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The Holdovers’ Dominic Sessa: ‘Everyone’s like, don’t become a celebrity – stay who you are’

A chance audition – and a broken femur – led to a role in Alexander Payne’s boarding school drama The Holdovers, and the debut of a lifetime. Its star’s next ambition? To be in movies without becoming famous

But in autumn 2021, when Sessa was starring in a student production of Neil Simon’s Rumors, his drama teacher asked him to audition for a Hollywood casting director who was scouting Deerfield as a potential filming location. As Angus Tully, a sullen, unmoored teenager left behind for the holidays, Sessa more than holds his own against Paul Giamatti, playing the crotchety professor tasked with babysitting him, and Da’Vine Joy Randolph as the fictional Barton Academy’s head chef, who recently lost her only son in Vietnam. Sessa has nothing but praise for Payne, who trusted him; Randolph, who taught by example to ask questions of her character on set and to take the heavy moments seriously but not too seriously; and Giamatti, “the most grounded, down-to-earth person I possibly could’ve ran into in this industry”.

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