Sebastian Stan said shock over filming disturbing scenes for the movie Fresh didn't set in until well after filming had wrapped. Stan is a Romanian-American actor who is best known for portraying Bucky Barnes (a.k.a. The Winter Soldier) in the MCU. Stan has also starred in such works as I, Tonya and Gossip Girl. Recently, Stan appeared as Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee in Hulu's biographical mini-series Pam & Tommy.
On March 4, Stan's latest film, Fresh, was released on Hulu. Fresh is a black comedy thriller that follows Noa (Daisy Edgar-Jones), a young woman disgruntled with dating apps, who decides to take a chance with an alluring man named Steve (Stan), whom she meets at a grocery star. However, their exchanging of numbers turns into a fight for survival for Noa when Steve turns out to be a butcher who sells human flesh to cannibals. The film has received relatively positive reception as it presents a particularly disturbing take on the horrors of modern dating. However, Stan and Edgar-Jones' film, Fresh, is definitely not for the faint of heart as it depicts dismemberment and consumption of human flesh.
In an interview with Yahoo!, Stan revealed that the shock of filming disturbing scenes for Fresh didn't set in until later. Part of the reason for the delayed shock may have been how methodical filming was. Stan explained they had both a surgeon and a cook on set who would watch him to ensure his movements were accurate. Stan's focus on accuracy led to him not fully grasping the disturbing nature of what they were filming. After the film wrapped, however, he began realizing how messed up it was and started thinking, "What have we done?" Check out his statement below:
We had an actual former surgeon on set that would kind of watch all the movements and everything, and just the dexterity of that. And then similarly, we had a chef who was watching me, how I was handling everything just from a purpose of keeping it as grounded and realistic as possible. So I feel like I didn't really have any wake up moments until a month later when I was like, ‘What have we done?! What was that? Why am I still thinking about it?’ Middle of the night, just [wide awake thinking about it]. ‘Oh god, oh god! I ruined my life.’
Stan's interview gives some insight into what it was like for him to take on such a unique and disturbing role. While he has taken on more complex roles since the MCU, his knife-wielding role in Fresh is outside any work he has done so far. Getting into the mind of a human butcher is not an easy task and it is likely his dedication and preoccupancy in getting the role right resulted in his delayed shock. However, looking back on creating a film that is so grisly in nature would naturally lead one to question what exactly they have done. The fact alone that real-life surgeons and chefs were giving input on what the cooking and cutting of human flesh would look like certainly shows that this was no ordinary filming experience.
While grisly and disturbing, Fresh is still quite a unique film in its depiction of modern dating. While most women won't find themselves dating a human butcher, the film does comically explore the trials that many women face in never being too sure who it is that they are dating or feeling like consumer goods being chosen by men. Especially with the stories of Anna Sorokin and Shimon Hayut (a.k.a. The Tinder Swindler) swirling around, it is becoming quite common for individuals to fabricate who they really are. Fresh tackles all the perils of modern dating in a way that is very ambitious, dark, and humorous, and that may leave Stan feeling delayed shock for a while yet.
Source: Yahoo!