A Different Man Proves That Sebastian Stan Is Best When He’s Unlikable

Edward Lemuel is a kind, timid man. Or so it seems. For the first act of the 2024 black comedy, A Different Man, Edward tries his best to avoid attention. He sheepishly slides past the couch blocking his apartment door as new neighbor, the aspiring playwright Ingrid (Renate Reinsve) moves in. He moves through the city with his body bent forward and his arms crossed in front of him, as if shielding himself from some unseen attack. Even when he tries out for various acting gigs, he falls back and gets embarrassed, a quality that only earns him parts in tone-deaf corporate training videos about how to treat people with physical differences.

It’s easy to see why Edward would conduct himself in this manner. After all, he has neurofibromatosis, a condition that covers his face with deforming tumors. When a miracle treatment removes the tumors and reveals a conventionally handsome face in place of the one he had before, Edward initially behaves the same way, skulking down the street to a nearby dive bar and eyeing with suspicion everyone he passes, including his own reflection.

Edward continues that nervousness when a noisy group of revelers burst into the bar to celebrate their favorite team’s win. They’re loud and crass and obnoxious, but instead of bullying Edward like he expected, they bring their shouting alongside him. And when Edward starts shouting along with them, the jerks welcome him into their throng, to the point that a flirtatious woman in the group makes out with him and even performs sex acts on him in the bar’s hideous bathroom.

Edward discovers he’s at home among the jerks. And because Edward is played by Sebastian Stan, we know immediately that is going to be a layered and complex jerk at that. In fact, few modern actors excel at portraying unlikable people quite like Sebastian Stan.

Bucky’s Best When Bad

For most people, the name Sebastian Stan immediately calls to mind Bucky Barnes, his hardluck superhero in the MCU. Bucky entered the Marvel franchise as Steve Rogers’ big and strong best pal, a guy who seems to die heroically during World War II only to return in modern day as the unstoppable assassin called the Winter Soldier. As seen in Captain America: Civil War, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, and the upcoming Thunderbolts*, Bucky’s story has been one of tragedy and redemption.

Yet as popular as his character is, Stan has always seemed ill at ease in the role. He relies on a mop of shaggy long hair, its untamed tresses covering his eyes, to relate Bucky’s internal toil as the Winter Soldier. Bereft of that hairdo in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Stan charms when he’s bantering with Anthony Mackie as Sam Wilson. But as soon as the two get separated, and he must convey Bucky’s regret and tentative hopes for acceptance, Stan loses his way. He appears inert on screen, trying and failing to make a creased brow and glower compelling.

Popular as the part may be, Bucky hardly shows off Stan at his best. To best understand that, we can revisit Stan’s work from even before the MCU. The actor’s first break came playing rich kid Carter Baizen, an agent of chaos in the teen soap Gossip Girl; at the same time that he earned critical acclaim for his part as a jealous prince Jack Benjamin in the weird and wonderful Bible adaptation, Kings. Stan flounders when trying to portray a nice guy in the first half of Renny Harlin’s sublimely stupid The Covenant, but clicks into place when his character reveals his malevolent intentions in the film’s final act.

These non-Bucky parts set the stage for Stan’s best work, in movies such as I, Tonya and the horror dark comedy Fresh, and the miniseries Pam and Tommy. In I, Tonya, Stan seems to pull a reverse of Chris Evans’ transformation in Captain America, apparently shrinking to a reedy wisp of a man to portray Jeff Gillooly, the terrible boyfriend to Margot Robbie’s Tonya Harding. The effect comes less from any CGI wizardry and more from the attitude Stan infuses in the character. He feels like a person who weighs just over 100 pounds, and whose sense of inferiority makes him at once too aggressive and too resigned. He’s a bitter, hateful man with an insufficient mustache.

The horror film Fresh leans too far into ironic visuals and needle-drops to fully work, but Stan stands out as a man who literally preys on single women. In Fresh, Stan marshals his good looks and soft eyes to make his character Steve the type of guy who would attract women like protagonist Noa (Daisy Edgar-Jones). He makes those same features into something menacing and nefarious when he reveals his true intentions and starts dissecting her for literal meat.

It’s easy to see why fans would clamor for Bucky over Gillooly or Steve, but he’s infinitely more engaged and interesting in the latter parts, even if the movies don’t always match his skill.

An Different, Unlikable Guy

Yes, Sebastian Stan portrayed real-life monster Donald Trump in 2024’s The Apprentice, but his best villain performance of the year came in the A24 film A Different Man, written and directed by Aaron Schimberg. A Different Man follows Edward’s life before and after he gets a miracle cure for his neurofibromatosis, which has left his face disfigured since birth. Edward sees himself as a completely different man, and even starts calling himself “Guy Moratz” and claiming that Edward died. But as Edward as Guy integrates better into society, his anger and bitterness intensifies.

That short description makes A Different Man sound like a movie about learning that beauty is only skin deep; that it’s what is inside that counts. But Schimberg has something more complex, and more cynical, in mind.

Guy’s good looks allow him to become a high-powered real estate agent, successful with cash and women. Still, he keeps returning to the theater, and in particular to Ingrid (Renate Reinsve), a struggling playwright who once lived next door to Edward. Guy discovers that Ingrid has written a play about Edward and he desperately wants the part, to the point where he begins wearing a mask of the face he had removed.

Schimberg heightens the irony not only by having Guy get angry at Ingrid for the condescending way she romanticizes Edward’s life, literally describing his romance to her stand-in as a “Beauty and the Beast story,” but also by inserting a third person in the form of Oswald. Played by Adam Pearson, an actor who actually has neurofibromatosis, Oswald charms everyone, embodying the success that Guy thought impossible when he was Edward.

To its credit, A Different Man makes all three members of this triad awful in their own ways, without making them inhuman monsters. Oswald’s extremely extroverted behavior allows him to disregard the feelings of others and ignore the way that Ingrid fetishizes him, allowing her to center herself in a story that’s not hers. That dyspeptic twist, meanwhile, gives Stan plenty of space to play a sour, soiled man. In one delightful sequence, Oswald joins Ingrid and the actors for an after dinner drink and impresses everyone with his upbeat personality. Schimberg cuts from shots of Ingrid and other women laughing historically at Oswald, fully unencumbered by his appearance, to shots of Guy, Stan letting a sneer quiver under his character’s smile.

As the film builds toward its traditional climax (before moving into extended, and frankly, unnecessary fourth and fifth acts), Guy becomes more erratic on stage. Stan shows no fear of incurring the viewers’ disgust as he stomps across the stage as Guy, bellowing as pieces of facial prosthetics plop from his face. It’s hard not to hate Guy in that moment but, as with all of the characters in A Different Man, it’s hard not to relate to him either.

A Despicable Man

A Different Man works not just because it has unlikable characters, but because they feel real and well-drawn. And that’s Stan’s real skill in being unpleasant onscreen. It takes courage for an actor as handsome and popular as Stan to play people that the audience is going to hate. No one would blame him if he kept bringing in money and fans by playing Bucky or similar roles. Say as Dwayne Johnson’s partner in rescuing Santa Claus? So it’s even more impressive that Stan can imbue his onscreen jerks with humanity, making them real and relatable, even as they disgust us.

As A Different Man shows, Stan excels at playing despicable men precisely because he plays them so real.

A Different Man is now streaming on Max.

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