Aaron Schimberg’s new film, A Different Man, wears a few disguises: comedy, drama, paranoid thriller. It’s also a delirious tug of war between two men. There’s Edward, an aspiring actor with neurofibromatosis who undergoes facial reconstruction surgery, played by Sebastian Stan. And then there’s Oswald, a charming man about town played by Adam Pearson, an actor with neurofibromatosis. Edward’s post-surgery life is upturned as his girlfriend and colleagues and career fall under Oswald’s spell. As Pearson says of his character in the latest episode of Esquire’s Freeze Frame: “I have the rizz, as the kids would say.”
In the episode, Pearson and Stan – who clearly get along a lot better in real like than they do on screen – go deep on their characters’ love-hate-can’t-get-enough-of-you dynamic as well as Oswald’s impressive karaoke offering (Pearson listened to “I Wanna Get Next to You” by Rose Royce for five hours as preparation). They also discuss the difficulty of defining the genre of this movie and the characters’ motivations. Is Edward mad? Is Oswald sincere? Ultimately, as Pearson points out, the film works because “it holds up mirrors rather than placards”. Watch on to figure things out yourself.
