It took just one image: an unkempt Dominic Sessa, sauntering onto his first Golden Globes red carpet, wearing Saint Laurent shades and an unbuttoned silk shirt. But it only ever takes one image for social media to fall into a delirium. “dominic sessa stop,” began one viral tweet. “your bob dylan drip is too immaculate. your timeless beauty swag is too unreal. timothee chalamet is gonna kill you.” Within hours, a new fandom for the 21-year-old actor (the Sessa Society) had somehow been established, its members desperate to assert the superiority of their new king. Chalamet’s reign over Hollywood was suddenly, out of nowhere, being called into question. “I hope he doesn’t kill me,” says Sessa, with a serene smile. As was hinted from his easy swagger at the Golden Globes, he doesn’t really use social media, so he has no idea what I am talking about. “I feel so ignorant when people are talking about these things, but it’s probably for the better.”
We are talking days before the UK release of Alexander Payne’s new movie The Holdovers. In his first-ever role, Sessa stars as Angus Tully; a young, troubled student who is abandoned by his parents over the Christmas holidays and forced to ‘hold over’ at his prestigious New England boarding school. He is looked after by Paul Hunham (Paul Giamatti), a cantankerous Classics teacher with a glass eye and fish odour syndrome, who openly resents the entitlement of his wealthy students. They’re joined by school cook Mary Lamb (Da’Vine Joy Randolph), who is quietly mourning the death of her teenage son in the Vietnam War. Set in 1970, The Holdovers is the kind of Christmas film that is rarely made now: so nostalgic and immersive you can feel the bite of New England frost, the itch of thick wool. The characters are so wonky and lovable that by the end, it feels genuinely wrenching to leave them behind.
Sessa’s rise also feels like a rarity in modern Hollywood. Born and raised in New Jersey, he won a scholarship to board at Deerfield Academy in Massachusetts, where he spent years thinking seriously about becoming a hockey player. It was only after breaking his femur bone in a skateboarding accident that he considered trying drama. “I guess I needed something to do really,” he says, nonchalantly. He is speaking to me from his mum’s house in New Jersey, after weeks of back-to-back red carpet events, his hair bedraggled and phone camera aiming up his nose. “At the time I just thought of [acting] as a way to not be thinking about hockey all the time… I didn’t really want to get super involved in it.” After a while, his teachers started giving him bigger roles, realising he had a natural talent that probably needed cultivating – even if he wasn’t fully aware of it. “By the time I was a senior, acting felt like the only thing I wanted to study.”
He got his role in The Holdovers in a serendipitous stroke of luck, when director Alexander Payne came to scout Deerfield as a potential filming location. One of Sessa’s teachers, after hearing about some open auditions for the film, encouraged him to apply. He did, and after months of meetings, callbacks and readthroughs (“they put me through the wringer”), he landed the role of Angus. There are similarities between the two: they both went to exclusive East Coast boarding schools (even if Sessa was on financial aid) and they both lost their fathers (Sessa’s dad passed away when he was 14). But still, Sessa’s on-screen magnetism is undeniable – it’s hard to believe, when watching, that this is his first role.
The reaction to the film has felt almost dreamlike. For the last few days, the actor has been appearing at various Hollywood award ceremonies, with many critics raving about his performance. Earlier this week, he even won the Critic’s Choice for Best Young Actor, and has just been announced as a Best Supporting BAFTA contender. While he admits to learning a lot from his co-stars about acting (namely not to “overthink it”), did he get any good advice about dealing with this glitzier, more surreal side of the industry? “Alexander Payne likes to talk in metaphors a lot, and his advice was to pretend everyone is on acid and you’re sober,” he says. “He was like, you just have to relax, have fun and pretend everyone else is crazy, and you’re a normal boy.”
Like Angus, Sessa is warm and talkative – though admittedly more placid. It’s hard to imagine him being nervous about anything. “I guess there can be concerns for someone my age; like, I’m 21 years old. I obviously haven’t done press or anything before, so I’m not used to this world. So I’m sure there was concern like, ‘oh my gosh, this guy is gonna say some ridiculous, stupid stuff’. But I think I gain people’s trust pretty quickly.”
“I guess there can be concerns for someone my age; like, I’m 21 years old. I obviously haven’t done press or anything before, so I’m not used to this world” – Dominic Sessa
Then there’s the unexpected perk of becoming a breakout fashion muse. Over the last few weeks, much of the social media frenzy has been centred around the actor’s undone, 70s-esque style. He’s been spotted in Saint Laurent, Tom Ford and Hedi Slimane’s Celine, with rumours swirling about a potential campaign deal. “Jeans and a t-shirt are kind of my vibe, so it’s definitely dipping my toe into something new,” he says, with a shrug. “If I can bring back sideburns, that would be cool… That’s what I want to do. I want to bring back the sideburns.”
The big question now is what comes next. When Sessa began filming The Holdovers, he had just enrolled at Carnegie Mellon University to study drama. But their formal approach – placing the onus on heavy research, thinking and preparation without play – is at odds with Sessa’s more laid-back nature. “It just felt like a very pretentious environment honestly… We were just talking about acting all the time, 24/7,” he says. Instead, he’s going to take a year off, head to fashion week, and see what happens next. “I want to be taking other classes. I want to be around other humans who aren’t actors, just experiencing the world. I think that’s what helps someone perform well and put themselves in other people’s shoes… if I do go back to school, I’ll be studying other stuff and making myself more well-rounded. I think that’s what makes a good actor.” His dream role, he adds, is to one day play the legendary Willy Loman from Arthur Miller’s Death Of A Salesman: the OG king of delusion. “I’ve always said the things that get me through life are adrenaline and ignorance, you know what I mean? I think he holds those two emotions very powerfully, in very different ways than I do. I’d like to explore that.”
The Holdovers is out in the UK on January 19.