Slant Magazine – The actors discuss their physical and philosophical approaches to the self-reflexive tale.
Saying an actor was “born to play this role” might get bandied around flippantly when describing a virtuosic performance, but writer-director Aaron Schimberg refuses to stay skin deep when deploying the phrase like a dagger twice in A Different Man. The dramatic physical transformation of Sebastian Stan’s Edward, a downbeat New York actor with facial disfigurement, at the film’s midpoint becomes an opportunity for a meta-reflection on the events of the first half. A staged dramatization of his experience by Renate Reinsve’s playwright Ingrid presents Edward—now unrecognizable from his previous self due to facial reconstruction surgery—with the ultimate opportunity to embody someone he was quite literally born to play.
But trying to square the confident swagger of his new persona, “Guy,” with the version of himself that he left behind traps Edward within a hall of mirrors. As self-consciousness eats away at the flailing actor, his part gets usurped by Adam Pearson’s charismatic Oswald, a man born with neurofibromatosis, which has disfigured his face. While he doesn’t share Edward’s experiences, Oswald proves more capable of conveying the truth of his life on stage.
These bitter, brutal ironies that pervade A Different Man function like a grenade thrown into conversations about identity and representation on screen. But in a film full of calculated contradictions, arguably the most central to the success of Schimberg’s work is the sincerity required by Stan and Pearson in their parts. Mere mortals cannot settle whether they were “born to play” Edward and Oswald, yet both actors deliver turns as deeply felt as they are embodied.
In a brief conversation ahead of A Different Man’s theatrical release, I spoke with Stan and Pearson about how they approached Schimberg’s self-reflexive exploration of transformation, acting, and performance both physically and philosophically.
At the end of the film, someone speculates about how they’d convey Edward’s experiences in a performance by saying, “If I get it right, it will come through.” What does it mean for each of you to get it right?
Adam Pearson: I’m a real stickler for getting it right. I come to everything with a view toward doing the best version of it that I can do. And I’m a real perfectionist, sometimes to a fault.
Sebastian Stan: I think you set out to get it right, knowing that you might not. Because it’s also in the knowing that you might not that there’s great freedom. All of this is an ongoing exploration. You never really arrive at a place. You could always just keep exploring something. You just have to arm yourself as best as possible with knowledge in terms of what’s needed.
Sebastian, you’ve said you try not to overthink your performances and find them in the moment. Was that different here, where you have to be aware of the wider context of images around the portrayals of disfigurement or disability?
SS: I was [aware] when I read it, in rehearsal, and when we were talking about it and trying to understand Aaron’s vision. But when we started shooting, it was about being in the honest, truthful moment, going on the journey as Edward, and trying to be him as much as possible.
Advertisement
Was there anything philosophically different in the way either of you approached the link between your character’s physicality and their emotions as you were trying to unlink physicality from identity or a sense of the self?
AP: The script was the script, and we didn’t want to overthink that. It takes something away. Oswald’s similar to me but with the volume turned way, way up. Once you rock up to set and everyone starts doing their thing, things just sort of happen, don’t they? They just materialize. That chemistry is either there or it isn’t. And if it isn’t there, which luckily it was, you’ve got to find a way to get there. But again, much like Sebastian, I try not to overthink things.
A lot of discussion around art in recent years has stressed centering the idea of lived experience. Given Edward’s struggles to convey his own life on stage in character, did this film change the way either of you weigh the importance of lived experience in your performance as opposed to just an actor’s imagination?
AP: Lived experience certainly helps, but I don’t think it’s necessarily the be-all, end-all. [Take] something like The Crown, I don’t think you need to experience being the Queen of England to play the Queen of England. When you take an argument to that ridiculous conclusion, it loses its weight and gravitas. But I think if you’ve grown up around the disabled community or disfigurement, it’s a good thing to have in your kind of back pocket and skillset when you come to a film like this. In the same way that if you’ve grown up in a Jewish household, something like Schindler’s List has a lot more weight to it. If you’ve grown up in an African American household, something like 12 Years a Slave has a lot more weight to it. Having those cultural and environmental touchpoints to lean into is certainly preferable to not having them at all.
SS: Whenever you’re doing anything, you have to find what you’re playing to some degree in yourself. It’s that confrontation that I think can be challenging and scary. We all have things that have happened to us that still haunt us, or fuel how we look at each other and at ourselves, [or inform] what kind of partners we want, and so on. There’s also this idea about the imagination of, “Well, look at what they have. I wonder if their life is better or whatever. If I had this, then maybe this would be okay.” There’s a degree of future tripping that’s become almost a disease now. That’s what social media is. It’s a total self-involved fantasy. You’re looking at things that people are selectively giving you about their lives. It means nothing. I think there are very few brave people who aren’t like that and put themselves forward. I would commend those people. But when it comes to acting, I think it’s a marriage of both [lived experience and imagination].
The PSA that Edward shoots about accommodating disability in the workplace has answers for many situations, but not for the angst that he’s tasked with conveying. What do you see as the best way to show up for others in such moments?
AP: It’s just that! You go into it with a clear hand and a full heart. But also, it’s silly to watch a PSA video to learn how to be nice to people. [laughs] Like, I don’t know how to help you! Maybe just go work on an oil rig or something where you have limited human contact. Who watches those videos and goes, “Oh, I get it now! Oopsie daisies, sweetheart.”
SS: It’s so ridiculous and silly. I believe we all get born and are brought into this world with empathy. We don’t value it as much as we should, and I wish we led with it more than other reasons. The empathy is there. Sometimes it’s just literally saying hello to somebody or just owning what you are experiencing. Maybe it’s fear, confusion, or anger. It’s ownership of self, and that’s what the movie speaks to. I think it’s crucial, now maybe more than ever.