
An instructor of Tony’s at the Culinary Institute of America in the film is played by Bourdain’s real-life friend and acclaimed chef Eric Ripert.
Bourdain received a formal education in cooking at the school following his time in Provincetown.
on People
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
