A Different Man, the latest film from writer/director Aaron Schimberg, seems to have been created based on the filmmaker’s working relationship with one of the movie’s stars, Adam Pearson, who appeared in Schimberg’s excellent 2019 work Chained for Life. Debuting at Sundance Film Festival back in January, A Different Man concerns a man named Edward (Sebastian Stan) who has a condition called neurofibromatosis (in which non-cancerous tumors grow in the nervous system and often into the skin or surrounding bone), a condition that Pearson has in real life. In the film, Edward undergoes an experimental treatment that effectively rids him of the disease and all signs of his facial deformity, making him unrecognizable to those who knew him before, including his doctors.
Edward is a would-be actor, but his shame about his condition makes him uncomfortable and less outgoing around others, including his new neighbor Ingrid (Renate Reinsve), a struggling writer looking to pen her first play. When the version of Edward she knows vanishes and she meets this new man, she thinks it’s a different person. Her relationship with the old Edward sparks an idea for a play about their meeting, and "new" Edward becomes obsessed with the idea of playing this character that is effectively him. Enter: Oswald (Pearson), a joyful, kind, funny, and intelligent man who is everything Edward wishes he could have been before his treatment, and before long, despite Oswald cozying up to him, it would appear that Oswald is about to steal this part and his girlfriend away from Edward, causing Edward to have a full-on mental collapse.
A Different Man is staggering in what it says about identity, allowing personality to define who you are and how people see you, and it also makes you wonder if Oswald isn’t a little more knowing than he lets on about his impact on Edward’s life. The film is funny at times, tragic at others, and watching Pearson (who also appeared in 2013’s Under the Skin, opposite Scarlett Johansson) grow as an actor and really become the character in this film that everyone wants to know and be close to. I sat down with him during his recent trip through Chicago to talk about his collaborations with Schimberg, taking on roles that he hopes challenge disfigurement stigma, avoiding roles that don’t, and where he hopes his acting career goes from here. Please enjoy our conversation.
Since you and Aaron officially have a working relationship, what has been the key to keeping that successful across these two film?
I love and fully trust that man implicitly. I love the way he writes, I love the way he thinks, and he’s fully compassionate. But he’s also direct in what he expects from people and what he wants; he’s completely uncompromising when it comes to his creative vision, and I really appreciate that. I like working with directors who will live and die by their own sword. We’re also good mates—I know his wife, his kid—and you have to like who you’re working with. For me, if you don’t like or trust who you’re working with, then you’re doomed from the word go. I’m very fortunate that he took a chance on me with the previous film. You turn up, you do your job, you keep in touch, and I think we’ve done pretty good with A Different Man, but I’m biased .
Based on the three films that I’ve seen you in, this character seems the most like you, from what I’ve seen in interviews. Is that accurate, and is it harder to play someone closer to you than a character you have less in common with?
This is definitely the most like me. I think Aaron said at Sundance that my performance in Chained for Life is underrated because people thought that’s who I was. It’s harder to play yourself because it blurs the lines slightly and makes it harder to appraise your own performance, because you’re behaving like you normally would. Granted, it’s with the volume slightly turned up. It was important to do because it gave me a chance to show range to an audience to go from something quiet, like the Under the Skin guy, to Chained for Life where I’m quiet but self-assured, to Oswald, who is a full-on Renaissance man. It was important for me to give a performance where I could plant my feet and be like “Hello!”
I have a theory about Oswald. From the minute he comes into the story, he is manipulating many of the situations, and I don’t mean that in a bad way. But it seems almost too coincidental that Edward gets his life swept out from under him by your character. Oswald is very sweet and trying to be friends, but things are very much moving in his direction and away from Edward. Do you think that’s true?
He’s almost too perfect, isn’t he? He comes out of nowhere nearly halfway through the film, and just takes Edward’s everything. He ruins his life and then hijacks it, almost without batting an eyelid; he just does it. And by the end of the film, you’re not certain who’s a good guy and who’s a bad guy. I took my mom to the Berlin premiere, and she said at the end of the film “I think I hate all three of you.”
I can see that. I want to ask about one particular scene, because I think it’s the one where Edward realizes he’s lost . The karaoke scene is one of my favorites.
Ah yes.
You’re singing this great, sexy song beautifully, but the camera is trained on Edward, and his face says “I’ve lost this battle.” Karaoke is scary for everyone, and you just get up there and do it, and the crowd is falling for your character. Tell me about the importance of that scene and how you and Aaron mapped it out.
At that point in the story, you’re wondering what Oswald hasn’t done yet, and then he walks into that bar and just sees the stage and goes up and crushes the Rose Royce song “I Wanna Get Next to You”—a song that haunts my dreams now . That’s the point where Sebastian Stan truly breaks, and he’s doing so much heavy lifting in that scene without doing a lot of actual movement. He has this presence and physicality, and that scenes is so heartbreaking.
You and Sebastian would have collaborated on the scenes you have together, but I’m wondering, in the early scenes where in which he has the same condition that you do, did he talk to you about those scenes as well? What did you talk about?
Yeah, we had a lot of very frank and deep conversations about me and my life and my condition, and what it is like. Disability is unique in that you don’t get it until you get it. You can go away and do your best research in the same way I could go and learn how airplanes work, but if you put me in a cockpit, we’re all screwed. So I had to give him my own experiences, because everyone with a disability handles it differently on a spectrum so broad that you can only say what your experience is like.
The two easiest ways to lose your anonymity in society are to either have a disfigurement or become a celebrity. So I screwed myself over throughly . So we tried to harness that part of our discussion, but once you’ve got the prosthetics on, you go out and exist in New York and let it wash over you, and if it feels weird or scary, good—sit with that. Once you know how that feels, bring all of that baggage and darkness and uncertainly to the camera.
There’s a message here about confidence. While Edward is able to change his face, he’s not really able to change his personality in ways he would like, and then you come in with endless amounts of personality and win everyone over. What do you think the message is with regards to that?
For sure. There’s always that idea for Edward that the grass is always greener on the other side. He’s almost running away from himself, and when he finally thinks he’s clear and free, my character shows up as a reminder that he was always free and he might be the problem. Again, I accidentally take everything from him.
You also have some really lovely moments with Renate.
She’s great, so much fun, and has such a good energy, as did everyone. I was lucky to be with an entire crew of people who love their job and love film, and it shows. She’s just a real good presence to have around. I had days when I’d come in and I was a bit tired or a bit homesick, and she’d show up and the world made sense again. It was her first English-language film as well, and she rose to it.
You’re still a relatively new actor, and I’m guessing you’re still learning the craft. What do you learn from working with someone like Sebastian about acting that you’ll carry with you?
He’s one of the good guys. There’s so much kindness on set, and he’s all about how one must carry themselves in that environment; it’s really important. Every so often, I’d come in and there would be coffee and cake with a note on it saying “Thank you everyone for you hard work. Love, Sebastian.” He really makes people feel valued, honored and respected. He’s a great guy, and when you watch him act and do his thing, the importance of silence or a pause for a second longer than your instincts tell you you should, he truly is a remarkable actor and a solid dude. We need more solid guys in this industry.
Back to Aaron for a minute, in the two films you’ve done, he’s done a remarkable job of portrayin disabled people in a way that I’ve never seen. Even in this film, that PSA Sebastian is making at the beginning of the movie, I think you’re supposed to find it funny. Is that one of the things you liked about him initially, that he figured out what not to do?
You either have to stay away from the tropes or play with them, like that advert blows up to ridiculous proportions. You know it’s a joke. You’re leaning into the fantasy of something by making it ridiculous. The tropes are victim, villainy or false hero, and he stays well clear of those. He makes disability a thing, not the thing. He thinks about it differently in a way I think we need more of. It’s really healthy. All too often, disability and disfigurement are used as a very lazy shorthand in Hollywood, either as a mark of lazy writing or to avoid doing something different.
Have you turned down roles for those reasons?
Yeah, all the time. I get all the bad stuff, and I’m just like, I’m not here to take a step backwards away from where I want to be going or have the industry going. I’ve got no doubt you can find a guy who will say yes to it, but I’m not he.
Growing up, what were the films that impacted you?
The first film I ever remember seeing was on a boat coming back from Denmark, and I would have been like five or six, and they were showing two films: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze and Home Alone, and I went to see Home Alone. I remember sitting in a room with people I didn’t know, sharing this experience. And that’s when I started to fall in love with cinema and storytelling and wanting to see as much as I could. Then when I started to get a bit older, the film that made me take notice and when film went from a form of entertainment to a form of art was Forrest Gump.
Was that the film that made you want to be an actor?
I think Forrest Gump gave me the impetus to think “I like this; this is fascinating.” And I went down this massive Steven Spielberg rabbit hole, all the way back to Sugarland Express, then E.T., Jurassic Park, Jaws. And then there are things like Disney’s Inside Out, which is a great unpacking of the human condition. I would it put it in the national curriculum; I’d show it in schools. I haven’t seen the new one yet, but it certainly on my list.
It sounds like your Home Alone experience made you fall in love with the communal aspect of moviegoing.
Yeah, I don’t think films are designed to be watched alone. I don’t think any director thinks that their movie should be watched alone in the basement. It’s why we have film festivals; films aren't designed to be made or consumed in isolation.
Do you have a sense of what you’re doing next?
I’ve been working on a doc that I’m working on at the moment, and I have an option I’ve weighing, but it’s something new that will show a bit more range and flex a little bit. I’ll be on the big screen again.
Well best of luck with this, and it was great to meet you, Adam.
You too. I’m excited to see how the film plays for audiences.
A Different Man opens theatrically in Chicago on Friday.