Food, friendship bring damaged souls together in AMC's 'Feed the Beast'

Dion Patras' life is a mess.

The product of a painful childhood, this Bronx boy and talented chef played by Jim Sturgess (“21,” “Cloud Atlas”) has just been released from prison for burning down the uninsured restaurant owned by his boss, brutal mobster Patrick Woichik (Michael Gladis). The jobless Dion now owes the thug big time. On top of that, he has a thing for cocaine.

He's got baggage. So does his best friend, Tommy Moran (David Schwimmer, “Friends”), a sommelier with a drinking problem, who has been unable to stop mourning his wife since she was killed in a hit-and-run accident years earlier. What keeps him going — barely — is caring for their young son TJ, who hasn't spoken since her death.

Opening a high-end restaurant could bring salvation in the new AMC drama series “Feed the Beast,” premiering Sunday, June 5. But can these two damaged souls make a go of it?

“It's a dream that they've had forever,” Sturgess explains. “It was always a dream with Tommy and his late wife, Rie. The three made plans. It was the reason to keep living. Like any dream is, it's a powerful thing. And I think Dion sees an opportunity and sees that Tommy needs some injection of life, something to care about, something to kind of drive him forward, something to kind of get him out of his slump. ... So yeah, it becomes a very necessary thing in both of their lives for different reasons.”

Sturgess, a 38-year-old Brit who's been primarily a movie actor, had been reluctant in the past to take on a series and commit to one character for possibly years. But the script and the chance to live in Dion's skin proved enticing.

“I love Dion. I think he's a great character,” Sturgess says. “He's really fun to play and I like who he is and I love the world of cooking and I'm enjoying learning to cook and spending time in kitchens with chefs and I'm learning a bunch of things and that's really exciting.

“Growing up in the U.K., we fantasized about New York mobs and gangs and we all watched 'Goodfellas,'” he continues. “New York is a really special place for me and I was always completely kind of seduced by the romance of all the music that came out of New York and all the hip-hop music and all the movies I would watch and books that I would read. So for me ... it sort of blended so many of the things that I love in one show and so there was no way I could say no, really.”