Unexpected, undeniable and just getting started: Dominic Sessa came from nowhere and caught us off-guard. Cast as the wry, quietly explosive student at the heart of The Holdovers after a serendipitous open casting call at his high school, Sessa went on to deliver one of the most magnetic debut performances in recent memory. What followed was an instant mythology: an unknown teenager pulled straight from the hallway into the spotlight, holding the screen alongside industry heavyweights – and holding our attention. 

Now, Sessa stands at the beginning of something major. Following roles in the latest Now You See Me blockbuster and modern Christmas classic Oh. What. Fun., this year sees Sessa portray cult culinary icon Anthony Bourdain in Matt Johnson’s highly-anticipated A24 biopic, depicting a formative 1976 summer in Provincetown. But before any of this happened, Sessa was just a Jackass-obsessed kid quoting its wild-hearted ringleader Johnny Knoxville in his senior yearbook. Face-to-Face with his teenage idol, Sessa and Knoxville run riot.

Johnny Knoxville: Hey, Dominic, how you doing, buddy?
Dominic Sessa: I’m doing well. Where are you?

JK: I’m in Saint Paul, Minnesota, that’s why I’m in a jacket inside. It’s cold as hell. Where are you?
DS: I’m in New York City, I just moved here. I’m from New Jersey originally.

JK: How wonderful to be living in Manhattan at 23.
DS: Yeah, it’s pretty sick. Have you lived here?

JK: No, but I spent so much time there and had a ball.
DS: Where did you live when you were 23?

JK: I was in Los Angeles and living in a tiny studio apartment, waiting tables and pretending that I was pursuing acting.
DS: Is that what you wanted to do originally, be an actor?

JK: Yeah, that’s what I moved out of Knoxville for. I left Knoxville about three or four weeks after high school was over.
DS: Did you not go to college?

JK: Drove by. [both laugh] I drove down to Atlanta and auditioned for the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, and apparently they were fucking taking anybody because I got into their summer programme. You had a different route, right? I live a very sheltered life, but I was reading up on you. You got to audition for Alexander Payne while in high school?
DS: Sure, yeah. I wanted to pursue acting – I was mainly interested in theatre, I never thought about doing movies. I went to one of these very prestigious, stuffy, New England boarding schools, and they were using that as a location for Alexander’s movie. They came through and did an open audition, so I auditioned. I didn’t know anything about it, it was very short notice. But somehow I ended up getting in the movie. Then I went to college for a little bit but ended up leaving because I got another movie.

JK: It takes an incredible amount of confidence to not only audition at eighteen, but audition well enough to get the role. I did not have that confidence when I was eighteen. There are some things I’m frightened of and some things I’m not. Some things that give other people problems don’t bother me at all, but something like the auditioning process early on, and being in a crowd, that kind of thing bothers me.
DS: As an actor, that’s what gives me confidence in a way, that I can kind of hide behind a character. Whereas you were always Johnny Knoxville and people really related to you as yourself, not as an actor.

JK: I don’t know, man. That was my best guess at how to support a child. I was spinning out for years, like, “Oh, I’m pretending I’m pursuing acting.” But my then-girlfriend got pregnant, and I was like… That’s the most fear I’ve ever had. I was your age, and it’s like, “I’m working at a restaurant, how am I going to support a daughter?” That fear, that paralysing fear, led me my friend John Linson getting me a job writing articles at this magazine [Big Brother, a cult skate magazine that ran from 1992 to 2004]. My next-door neighbour, Antoine Fuqua, then got me a commercial agent so I could start auditioning. Slowly, I started writing, trying to do my poor version of the participatory journalism, Hunter S. Thompson thing, which turned into my articles becoming stunts. Jeff Tremaine, who ran Big Brother and directed Jackass, said, “Why don’t you film your stunts?” So that’s how a lot of that started – but it’s not how all of it started.
DS: Was Tremaine the first guy that you met up with in the context of the Jackass guys?

“I can kind of hide behind a character. Whereas you were always Johnny Knoxville and people really related to you as yourself, not as an actor.”

JK: Yes, and more importantly, he’s the first guy that I met where I felt like we got each other and thought this could be something. A lot of the Jackass guys came from Big Brother magazine, either being in it or working on it. I felt like it was a special group, and I felt like, for the first time in my life, maybe we’re on to something.
DS: Was it something about Tremaine specifically? What do you think it was about him that made you feel differently?

JK: Well, he’s a fucking monster. [both laugh] God damn, don’t ever sit across from him in a restaurant, because he just screams and he’s spitting on you and it’s just awful. But he had such a point of view, and very creative. And whatever one of us lacked, the other person had. Then the Spike Jonze of it all gave us credibility. Jeff went to school with Spike and Jeff was like, “Should we ask Spike if he wants to do it with us?” And when Spike said yes, suddenly it wasn’t two idiots who knew nothing. Suddenly we have Spike Jonze. But literally, all we knew was Spike Jonze. That was all we knew. People thought we knew something we didn’t.
DS: Did you expect them to try implement some storytelling elements to what you guys were going to put on camera?

JK: Well Jeff and I were trying to figure this out, right? We know it’s stunts and pranks, but are we going to interview anybody? Are we going to interview musicians? Am I going to sit behind a desk? Yada, yada, yada. We had all these questions. And Spike was just like, “You guys are already doing it in the Big Brother videos. They’re just freeform, one thing goes into the other.” Jeff and I were like, “Oh yeah, we knew that, yeah.” [Dominic laughs] But that big, small idea crystallised everything for us. We thought it was never going to get on TV, and once it was on TV, no one was going to watch it. Then we’re going to make a movie and no one is coming to see that. We’re constantly surprised that we’re getting away with it.
DS: Do you ever think about – especially on TV – if that could even exist today? Because that’s the format of so many YouTube videos now. For me, when I was young watching Jackass, my favourite parts of the movies were when you guys would dress up as like, old people, and go into the live environment and fuck with real people. I was also a big fan of Sacha Baron Cohen, and he would do similar things. Nowadays that’s such a mainstream thing on the internet, but [then] the only place where you could watch that was on a TV show like Jackass.

JK: Yeah, we came in before the internet. [puts on old man voice] Young man, we were before the internet! [both laugh] So it’s hard for me to relate. I’m so insular, I don’t really know what’s going on. But I know that there’s a lot of that kind of thing out there.
DS: Prank videos in general?

JK: Yeah, a lot of that. I don’t really have any connection to it, but as long as they’re not hurting anybody. Everyone’s got to do their thing.
DS: Are you still interested in making films?

JK: Do you mean Jackass films?
DS: Films in general.

JK: Yeah, I’ve done a few this year and I’ve got a few more lined up. I do enjoy it quite a lot. And with my limited education, I appreciate it as well. I mean, what else am I going to be doing? I’m pretty fortunate. I’m not employable for any other job.
DS: [laughs] I sometimes feel that way too, but also I do feel like I could go back to school at some point if I wanted and figure something out.

JK: I think about that too sometimes, like, “Fuck, do I want to go back? Do I want to go to college?” It’s possible – I love reading, learning. So you’re like hotter than a St Louis laundromat right now. How’s your head? How are you cognising all this?
DS: I don’t know. I just like acting, and as long as I can keep doing that, then I’m happy. It is weird to think that the thing you’re doing is being seen by a lot of people. I consider myself really lucky. There’s something cool about entertaining people, but I don’t think I have this, like, self-righteous feeling about it. What I do is incredibly unimportant in the grand scope of the world. I’m lucky to be able to think about how I can utilise this position to create things that put out messages that can help in some way. I want to be really proud of the things that I’m doing and not just doing it for attention or monetary reasons.

JK: That’s a very healthy outlook for a young man your age, or any age, really, because so many actors are just full of their own shit. As entertaining as it is to me, when I come across those people and work with them, you wonder what their reality is.
DS: At the end of the day, you have to be aware of the fact that what you’re doing is kind of absurd. You’re pretending to be someone else, recording it, editing it together. It’s a really odd thing.

“It’s important to make those things that are meaningful to people.”

JK: You strive to do that, and then sometimes you’re on a set and you’re like, “Oh. Ohhhh, this director has no idea what’s going on.” [both laugh] Even those situations I find hilarious, as frustrating as they are. I just try to find the humour in awful situations.
DS: Was there a specific movie out of all of them that was the most meaningful to you, where you felt personally gratified when walking away from it?

“So you’re like hotter than a St Louis laundromat right now. How’s your head? How are you cognising all this?” – Johnny Knoxville

JK: I loved all the Jackass films, because it’s something I created with my friends. And we went through a lot in making those films. Bad Grandpa means a lot to me because it was so fucking hard to make, Dominic. I had so much anxiety going into that film, because it’s a prank film, and if we don’t get the right reactions, I’m fucked. If this tanks halfway through, we’re going to have to turn this into a Jackass film or something. [laughs] I remember we pitched Paramount two movies at the same time, and Bad Grandpa was one of them – but we wanted them to pick the other film. Because Bad Grandpa was like – that’s too much. But then they chose Bad Grandpa.
DS: What was the other movie?

JK: It was a Broken Lizard movie called The Mustache Riders. Willie Nelson was going to play a karate master. We love the Broken Lizard guys, and love Willie Nelson. After Bad Grandpa got greenlit, you’ve never seen three more depressed people walking out of Paramount. [both laugh] We were like, “Oh god.”
DS: But it was a hit. You were obviously with real people in public, was there one thing in the movie that you just had to try over and over again to get to get the right shot, or reaction?

JK: All of them. You’ll try some hours in a row. Some you get five or six shots at.
DS: The best was the giant penguin that you smash into with the kid in the car. [both laugh]

“I’ve had guns drawn on me like, five or six times by four or five car loads of cops.” – Johnny Knoxville

JK: So, you know the story behind that?
DS: No.

JK: That was a pick-up shot, Dominic. We didn’t even have the kid in the car that day. We had a dummy in the car, like a little kid dummy. Because all we were planning was for me to hit the penguin and that’s it for the day. But that dude comes out, and he doesn’t even work there. He’s fucking furious that I hit the penguin and I was like, “What?”
DS: So he didn’t even work at the restaurant?

JK: No, he was just there. [Dominic laughs] He said a couple of things to me, and I guess he expected an old guy to back down, but I just let him have it. He became furious. I had him going for like 45 minutes straight. I was like, “How are we going to cut this?” That guy was a gift – he was going to punch me a couple of times. I don’t care if I get punched, I don’t give a shit, but I don’t want someone to break their knuckle on my face, because now they’re hurt. So I would get him as mad as possible to where he’s going to punch me, then I’d calm him down. Then I would make him furious again. It was so fun, man. That guy was awesome.
DS: I watched that movie on my eleventh birthday. [Johnny laughs] My dad took me to the movie theatre and we to go through three different managers for them to allow me to go in.

JK: Wow, that was in New Jersey that they were that uptight?
DS: Yeah, and that same day, my dad bought me Grand Theft Auto V. [both laugh]

“At the end of the day, you have to be aware of the fact that what you’re doing is kind of absurd. You’re pretending to be someone else, recording it, editing it together.”

JK: Dad was on a mission. Bad Grandpa, aside from like, two scenes in the movie, it wasn’t that dirty, because I had an eight year old kid with me. So even when I talk dirty, it’s in metaphors that kids wouldn’t understand. Like, “Oh, I’d like to hog rinse that spatuli. [Dominic laughs] It means nothing, right?
DS: The strip club scene, too.

JK: Oh man. Someone had got shot in there a week or two before, and written on a paper plate on the back of the door it said, “If you walk in here with a mask, you’ll be treated as a robber.” And if I can impart anything to you, if you see a warning written on a paper plate, take that warning. [both laugh]
DS: Noted. That’s hilarious.

JK: Are you working on something now? Are you promoting?
DS: The last project that came out was a Christmas movie with Michelle Pfeiffer [Oh. What. Fun.].

JK: Oh, wow.
DS: She’s an iconic person and it was really great to be around her and work with her. We were filming in Atlanta last summer, but it was a fucking Christmas movie…

JK: Oh my god, that sucks. It’s like 100 percent humidity there.
DS: Yeah, so I was sweating my ass off the whole time.

JK: Were you in sweaters and whatnot?
DS: Oh yeah.

JK: [laughs] That’s wild.
DS: What’s the scariest or worst place you’ve been arrested or got into trouble with the police while filming?

“Just remember to drink your milk, mind your mom and don’t take shit from anybody.” – Johnny Knoxville

JK: I’ve had guns drawn on me like, five or six times by four or five car loads of cops.
DS: [laughs] Fuck.

JK: The first time was probably the closest I came to getting shot. It was for the pilot and Jackass almost didn’t make it to TV because of this prank. I was handcuffed in a prison orange jumpsuit with dirt all over my face, and went into a hardware store in Santa Monica all out of breath like, “Hey guys, can you help me get these off?” Trying to get people to cut my cuffs off. The whole fucking store evacuated – even my fucking camera guy! At one point I’m in there trying to saw the cuffs off, because I’m into the thing, and I almost sliced my wrist open – and no one’s even there to see it! I hear the cops coming, so I’m like, “I need to get outside, because this is going to be good.” The first three or four carloads of cops pulled up on the scene, and the first cop who gets there jumps out of the car with her gun pointed at me and tells me to get on the ground, which I comply. But she didn’t put her car in park, and so it ran straight into a telephone pole in front of me. And I was like, oh no, she’s not going to be happy. After talking to them afterwards, she said, “If you would have moved an inch, the bullet was going in your ear.” I’m like, “Well, I’m glad I didn’t move an inch.”
DS: [laughs] That’s another lesson.

JK: If a cop tells you to get on the ground at gunpoint, take the note. You know, notes are tough when they come from the studio, but if it comes from a cop holding a gun – take the note.
DS: That’s crazy. I’ve never had guns drawn on me, thankfully.

JK: You sound like you’re in a really good headspace, so I don’t foresee that in your future. Just remember to drink your milk, mind your mom and don’t take shit from anybody.