Sebastian Sacco has been in Hollywood for almost three years and is taking the city by storm. His career is on an upward swing with lead roles in A Christmas Recipe for Romance, a Christmas movie that just played on the UP-TV network, as well as a starring role in a huge Toyota television commercial that was shot by Academy Award-winning director of photography, Claudio Miranda. We caught up with the busy actor at an upscale Beverly Hills restaurant so we could ask him about his life and busy career.
Hi, Sebastian. Your television movie, A Christmas Recipe for Romance just aired this past Christmas. How did you end up starring in this project?
The producers wanted me for the role. It was originally written for an American, a chef called “Jason Corwin” who is having girl troubles. I discussed it with my agents and we decided I should go in with my British accent. Fortunately, the producers loved my interpretation of the character and hired me for the job. It turned into another fun and prestigious project.
You also recently landed the lead in a Toyota commercial. Why did you jump from a feature film to a TV commercial?
Well, besides a great pay-day, there were some amazing names attached to it. Academy Award-winning cinematographer, Claudio Miranda was going to be the director of photography. He won the Oscar for ‘The Life of Pi’ which was a masterpiece, so getting to work with Claudio was a huge incentive. Secondly, the director, Jamie Webster, has worked on some amazing campaigns and music videos such as A$AP Rocky, Majid Jordan, Nike, Adidas, SSENSE.
Iconic stuff. Jamie has such a unique style to whatever he creates. I mean he even won an award for being best dressed in Toronto I think. The other reason I took the role in the commercial is because I’m a big fan of Toyota. When I was young my dad used to import second-hand Toyotas from Japan so it seemed serendipitous to now be working with them.
Tell us about the shoot. Is it true you shut down part of Downtown LA for two days filming this?
We did. With big shoots like this, they use something called a ‘Russian Arm’. In this case, it’s a tuned-up Porsche Cayenne 4×4 with a very expensive carbon fiber crane on top that they can control at speed in any direction. That’s how they create such great shoots and chase scenes of moving cars. They have multiple people inside controlling all aspects of the crane, Claudio was controlling the camera with a TV monitor inside and a skilled driver of course. It was pretty amazing. In order to do this though we had police on bikes who would close off roads for us. I felt like I was the president or something. I was driving along with multiple police bikes securing the road for me. One will zoom off ahead and block traffic so we can go right through. That was in addition, the roads we had closed off already. We also had a lot of background actors in some scenes and it felt like a whole town was alive on set. I t was very fun.
What did you think of the car?
I loved it. I’d always liked the Toyota Corolla but I didn’t realize how sporty and fast the top of the line one was. It was quite a car. I’m actually thinking about buying one.
So what’s next for you? Are you ready for 2020?
Absolutely. I have a couple of feature film projects in the pipeline that I can’t talk about at the moment, and I am also developing a television concept that I would play an interesting role in. I plan to make 2020 another big year.
Good luck with all that and thank you for talking to us.
Thank you.
