NO CHOICE BUT TO STAN
THE COFFEE-SHOP STAFF are having a silent meltdown. The peppermint tea I ordered was forgotten as soon as Sebastian Stan walked in. He orders a coffee, receives it instantly, and goes to put it down on a table. The lid isn’t fully on, and the coffee spills. It’s almost a “stars are just like us” moment, but then a barista suddenly materialises with a paper towel in his outstretched palm. “It’s wet,” he says eagerly.
Stan, 37, is wearing black shorts, a black T-shirt, mid-calf black socks and a grey hoodie missing its drawstring. He looks very off-duty SoHo, which he is: he’s back home in New York City on furlough from preparations for The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, an extravagant collaboration between Marvel and newborn streaming service Disney+.
He’s also wearing a blue baseball cap, which sits slightly higher on his head than it might on the head of someone with less va-va-voom hair. That hair sent the Internet into a tizzy recently, when a poster for Falcon showed Stan with a short cut. In the past when Stan has played the Winter Soldier (né Bucky Barnes), he’s had shoulder-length hair. Next to his forehead, which is giant – the White Cliffs of Dover of foreheads – the longer style made him look very sinister.
Stan is somewhat less recognisable in street clothes, but women still side-eye him on their way to the bathroom.
Maybe they recognise him; or maybe he’s just a little too strapping not to be famous.
As Stan talks, he maintains an unsettling deadpan demeanour, verging on a glower. “People always ask me if I’m okay,” he says, still glowering. “They’ve said I have
