Sebastian Stan Recalls ‘Big Reactions’ From New Yorkers Over His A Different Man Transformation: ‘I Was Terrified’

Sebastian Stan‘s transformation in A Different Man is so striking that even New Yorkers couldn’t help but react — often quite dramatically. In the film, Stan plays Edward, a man with neurofibromatosis (NF1) who undergoes an experimental procedure to change his appearance, only to spiral emotionally when he loses a coveted acting role to Oswald (played by Adam Pearson), a man who lives with NF1 in real life.

Stan was determined to work with Oscar-nominated makeup artist Mike Marino, known for his transformations of Colin Farrell in The Batman and The Penguin. For A Different Man, Stan willingly immersed himself in the character by experiencing life in New York while donning his full prosthetic look. Every morning, Stan would walk from his SoHo apartment to Marino’s studio in the early hours for his makeup application. “I walked up and down Broadway, basically,” Stan recalls, admitting, “I was terrified, but I would just go get a coffee or sit.”

The reactions he encountered while walking around Manhattan helped him embody Edward’s character. “New York is pretty evolved in a lot of ways, but I still got some big reactions from people,” Stan shares. “Like, ‘Oh s—!’ ‘Oh f—!’ ‘Look at that!’ It was scary to experience. It was hard to experience. I felt powerless in those situations.” For Stan, this experience mirrored Edward’s feelings in the film. He described feeling defensive and wary, emotions his character grapples with post-surgery. “It changes how you stand. It changes how far away you are from people, how you look at people,” Stan notes of his prosthetic makeup. “I felt oddly on my back foot more.”

Mike Marino, who applied Stan’s makeup, was impressed with how the actor embraced the social experiment. “He would actually now have a chance to live with people’s reactions and how they were treating him,” Marino explains, adding that A Different Man‘s focus on the emotional toll of disfigurement reminds him of the 1980 classic The Elephant Man, a film that left a lasting impact on him as a child. Stan’s interactions while in character were often eye-opening. “I noticed people avoiding eye contact or offering a forced smile,” he says, describing the uncomfortable responses that mirrored some of the reactions captured in the film. “It’s not even about you,” he adds. “It’s about their own experience… They don’t know how.”

The performance resonated deeply with Adam Pearson’s mother, who told Stan after seeing the film, “All I ever wanted was for someone to walk in his shoes for one day, to know what it’s like, and you were able to do that.” Stan’s role in A Different Man is one of two highly transformative performances he is promoting, alongside his portrayal of a young Donald Trump in The Apprentice. Both roles required a level of physical transformation that allowed him to access different layers of the characters. “I’ve been finding strange parallels between these roles… Truth, self-abandonment, denial of reality,” Stan reflects. Ultimately, his ability to walk in someone else’s shoes, both literally and figuratively, left a profound impact on the actor. https://galborow.com/product/seatle-seahawks-the-seahawks-thank-you-for-the-memories-2024-t-shirt/