Flaunt — Daisy Edgar-Jones and Sebastian Stan | Because Nothing Tastes as Good as a Great Date on the Town.

Ever had a bad dinner date? It’s not the law of attraction—rather the law of averages—that ensures anyone putting themselves out there on the love-seeking scene today will encounter their fair share of whackjobs, weirdos, and ghosts. But no dating disaster you’ve been through could be worse than what befalls the characters in gripping new Rom-Com/ Horror film, Fresh (Hulu). Starring young British actor Daisy Edgar-Jones (Normal People) and seasoned leading man Sebastian Stan (Captain America: The Winter Soldier, I, Tonya, The Martian), Fresh begins by exploring the dynamics of the contemporary dating world… before crossing the boundaries of… taste…

Stan plays Steve, a handsome, single doctor who accidentally (but we realize later, of course, on purpose) strikes up a conversation with Daisy Edgar-Jones’ Noa in the produce aisle. It’s all so natural. They exchange numbers. He texts her. They go on a date. It’s a good date. Since they met IRL and not through an impersonal app interface, they skip a few steps and quickly get intimate. Noa’s best friend, Mollie, (played with verve by Jojo T. Gibbs) finds Steve’s lack of digital presence disturbing, but enjoying the love-buzz, Noa throws herself into her exciting new romance.

But Noa’s soon to find out—the very hard way—that behind this charming facade, ‘Steve’—a pseudonym—is really quite something else. Instead of the sophisticated getaway he promises her, she’s face to face with primal fears, and her sweet, sensitive lover is revealed to be a mix of Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, and American Psycho, prone to Patrick Bateman-style musical interludes as he … well, that would be giving it all away. Suffice to say, in classic horror movie style, trapped in a mysterious house in the woods, Noa has to find a way to get out… And Fresh—directed by Mimi Cave, written by Lauryn Kahn, and produced by Adam McKay (Don’t Look Up, The Big Short, Vice)—is the clever, knowing, and full of suspense result.

Flaunt caught up with Daisy and Sebastian in London about Fresh, cuisine, and how they found a friendship in the midst of horror.

So how is London treating you?

SS: I think it’s been good, it’s only been 24 hours now since we’ve been here. But it’s been good—the rain is here, of course. A nice, cloudy, rainy day.

DEJ: I love it when it’s rainy in London— it’s my favorite! It’s so, you know, romantic and lovely when it rains.

Daisy, you are of course a born and bred London girl. It must be nice to be home. But you’ve lived in London before, haven’t you, Sebastian?

SS: Yeah! I was in London In 2003, when I did a year at the Globe Theatre; my college, Rutgers University, had a program at the Globe, so that was the first time I was here. In 2010, I basically lived here for a year do- ing Captain America: The First Avenger, and then I was in and out of London. And then in 2019, then the pandemic, and I lived here for another six months doing another project. So, I really do like it here.

Oh, so you’re basically a local with all of that experience.

SS: Almost.

DEJ: Practically a Londoner. He still hasn’t had a Sunday roast, though. That, to me, is shocking.

In all those years?

SS: I didn’t even know what that was—because usually Sundays, I keep to myself.

Right.

SS: And I was always in the hotel room crying.

Well, hopefully, you’ll have more than 24 hours on this trip, and it will include a Sunday. And a roast… So, sticking with the food theme, the subject at hand is your fantastic new film, Fresh, which I keep reading as “Flesh.” Is that just me?

DEJ: No, it’s not just you, actually, we’ve had a couple of people go, ‘I’m really excited to see Flesh!’ Well, you will see flesh in Fresh… perhaps not in the best way.

So, to Fresh. I watched it yesterday, and to be honest, I’m still kind of a bit traumatized. What was it like to work together on what is, let’s say, a very strange, post-modern ‘romance’?

SS: I guess it was bittersweet in some ways, right, because we had such a good time shooting it. We weirdly shot it chronologically, in the sense that we started it from the beginning of the story, and then… We were having so much fun kind of doing the scenes and finding the banter and the spontaneity of it, that we were always dreading the second half of the film coming at us. But we managed to keep going. Continue reading