Sebastian Stan’s Fresh Audition Video Proves The Creepy Role Was His All Along

If you’ve already watched Fresh since it dropped on Hulu on Friday, March 4, you know how disturbing it is. If you haven’t seen it yet, well — suffice it to say, it involves the worst weekend getaway ever between a new couple, Noa (Daisy Edgar-Jones) and Steve (Sebastian Stan), the latter of whom has an appetite for women that goes beyond the figurative. Yeah, it’s a pretty creepy concept — even for the film’s director, Mimi Cave. “There are certain scenes that are quite upsetting, so I had to put [the script, by Lauryn Kahn] down and then come back to it,” she told The New York Times recently. “I was terrified of it.”

To pull off his performance, Stan had to flit between charming and terrifying — which might include things like dancing in the kitchen before picking up a knife and making stabby swipes to the music with it, as the Pam & Tommy star did for an audition video back in October 2020. As Stan shared in a March 4 Instagram post, he sent Cave the tape after meeting about the film nearly two years ago. Now, he’s thanking Cave and the Fresh producers “for trusting [him] and taking the chance.”

For her part, Cave seemed equally grateful for Stan’s involvement in the project, which earned the Best First Film award at Sundance Film Festival in January. “I will always remember the first time I laid eyes on Steve’s moves. Always and forever,” the director commented, along with heart and fire emojis.

The knife video could actually have been overkill because Stan was already going to get the part before he sent it in. As Cave told The Hollywood Reporter, she and the Fresh producers had been preparing to send him an offer when they got it. Luckily for him, though, the tape only cemented that he was their perfect Steve. “He sent in the video dancing in the kitchen with a steak knife and I was like, ‘OK, we made the right choice,’” Cave said to THR.

Stan’s stans and fellow celebrities were also very much into the tape. “I am here for this. All day. Every day,” Sam Claflin wrote, while user @aditya_ch.10503 joked that the clip was giving “Bucky preparing for the Avengers musical.” Speaking of which, Winter Soldier fans already had a pretty good clear of Stan’s knife choreography skills. His Fresh work is just one more addition to his repertoire.