ComingSoon Editor-in-Chief Tyler Treese spoke with The Holdovers star Dominic Sessa about the holiday movie. The actor discussed his character’s development and getting to learn from an established actor like Paul Giamatti. The Holdovers is now playing in theaters.
“From acclaimed director Alexander Payne, The Holdovers follows a curmudgeonly instructor (Paul Giamatti) at a New England prep school who is forced to remain on campus during Christmas break to babysit the handful of students with nowhere to go,” reads the movie‘s synopsis. “Eventually he forms an unlikely bond with one of them — a damaged, brainy troublemaker (newcomer Dominic Sessa) — and with the school’s head cook, who has just lost a son in Vietnam (Da’Vine Joy Randolph).”
Tyler Treese: Dominic, congrats on The Holdovers. I really enjoyed the movie, and I can’t imagine a better learning experience for your first film than working with Paul Giamatti so closely. What stood out most about him as a scene partner? Because, he’s a real master of the craft.
Dominic Sessa: Yeah. I mean, when you say standout, it’s hard to think of things that stand out because that’s what makes him so good. How he’s able to just make it look so effortless in what he’s doing. But, what was really interesting as a new person to work with Paul, and to see his relationship with Alexander, just the way he was able to receive notes and execute on them pretty much instantly was really inspiring for me as a young actor to witness.
This movie starts off a bit slow, but it really gets its teeth into you and the emotional moments are really effective. The scene with Angus’s father is just so heartbreaking. It was the most emotional I got watching. Can you speak to filming such an emotion heavy scene, because, it was just fantastic.
Sure, yeah. It’s definitely a difficult type of scene to film because, you know, Angus has this relationship with his father that nobody really knows about and there’s not much explicitly stated about it until he kind of breaks it down later on. So you have to create that in your mind, you know, what is this relationship? Who is this dad, who is this guy in my life?
And then you get to the day of actually filming it, and you meet the actor for the first time in person, and you kind of have to troubleshoot all of those things that you had created in your mind, and then what is presenting itself right in front of you with the actor and what they’re bringing. So it’s difficult in that sense. But luckily, everybody in this cast was so incredible that it was just easy and seamless to connect with them naturally.
The reception to this movie has been just overwhelmingly positive. How has it been just seeing it really connect with people? You obviously hope that art will connect with people, but across the board everybody’s really enjoying this film.
Yeah, I mean, it’s incredible. You never know, obviously, and this being my first movie, I have no idea how people are not only going to receive the movie, but me, this being my first time. So yeah, I was definitely a little nervous about that, but to get such positive reception from so many people across the board, it’s way beyond anything I imagined, you know? So just hopefully, it keeps doing well for people. [laughs]
