During the opening night of New Directors/New Films, Sebastian Stan recalled the moment (via IndieWire) when he felt differently walking the streets while clad in his A Different Man prosthetics.
Stan went under prosthetics to play a man suffering from a facial disfigurement in A24’s Aaron Schimberg-helmed psychological thriller. With the prosthetics having made him totally unrecognizable, the actor shared that people seem to look at him differently while he is wearing the prosthetics, which takes up to three hours before the filming starts.
“And then I had this time, so I would walk down the street, get a coffee. I was too scared to do it alone, like I had to have my friend with me. I would just see what would happen. And everyone, [in] every single place, was responding to me and not once did someone think that I was an actor. Everyone just believed it,” Stan told IndieWire.
He added, “But more importantly was just their reaction and unfortunately getting sort of uncomfortable and just their lack of tools or lack of awareness on how to connect. The impulse was there but then it was just nowhere…”
What is A Different Man about?
In A Different Man, Stan plays Edward, a lonely man with neurofibromatosis, who undergoes a facial reconstructive surgery procedure to start a new life. An aspiring actor, he later finds himself fixated on another man playing him on a stage production based on his former life, written by his neighbor named Ingrid (Renate Reinsve).
“Aspiring actor Edward undergoes a radical medical procedure to drastically transform his appearance. But his new dream face quickly turns into a nightmare, as he loses out on the role he was born to play and becomes obsessed with reclaiming what was lost,” the official synopsis reads.
The rest of the cast includes Adam Pearson as Oswald, C. Mason Wells as Carl, Owen Kline as Nick, and Charlie Korsmo as Ron Belcher.
