One of my favorite things about the new A24 movie Tony is the ongoing gag involving Dominic Sessa’s Anthony Bourdain getting water dumped on his head every single morning by Antonio Banderas’s Chef. However, while it’s a fun moment in the project on the 2026 movie schedule, it was “kind of like prison torture” for Sessa when they filmed it.
For a bit more context, in the film, Tony sleeps in a hammock on Chef’s porch while staying in Provincetown. Every single morning, instead of using an alarm clock, the chef wakes his dishwasher up with a cold bucket of water. So, when CinemaBlend’s Hannah Saulic interviewed Sessa and the movie’s director Matt Johnson, she asked the actor it was harder to shuck an oyster or get “a million buckets of water dumped” on him. Here’s how the Tony star reacted to that:
Um… ugh, I mean, the water sucked. Yeah. That was way worse.
Johnson was quick to note that it “wasn’t saltwater” being thrown on Sessa, which is what the “movie implies it was.” And I think that would be worse than just normal water. However, it was “irritating,” as The Holdovers star explained.
Now, why was it irritating? Well, the answer feels obvious. However, Johnson dove into the details of how exactly they went about filming this ongoing joke, and that made it clearer why they humorously compared this process to “prison torture”:
What made it so painful, and the reason that Antonio was so hesitant to do it, is because Dom needed to be, not asleep, but he needed to not see it coming. And so Dom is lying there, and he has to be totally relaxed to the point of unconsciousness. And he had to do that 30 times in a row. It was like a kind of prison torture. ‘Go to sleep. You have to. Go to sleep, sleep, go to sleep, relax, go to sleep.’ [*imitates water sloshing sound*].
I have to say, watching Tony – which has gotten good reviews, by the way – I felt like both Tony and Dominic Sessa were shocked and annoyed by the water. The Now You See Me: Now You Don’t actor proved that to be true too by telling us:
But what the worst part about it was it wasn’t all in one day. It was like one day a week we had. It was like, ‘All right, we’re doing more bucket splashes.’
Well, that sincerely does sound pretty awful, especially since it was repeated day after day, and it had to be done in a way where Sessa had to be surprised by it every time. However, I think it was well worth it, because the ongoing bit is truly one of the most delightful elements of Tony. Johnson believes that too, as he told us these scenes are “some of the best moments in the movie.”
While there are moments in Tony that are tearjerking and emotional, it is also genuinely funny. That’s thanks to bits like this water bucket one. Every time Tony was splashed with that water, I laughed. Plus, it helped shape the relationship between him and his boss, and it was one of the ways we got to see their friendship and mentorship evolve during the film.
Now, I’d love to know what Anthony Bourdain would have thought of all this. While we won’t know that, I’m happy Sessa suffered through the water, because this gag is so fun. To see it for yourself, you can catch Tony in theaters now.
