The Tony Trailer Is Here, and It’s Bourdain Before He Was Bourdain

Bourdain before the memoir, before the show, before any of it — just a 19-year-old with a summer job in Provincetown that changed everything. The first trailer for Tony is out, and it’s got the chaos to prove it.

I’ve read Kitchen Confidential more than once. I watched No Reservations and Parts Unknown the way other people watch sitcom reruns — always something on in the background. So a movie about the summer that turned Anthony Bourdain into a cook, before any of the rest of it happened, is exactly my kind of thing.

The first trailer just dropped. I’ve watched it a few times. Here’s where I am.

Quick context if you need it

This isn’t a cradle-to-grave biopic, which honestly is the right call. Tony is about one summer: 1976, Provincetown, Massachusetts. A 19-year-old Bourdain wants to be a writer, takes a restaurant job instead, and gets pulled into kitchen life under a Brazilian-born chef who more or less rewires him. It’s pulled from stories in Kitchen Confidential. Matt Johnson (BlackBerry, Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie) directs and co-wrote the script.

Bourdain’s estate signed off on this one, which matters. Their statement: “We chose to support Tony because it is not a standard biopic and doesn’t attempt to summarize a life… It is an interpretation, as that part of Tony’s life will always remain somewhat unknown.”

About that cast

Dominic Sessa (The Holdovers) leads as young Bourdain. Emilia Jones (HBO’s Task) plays Nancy, his love interest that summer. Antonio Banderas (Paddington in Peru) is Ciro, the restaurant owner and chef who takes him under his wing — the guy who essentially makes him a cook. Leo Woodall (The White Lotus) and Stavros Halkias (Bugonia) play Sal and Dimitri, two of the kitchen crew. Rich Sommer (Mad Men) plays Tony’s father, Pierre. Dagmara Domińczyk (Netflix’s Black Rabbit) rounds things out.

That’s a real cast for a movie about one unglamorous summer nobody used to talk about.

Watch the trailer

Oyster shucking, lobster prep, cooks jumping into the ocean at 3 a.m., a party that clearly doesn’t stop when the restaurant closes. It’s the chaos and camaraderie Kitchen Confidential actually captured, not a sanitized version of it.

Tony opens in theaters on August 7, 2026, from A24.

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