A Fresh flip for Sebastian Stan in a darkish romance

Director Mimi Cave was driving someday when she bought an e-mail from a reputation she didn’t acknowledge. It was Sebastian Stan, writing beneath a pseudonym.

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“I just couldn’t help myself,” Stan wrote.

She’d been contemplating him to star reverse Daisy Edgar-Jones in her characteristic debut Fresh, which is loosely concerning the horrors of contemporary relationship. Attached was a video, a form of supplementary audition, of him dancing round a kitchen with a steak knife.

Sebastian Stan in a nonetheless from Fresh. (Photo: Searchlight Pictures by way of AP)

It wasn’t unrelated to the half. His character, Steve, has a pivotal dance second in a kitchen set to Animotion’s Obsession. And Cave had a background in dance and directing music movies for cool indie outfits like Lucius, Sleigh Bells and tUnE-yArDs.

What Stan didn’t know on the time was that the half was already his.

“I had to pull my car over,” Cave stated, laughing. “We’d already decided we were going to cast him but this just put the nail in the coffin. He was obviously super into it and excited and inspired.”

It might solely be March, however Stan is already having an enormous 12 months together with his transformational, tattooed flip as Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee in Pam & Tommy and as a presumably too-good-to-be-true boyfriend in Fresh, each of which can be found on Hulu.

Sebastian Stan might be finest identified for his Marvel affiliation. (Photo: AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)

“Fresh,” particularly, had Stan doing deep dives on relationships, studying Alain de Botton’s treatise on marrying the incorrect particular person, and different complicated males in latest historical past that ought to in all probability go unnamed — it’s a kind of the-less-you-know-going-in-the-better films.

“It has that fun kind of spontaneous, naturalistic banter that you would see in Before Sunrise. Two people meeting and kind of calling each other out and sort of being honest and aware how awkward meeting someone is without even knowing them,” he stated. “You want to know what happens to these two people. Then it takes a turn and becomes even more fascinating.”

Stan might be finest identified for his Marvel affiliation — he’s performed Captain America’s frenemy Bucky Barnes/The Winter Soldier for over a decade now, in movies and on the Disney+ present The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.

“I learned so much from Marvel,” Stan stated. “I still credit Marvel with kind of allowing people to give me a chance and sort of consider me for things.”

But he’s additionally been amassing a formidable record of co-stars and administrators over the previous 20 years. Part of that has to do with the truth that Stan has by no means cared concerning the measurement of the function. He’s all the time readily taken smaller elements for the chance to work with individuals like Jonathan Demme (Rachel Getting Married and Ricki and the Flash), Darren Aronofsky (Black Swan) and Steven Soderbergh (Logan Lucky).

Sebastian Stan can at present be seen alongside Lily James in Pam & Tommy, premiering February 2. (Erin Simkin/Hulu by way of AP)

“I would much rather be a part of a project that asks questions, that people will talk about or that’s good and have one scene instead of being in every frame in something that doesn’t seem to resonate,” Stan stated.

He’s performed sons to Meryl Streep (Ricki and the Flash) and Sigourney Weaver (Political Animals), notorious boyfriends to Margot Robbie (“I, Tonya”) and Lily James (Pam & Tommy), and assist to Nicole Kidman’s detective (Destroyer) in addition to Jessica Chastain’s tremendous spy (The 355) and astronaut (The Martian).

The manner Stan tells it, one morning he awakened and realized he’s simply higher in roles reverse “very strong women.”

Things are good proper now for Stan, however he additionally isn’t able to kick up his ft.

“You have to remember, I’m from Eastern Europe,” Stan stated. “I grew up always thinking that the other shoe is going to drop.”

Stan was born in Romania in 1982. He and his mom left amid the 1989 revolution and moved to Vienna for a couple of years, although neither spoke German on the time. When he was 12, they moved to Rockland County, New York, and Stan began getting critical about performing, attending the storied Stagedoor Manor summer time camp, which boasts alumni like Natalie Portman and Robert Downey, Jr — each of whom he’d find yourself working with later. His Broadway debut in 2007′s “Talk Radio” was what bought him on Demme’s radar and gave him the possibility to satisfy the likes of Al Pacino and Paul Newman.

“(Demme) came backstage and said ‘I’m doing this movie with Anne Hathaway and there’s no role for you, but I’m going to just I’m going to figure it out. You’re just going to be in it,’” Stan stated. “He was such a kind, generous man.”

Stan has some tasks brewing in the meanwhile, together with a movie for Brady Corbet, who he used to see at auditions, that they’re attempting to get off the bottom. And he may begin stepping into producing, too. He simply doesn’t wish to ever get lazy.

“I do feel like you always have to keep growing. You have to kind of keep trying to take swings,” he stated. “I’m very, very afraid of comfortability and getting too comfortable and playing any one character.”