In case you missed it, Deerfield student makes film debut in "The Holdovers". Sadly he costars alongside Paul Giamatti...a Choatie!
DEERFIELD — Two years ago, Catriona Hynds, Deerfield Academy’s director of theater, got an email from a team casting a movie.
“I often wonder what would have happened if that email had gone to spam,” Hynds said. “Or I had thought, ‘This sounds a little dodgy,’ and ignored it.”
Director Alexander Payne’s “The Holdovers” was being filmed at several Massachusetts schools, including Deerfield Academy. In the comedy-drama set in the ‘70s at a fictional elite boarding school, “Barton Academy,” Paul Giamatti plays an ornery history teacher who has to supervise Angus Tully, an angsty teenage student, over Christmas break because Tully unexpectedly has no place to go.
The casting team had already auditioned actors to play Tully, and decided to try looking for actors at the schools they were planning to film at, Hynds said. Some schools didn’t respond, Payne told Town & Country magazine.
They set up auditions for a group of about a dozen students at Deerfield Academy. Before Dominic Sessa auditioned, Hynds talked to the team.
“I actually went into the room and basically said, ‘You know, the kid that they’re looking for is just about to walk in,’” she said.
Sessa had much lower expectations. He thought maybe he could score a part as an extra. “I just thought, ‘Maybe if it goes well, I can sit at a desk or something,’” he told the Sioux City Journal.
Hynds was right. Though Sessa had never acted on screen before — his experience was only on stages — he got the part after several rounds of auditions, Hynds said.
“They could see immediately how fearless Dominic is — he just jumps right in and he’s courageous and creative. I was really happy that they chose him,” Hynds said. “It couldn’t have happened to a nicer, more hard working and more professional kid.”
Hynds, also chair of Deerfield’s Visual and Performing Arts Department, remembered when she first saw Sessa audition as a sophomore for a role in “Antigone,” a Greek play.
“I knew immediately when he opened his mouth in his first audition that we were dealing with someone special,” she said. “He has just this incredible stage presence.”
“The Holdovers” casting team had seen 800 actors before Sessa auditioned, Payne recently told the Sioux City Journal. “When I was coming down to the final decision, (star Paul Giamatti) was generous enough to read with both of the (finalists) via Zoom. We agreed Dominic was the one,” he told the outlet.
Payne said Sessa was “just born to be a film actor.”
Sessa, now on leave from school at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, hopes to next take on new roles next.
“Moving forward, I definitely want to be stretching my legs and playing things that are a little further from my own life experience,” he told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “That’s what makes acting fun.”
Bit players
Deerfield Academy students, faculty and staff are in the background of the film, and another student was cast in a small speaking role, Hynds said. Will Sussbauer, an Ashfield resident, was cast as a student who delivers a line about Cobb salad early in the film.
The movie was filmed in a number of locations across Massachusetts, from Boston to Deerfield. Several other western Massachusetts towns are depicted in the film, including Gill, Shelburne Falls and Buckland, according to the Massachusetts Film Office.
Hynds thinks that has encouraged western Massachusetts moviegoers to watch the film.
“I’ve seen it a couple of times and I was sitting behind a couple who really enjoyed pointing out .. ‘Oh, there’s the Main Street in Shelburne Falls and there’s that,’” she said. “I think it’s been great for the local community to see themselves up on the screen as well.”
Sessa sees “The Holdovers” as a movie with broad appeal.
“There’s nothing you need to understand beforehand going in, and you can just enjoy watching these characters live their lives and discover new things about each other,” Sessa told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “Hopefully it inspires people to have that willingness to empathize with real people in their own lives.”
