During a press conference at the Berlin Film Festival for his latest film A Different Man, Sebastian Stan pushed back on the journalist who described his character, who has a facial disfigurement, as a “beast.”
Aaron Schimberg’s A Different Man, which will screen on Friday at the Berlin Film Festival, follows Edward (played by Sebastian Stan), an aspiring actor with facial disfigurement who, after undergoing reconstructive surgery, starts a new life, only to become obsessed with an actor with a facial disfigurement (Adam Pearson) who is playing him in a play based on his former life.
The journalist, who was not an native English speaker, asked Stan, “What do you think happens after the transformation from this so-called beast, as they call him, to this perfect man?” (Stan wears a facial prosthetic for the first half of the film.)
“I have to call you out a little bit on the choice of words there,” said Stan. “Part of why the film is important is because we often don’t have the right vocabulary. It’s a little more complex than that and, obviously there is language barriers and so on, but “beast” isn’t the word. Ultimately, it is interesting to hear this point because I feel like that is what the film is saying: We have these preconceived ideas. We are not educated to understand this experience in particular.”
A Different Man, which is backed by A24 and Killer Films, first premiered at the Sundance Film Festival to positive reviews that noted the film’s ability to wade into complex questions surrounding disability, perception, and identity.
“It would have been really easy to make this film a little more campaign-y and shouty, or to get on a soapbox. But I think audiences are a lot more intelligent than others give them credit for,” said Pearson. “A good film will change what and audience thinks for a day, but a great film will change how an audience thinks for a lifetime.”
“It’s always been very important to me that if I make films about people with disfigurement that I cast people with disfigurements,” said the director. Schimberg, who has a cleft palate, noted that he has “gone through life wondering, ‘How much of this defines me?’ [What about] if I had been born differently, or if I can fix it more than it has been fixed. I can draw upon these thoughts.”
Hollywood has long cast able-bodied actors to play characters with disabilities and disfigurements. “I am not trying to get too heavily involved in that [representation] discourse, but these questions come up in the movie. In making my last films, where I got criticism from both sides, it forces me to go deeper about issues of representation.”
Pearson, who has neurofibromatosis, previously worked with Schimberg on the director’s last film Chained for Life, playing the disfigured co-star to an actress who is having a difficult time.
When asked about the importance of onscreen representation of characters with disfigurements, Pearson spoke about his two months of filming A Different Man on location in Manhattan, saying, “I found my coffee spot, I found my breakfast spot, and I found my bar. Initially, you have got to do a lot of heavy lifting and the legwork in the conversation. But the more you do it, the easier it gets.”
The actor, whose other credits include Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin, added: “The only way to challenge people’s perception on something, truly challenge it, is to gently and kindly expose them to it. The more we can do that, the easier and more organic that eventually becomes. I’ve got no business in shocking people into submission. I love a good honest conversation, and a loving and graceful correction when needed.”
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