The actor tells LADbible there was only one group of people who interacted with him when he went out in New York in the prosthetics
A24’s latest release A Different Man was written and directed by Aaron Schimberg and stars Adam Pearson and Sebastian Stan.
The dark comedy and psychological thriller acts as a mirror held up to society, spotlighting people’s biases and ultimately discomfort – reactions Stan experienced first-hand when he walked around New York City wearing his character’s facial prosthetics.
In A Different Man, Stan plays the role of aspiring actor Edward who has a genetic condition called neurofibromatosis which presents itself in the form of tumors on his face.
Left feeling isolated, Edward leaps at the change to undergo a radical medical procedure to remove the tumors, however, having the face of someone who is considered a conventionally attractive man doesn’t live up to everything he thought it would be.
The arrival of Oswald (Pearson) rubs salt in the wound and leaves Edward’s mental health deteriorating in a rapid and alarming manner.
When playing Edward pre-medical procedure, Stan was required to wear facial prosthetics to portray Edward’s neurofibromatosis and the actor tells LADbible the prosthetics really ‘informed [his] whole character’ and ‘the whole experience of going into the movie’.
What’s more, Stan also spent time ‘going out into the world,’ walking around New York City while wearing the prosthetics, which he reflects as being ‘extremely educational in terms of just seeing how people react or don’t react’.
Sebastian Stan wore the prosthetics out in public (A24)
When asked what wearing the prosthetics taught him, Stan tells LADbible: “What did I learn? I think the world’s a cruel place.”
The actor explains he thinks ‘people project’ and while he doesn’t think everyone ‘inherently […] has a bad intention or anything’ many people ‘just don’t know how to deal with difference’.
“Yet we all are different in so many ways,” Stan adds. “And there’s very few people that actually genuinely have the curiosity to understand someone.”
So few, that there was actually only one specific group of people who interacted with Stan while he was wearing the prosthetics in public.
He reveals: “The only people who made any contact with me at all in those prosthetics were children. Everybody else was just either too scared or too worried about themselves.”
Stan reflects his experience wearing the prosthetics in public really highlights how much people ‘still have to learn,’ resolving: “I wish everybody would get to walk around in some prosthetics in New York City for one day and see the world through those lenses. I think it was really important to experience.”
A Different Man is in cinemas now.
Featured Image Credit: Francois G. Durand/Getty A24
