Sebastian Stan praised for calling out reporter who called his co-star 'beast'

Fans have praised Sebastian Stan after he called a journalist for his choice of words during a press conference.

The conference was for the film A Different Man, a film in which a man with a craniofacial condition has his appearance transformed by surgery.

Sebastian Stan plays the man after surgery changed his life and helped his career as an actor, while Adam Pearson takes on the part of an actor who is playing Stan's character in a stageplay about his life.

Stan's character becomes fascinated with the man who is playing him in a stage play about his life before the surgery, and who suffers from the same condition he did but is not interested in surgery.

But at a press conference promoting the movie, the Marvel star bristled when a journalist used the word 'beast' to describe the character before the surgery transformed his appearance.

The reporter asked: “What do you think happens after the transformation from this so-called beast, as they call him, to this perfect man?”

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Stan replied: "I am gonna call you out a bit on the choice of words there, because I think part of why the film is important is because we often don't have maybe even the right vocabulary.

"I think it's a little more complex than that, and obviously there's language barriers and so on, but you know, 'beast' isn't the word I think."

He went on to reflect on the film's message and the way it handles preconceptions.

"I think ultimately it's just interesting to hear this point, because I feel to some extent that's one of the things the film is saying, you know, is that we have these preconceived ideas," he said.

"We're not really educated on how to really understand this experience."

Stan also mentioned how it was 'your interpretation' about the character before the surgery, and that 'everyone might have a different interpretation of what he's going through'.

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He concluded: "So I can't really speak to that, one of the things I love about the movie is that he's offering you a way to kind of look at it.

"Hopefully if you can have the same objective point of view while you're experiencing the film, then maybe you can pick apart the initial instincts that you have, and maybe those aren't always the right ones."

And people backed Stan in calling out the reporter.

One wrote: "So Sebastian was definitely right about checking that guy on his choice of words great job Sebastian way to defend and stick up for a fellow colleague and actor."

Another said: "As he should," while someone else praised him for doing it 'politely and eloquently'.

Speaking at the Sundance premiere, Pearson, who has neurofibromatosis, described how he and Stan had found common ground.

He said: “This was the hook that we gave to Sebastian - You don’t know what it’s like to have a disfigurement, but you do know what it’s like to not have privacy and to have your life constantly invaded.

"You become public property.’”