Sessa is now itching to move on from retro bildungsromans. “I’m kind of bored of the ’70s,” he says, laughing. (To be fair: he really does have a ’70s face.) “It’s not like I want to play these dirty teenage boys all the time.” But in the meantime, as his next chapter comes into focus, Sessa is the best big-screen embodiment of the perils of young masculinity we have right now.
One key to his talent in this particular type of role? He’s also living it in real time. “It’s this feeling of being young and it’s OK not to know,” he says. “It’s OK to have no clear direction. But I understand that.” want Feeling this way, that’s why sometimes it gets the best of you.”
If holdover did not turn After becoming an overnight sensation, Sessa had a few different career paths in mind: plastic surgeon, teacher, finance expert. However, when he’s really honest with himself, Sessa admits that he’s always had a tendency to perform a bit. Growing up in southern New Jersey, this manifested in many different ways. “I feel bad for my parents now,” he says, “because I just wanted so much attention all the time and would do anything to get it.” This included running around the house naked and singing loudly, before her parents decided to channel that energy into extracurricular activities – first dance classes, and then ice hockey.
He became so good at the sport that – shortly after his father died suddenly at the age of 46, when Cessa was just 14 – he was accepted into the prestigious Massachusetts boarding school Deerfield Academy on an athletic scholarship. However, just weeks before his first hockey season, Cessa suffered a career-ending thigh injury. Because of this he had to resort to his natural talent of laughing.
“In my high school, you were either the kid of someone really rich or famous, or you were a varsity lacrosse player,” Sessa says. “I was neither of those things, so I knew I had to be the class clown.” His sense of humor was shaped, in large part, by many donkey And the Sacha Baron Cohen movies his father showed him (of course) Very) Young age.
Soon, he attended Deerfield’s theater productions for the first time, and when his senior year ended, he found himself involved in holdover The prospect of a real career as an actor suddenly appeared on the horizon.
holdover plopped Cessa right into the center of the Hollywood buzz machine, wheeling her through red carpets and awards ceremonies as critics breathlessly compared her Graduate-Era Dustin Hoffman. “It was very gratifying,” he says. “But even at that time, I was stressed about, like, ‘Can I still do this? Can I even do this.’ to do Another movie? Was it just a show?”
The three films she made after that awards run helped calm those fears: the Rose Byrne vehicles. tow, In which Sessa developed into a sympathetic lawyer; Michael Showalter’s holiday fun Oh. What. fun., Which gave him a chance to display his comedic tendencies; And Now you look at me: now you don’t look, Where he got a chance to smoke a joint in Woody Harrelson’s trailer and get career advice from Jesse Eisenberg. Sessa said of the latter, “He really talked about living in the moment, enjoying it, taking things as they are, because anything can happen in this industry.” “We’re very fortunate to be able to do this, so don’t take it like crap.”
