A24’s latest release A Different Man was written and directed by Aaron Schimberg and stars Adam Pearson and Sebastian Stan.
The dark comedy and psychological thriller acts as a mirror held up to society, spotlighting people’s biases and ultimately discomfort – reactions Stan experienced first-hand when he walked around New York City wearing his character’s facial prosthetics.
In A Different Man, Stan plays the role of aspiring actor Edward who has a genetic condition called neurofibromatosis which presents itself in the form of tumors on his face.
Left feeling isolated, Edward leaps at the change to undergo a radical medical procedure to remove the tumors, however, having the face of someone who is considered a conventionally attractive man doesn’t live up to everything he thought it would be.
The arrival of Oswald (Pearson) rubs salt in the wound and leaves Edward’s mental health deteriorating in a rapid and alarming manner.
When playing Edward pre-medical procedure, Stan was required to wear facial prosthetics to portray Edward’s neurofibromatosis and the actor tells LADbible: the prosthetics really ‘informed [his] whole character’ and ‘the whole experience of going into the movie’.
What’s more, Stan also spent time ‘going out into the world,’ walking around New York City while wearing the prosthetics, which he reflects as being ‘extremely educational in terms of just seeing how people react or don’t react’.
Sebastian Stan wore the prosthetics out in public (A24)
When asked what wearing the prosthetics taught him, Stan tells LADbible: “What did I learn? I think the world’s a cruel place.”
The actor explains he thinks ‘people project’ and while he doesn’t think everyone ‘inherently […] has a bad intention or anything’ many people ‘just don’t know how to deal with difference’.
“Yet we all are different in so many ways,” Stan adds. “And there’s very few people that actually genuinely have the curiosity to understand someone.”
So few, that there was actually only one specific group of people who interacted with Stan while he was wearing the prosthetics in public.
He reveals: “The only people who made any contact with me at all in those prosthetics were children. Everybody else was just either too scared or too worried about themselves.”
Stan reflects his experience wearing the prosthetics in public really highlights how much people ‘still have to learn,’ resolving: “I wish everybody would get to walk around in some prosthetics in New York City for one day and see the world through those lenses. I think it was really important to experience.”
A Different Man is in cinemas now.
Featured Image Credit: Francois G. Durand/Getty A24
Sebastian Stan revealed he felt ‘isolated and scared’ filming scenes in new film as character with facial disfigurementSebastian Stan has got a new movie out where he plays a man with neurofibromatosis, a skin condition which causes non-cancerous tumours to grow on nerve tissue.
In the film, Stan’s character Edward eventually gets facial reconstructive surgery to remove the tumours, but he then becomes obsessed with an actor called Oswald (Adam Pearson) who gets a job portraying him in a play.
The film just recently released and has been garnering positive reviews from critics, with it currently enjoying a 90 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
Stan and A Different Man co-star Adam Pearson recently appeared on This Morning to promote the movie.
While on there, he said that the movie’s makeup artist Mike Marino had once been double booked for one of the days of filming, which meant Stan got his facial prosthetics applied hours earlier.
That meant he was able to walk around in public for a while, saying: “It was extremely isolating. I was very scared. You stand out obviously, and there’s a powerless feeling to it, at least that was my experience.”
“It really pointed out that we still have to normalise this idea of being different.”
Adam Pearson and Sebastian Stan star in A Different Man (A24)
Elsewhere in the interview, Stan said the new movie was ‘really special’ as well as being ‘unpredictable and a lot of fun’.
Pearson, who previously appeared alongside Scarlett Johansson in Under the Skin, said: “There’s no suspense or jump scare, or any of the old tropes that we normally see around disfigurement, like villainy, victimhood or false heroism.
“He’s just a guy that charms his way through life.”
During a press conference for the movie Stan said: “I think ultimately it’s just interesting to hear this point, because I feel to some extent that’s one of the things the film is saying, you know, is that we have these preconceived ideas.
“We’re not really educated on how to really understand this experience.
Sebastian Stan and Adam Pearson’s new movie is out now (Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty)
“So I can’t really speak to that, one of the things I love about the movie is that he’s offering you a way to kind of look at it.
“Hopefully if you can have the same objective point of view while you’re experiencing the film, then maybe you can pick apart the initial instincts that you have, and maybe those aren’t always the right ones.”
Pearson added: “This was the hook that we gave to Sebastian – You don’t know what it’s like to have a disfigurement, but you do know what it’s like to not have privacy and to have your life constantly invaded. You become public property.”
