Aaron Schimberg’s fantastical dark comedy A Different Man is one of 2024’s richest, strangest movies — a film about a man who radically changes his appearance and his life, but is haunted by the success of someone who looks just like he used to. It’s a perfect viewing companion for The Substance, another woozy, disturbing 2024 movie about a beautiful changeling battling a former version of herself. But Schimberg’s take on the tale is funnier and more down to earth, built around believable performances and a situation steeped in reality as much as fantasy.
Sebastian Stan (the MCU’s Winter Soldier; Donald Trump in the 2024 movie The Apprentice) stars as Edward, an actor with significant facial tumors who lives in isolation until he starts to get to know his new neighbor Ingrid (The Worst Person in the World star Renate Reinsve). A radical new neurofibromatosis treatment gives him a new face, so he takes on a new identity and finds success in every aspect of his life except his relationship with Ingrid — especially when a wildly popular, cheerfully charismatic man named Oswald (Under the Skin’s Adam Pearson), who looks exactly like Edward used to, enters their lives.
Like so many doppelgänger movies (Dual, Enemy, The Double, and Cam immediately leap to mind), A Different Man finds horror in the idea of someone confronting a more successful version of himself who represents roads not traveled and choices not made. Unlike most of those movies, though, A Different Man is sharply funny, when it isn’t tragic or terrifying. Polygon sat down with Stan and with previous filmmaking partners Pearson and Schimberg (who worked together on 2019’s dramedy Chained for Life) at 2024’s Fantastic Fest film festival to discuss how they found the right tone for the movie.
[Ed. note: This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.]
Polygon: So much of this movie is about seething and repressing a vast frustration around how the world works, and how people work. It all builds up to a pretty unexpected cathartic point at the end. Sebastian, how did you approach playing that breakdown?
Sebastian Stan: Well, we do that all the time. We always repress things, all the time — so [in a role like this], you just keep doing it more extensively.
But I think — there are so many things you read that try to explain things [in movies]. They’re always overwritten. This happens usually on more of a bigger-budget film, where the worry is always that the audience isn’t going to understand what’s happening, so you need to make sure they get it. I’m just so grateful we didn’t have to deal with that kind of thinking and approach in this. Because rather than [explaining the ending] — I think it is interpretation. People will relate to that moment or find things about it differently. You don’t want to comment on that, to tell people how to feel about it.
I will say that it’s interesting — Edward and Oswald and Ingrid, they all sort of weirdly need each other, and they all are sort of these planets spinning around each other in a necessary way, whether there are all these other feelings there. It is a mix of emotions. It’s not just one thing that’s driving him at the end of the movie, it’s a slew of things. There’s probably an inner struggle between being in awe of these people, while at the same time being incredibly hateful and angry at these people.
After the Fantastic Fest screening, you mentioned in a Q&A that you worked with Adam to discover how Edward would have experienced life, given his condition. You said Adam was very generous with his life experience. What did you learn from him that was important in playing Edward?
Stan: Well, one of the things that my task was — and Aaron brought this up in the rehearsal — was to figure out [Edward’s] backstory. Who was Edward? How did he get this apartment, how did he decide to be an actor? What happened to his mother? There were these things that are not in the script.
So I was doing research and creating a backstory, and looking at things online, and speaking with people who, for instance, had dealt with weight issues and had lost weight drastically, and had an identity crisis as a result. And then just soaking up whatever I could that was online from anyone that was dealing with neurofibromatosis or any other ailments or disfigurements.
A lot of those people were orphans. They were talking about being abandoned by their families. So there were things there. But with Adam, I actually had someone next to me who I could ask questions, about how he grew up, or what he had experienced simply just even on a playground.
[To Adam] I think my biggest lesson was: You had a very strong support system in your family and in your mom, who from my understanding always said, “Look, you’re going to walk in this room with your head held high, no matter what happens.” And a lot of people didn’t have that.
But at the same time, it didn’t necessarily mean he didn’t encounter the same slew of stereotypical responses from everybody around him. For me personally, [the important lesson] was perhaps understanding this ownership that Adam has over himself, in more ways, I think than I have about myself, or other people I know in the world have. Maybe also more so than Edward has.
Adam, what was your side of that? What was important to you to see reflected in Edward or to see in this film?
Adam Pearson: First of all, with regards to the conversations that me and Sebastian had, unless someone was going to be really and truly honest, there was no point in having them. It can be really easy to dilute it down and skip over the more visceral moments. So that would’ve been an incredibly counterproductive endeavor.
And for me, a lot of it was just about trust. [To Stan] I can only give you so much information or equip you so far, and I need to take my hands off the range and trust that you know what you’re doing at your end of things. And luckily, I got there really quickly.
I think Sebastian has this warmth and integrity that’s beyond his years, beyond what you see in other actors. And then there’s the really great writing and understanding the subject area that Aaron has. I had no qualms or fears that this could go the other way, and become stereotypical or problematic. So yeah, you come in, you trust the material, you trust the people you’re working with, and you come to everything with honesty, integrity, a clear head, and a full heart. And then you can’t go wrong.
Aaron, the tone of this movie is so complicated. There are so many things going on with the drama and the comedy. How did all three of you work to get to the tone you wanted?
Aaron Schimberg: I agonize over the tone before I ever start writing. I don’t agonize over how I’m going to do it. I agonize over what it’s going to look like, and I agonize so much that I don’t write. I procrastinate. And then eventually, when I can’t take it any longer, I’ll write a scene. And as soon as I start writing the scene, the tone lays itself out for me.
I found this to be the truth, the way it is: Everything I’ve written, it seems to come naturally. I think on one hand, I think every film I make, or project I undertake, I take something that’s painful to me that I want to explore, and put under the microscope. It’s coming from a place of trauma or whatever, not to overuse that word.
And then I also have a distance from it, and a comic side, with it. I want to make it light, I don’t want to make it dark. And these two things together create this tone, not to overanalyze it. And then I think the tone is sort of set in the script, but then when I bring everyone together, sometimes it tips a little more into tracking and sometimes it tips a little more into comedy. And I’ve sort of designed it that way. And my only job is really to make sure that there are guardrails up so that it doesn’t tip into one direction, or so that it doesn’t become too heavy. And we make sure that we bring it back — we put a comic moment into something dark. But I also just have to hand it to my collaborators, who are able to interpret this tone.
I knew what Adam was capable of. I wrote the role for him. And I knew the first time talking to Sebastian that he understood this tone. So that just set my mind at ease. Sebastian’s performance is both tragic and comic. [I had] a general fear about it, because without this tonal balance, the whole thing pulls apart. But I don’t know that I’m so much controlling it, so much as I’m protecting against it falling apart.
That sounds a lot like what Adam said about dealing with impostor syndrome at the Q&A last night, about the only people who never get impostor syndrome are the impostors.
Pearson: Yeah. It’s just such a weird thing — I’ve been thinking about it a lot, because I come to everything with a certain degree of self-doubt and nervousness. And for years, it bothered me, like, You should be over this feeling by now. But then one of my friends pulled me aside and went, “If that feeling ever leaves you, you are not in the right place. Because it means you don’t care.”
A Different Man is now available for digital rental or purchase on Amazon, Apple TV, and other platforms.
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