Speaker 1: You are listening to Ruthie's Table four in partnership with Montclair.
Speaker 2: Savannah Miller tells a story that when her sisters Sienna
Speaker 2: was born, it was.
Speaker 1: Like the lights came on.
Speaker 2: Our guests on Ruthie's Table four people we all know
Speaker 2: through the movies they make, the companies they run, the
Speaker 2: policies and the values they are defined by. Here we
Speaker 2: get to know them in a different way. How they
Speaker 2: lay a table, what they feed their children, a recipe
Speaker 2: they've kept from their grandmother. Everyone knows Sienna Miller is
Speaker 2: an actress, of fashion designer, and a brave combatant who
Speaker 2: stood up for her rights against a powerful media empire.
Speaker 2: All of us in the River Cafe know her as
Speaker 2: a fabulous eater, coming in on Sundays with her family,
Speaker 2: always a big table, always involving children, always sitting in
Speaker 2: the window. Most of all, it's about sharing. Most of all,
Speaker 2: it's about fun. Just like Sienna. We're here today in
Speaker 2: the River Cafe and the lights have come on. Oh ready,
Speaker 2: So Sienna, would you like to read the recipe that
Speaker 2: you chose to make for this podcast, which.
Speaker 3: Is pizza bianca with tiledio artichokes and time or as
Speaker 3: Giermo del Tourre said on his thame, which I loved
Speaker 3: from now I want to call it time. A pizza
Speaker 3: bianca is a pizza without tomato, but if you want
Speaker 3: to add something salty, you can add artichokes. Ingredients pizza dough,
Speaker 3: double zero flour for dusting, olive oil for drizzling, two
Speaker 3: artichokes baked and sliced, four hundred grams of toilggio sliced. Time,
Speaker 3: preheat the oven to two hundred and thirty degrees centigrade.
Speaker 3: Put a large baking sheet in the oven to heat up,
Speaker 3: and roll your doble on a floured worktop as thinly
Speaker 3: as possible. Place the pizza on a piece of baking paper.
Speaker 3: Top with artichoke slices and to ledgio. Season with salt,
Speaker 3: pepper and thyme. Drizzle with a little olive oil. Transfer
Speaker 3: the baking paper with pizza on to the hot baking sheet.
Speaker 3: Bake for six to eight minutes until the pizza is
Speaker 3: puffed and golden.
Speaker 1: There what easy, Okay?
Speaker 4: So today the pizza on the menu is to led
Speaker 4: you please, are straight out of the fridge. So if
Speaker 4: you just want to try and get them from underneath first,
Speaker 4: we would get a feel for it. And then I
Speaker 4: put them on the tops and on my knuckles a
Speaker 4: little bit, just widen it out. And then once it's
Speaker 4: on your knuckles, you can just very genuinely stretch with
Speaker 4: your thounds and your knuckles. But the most important thing
Speaker 4: is that the middle doesn't stretch too much.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so wreck.
Speaker 4: And then the secret is a rolling pin which actually.
Speaker 3: Has gone missing.
Speaker 4: We are to roll like around the middle parts. That's thinking, great, Okay,
Speaker 4: then this is the this is the fun thing, because
Speaker 4: I feel like you feel like a proper pizza chapherd.
Speaker 4: So you grab the top, just it like very delicately,
Speaker 4: and you gotta you gotta flip it onto your knuckles. Okay,
Speaker 4: so just like that, just go for it. You've got
Speaker 4: to go for it and for it. And then if
Speaker 4: you use this pizza park and just lay it out
Speaker 4: there and pull your fingers out from underneath, I got
Speaker 4: a job. Yeah, I think you're looking bent in the mind.
Speaker 4: And then we've got raw ars chokes. Yeah, and they
Speaker 4: just soaping and lemon water so they don't use the color.
Speaker 4: Then a nice little sprinkle of time, great, some black happer,
Speaker 4: and then just a couple of olives again, not too many.
Speaker 4: I think you should put in the other I agree.
Speaker 4: So the ovens on about four hundred degrees. So just
Speaker 4: with this again. You just want to move the paddle
Speaker 4: like back and then you're done and the paper you're
Speaker 4: going with it just yeah nice? Is it perfect? Real
Speaker 4: good love, you'll bring it you.
Speaker 1: Thanks.
Speaker 2: We were talking about making pizzas and what they involved,
Speaker 2: but it's also involved with how you feed your kids,
Speaker 2: and so I suppose we could talk about before feeding
Speaker 2: your kids, how your parents fed you. What was the
Speaker 2: food like in your household as a child.
Speaker 1: You have memories. I have so many memories.
Speaker 3: My mother is an amazing cook and really a lot
Speaker 3: of her nurturing and her mother incomes through cooking and
Speaker 3: always did. She was born in Yorkshire. She then moved
Speaker 3: to South Africa when she was about four. My grandmother
Speaker 3: was South African and she remarried a Jewish man converted
Speaker 3: to Judaism, so mom kind of grew up with the
Speaker 3: half Yorkshire, half Jewish South African cuisine around her. And
Speaker 3: then when that husband died, my grandmother converted.
Speaker 1: Back to the Church.
Speaker 3: So she was oh, she's not a grade Jew, No,
Speaker 3: she was quite flimsy with it. But as a result
Speaker 3: of that, there's Mum's got a lot of different styles
Speaker 3: of cooking, and Sunday lunch was just a huge I
Speaker 3: was born in New York to an American father, and
Speaker 3: my sister was born in Hong Kong because they lived
Speaker 3: in Hong Kong before, and then we moved to London
Speaker 3: when I was about eighteen months.
Speaker 2: A lot of moving around, a lot of exactly. But
Speaker 2: for you, you were in New York. I was in
Speaker 2: New York, raised in London.
Speaker 3: I mean, I remember teething on Builtong, like she would
Speaker 3: give us sticks of Builtong, and I don't really remember teething,
Speaker 3: but I kind of do. Remember you're back that far,
Speaker 3: running around like Bambam with just dried meat in every hand.
Speaker 1: And how old were you when you came back?
Speaker 3: People are grimacing, but I still love it. I was
Speaker 3: eighteen months.
Speaker 1: Old, Okay, So you are your childhood was British.
Speaker 3: My childhood was British but filled with different from people
Speaker 3: from all over the world. So we'd have you know,
Speaker 3: a brie, a South African barbecue in the summer on Sundays, and.
Speaker 1: It's called a brye.
Speaker 3: It's basically the Afrikaans word for a barbecue, I believe.
Speaker 3: And we'd have burr horse and drew avorce, which is
Speaker 3: different types of sausage.
Speaker 1: I know.
Speaker 3: Well, I grew up with this interesting yeah, and biboerti,
Speaker 3: this South African dish and built onng everywhere, which is
Speaker 3: the dried meat, which I still love.
Speaker 2: So there was your sister and yourself, my sister and
Speaker 2: myself and your mother.
Speaker 1: Were she did, she had, could cook, and she could
Speaker 1: have a job.
Speaker 3: And yeah, well she was a yoga sort of yoga
Speaker 3: Alexander technique exercise teacher. So I grew up in a
Speaker 3: house with women lying all over the floors, I mean,
Speaker 3: and my.
Speaker 5: Friends remember this, especially when I was a teenager.
Speaker 3: Her classes were so popular that they'd spill out of
Speaker 3: the allocated room which was next to my bedroom, into
Speaker 3: the hallways, down the stairs on another landing.
Speaker 1: It wasn't a big house, but this was your yoga lesson.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I signed up for the yoga
Speaker 1: lessons found myself on this serials.
Speaker 3: I know, well, she was so good at it, it
Speaker 3: was She actually started the first exercise base school in
Speaker 3: London in the seventies called Granny's beautiful bodies and it
Speaker 3: was Alexander technique yoga ballet kind of hybrid and Ava
Speaker 3: Gardner went and Albert.
Speaker 5: Finney and she was this really talented was it?
Speaker 3: It was in Knightsbridge.
Speaker 1: Because there was a woman called Lordie Burke. Do you
Speaker 1: remember her? Yes? She was to her that mum just
Speaker 1: like it.
Speaker 2: Yes, I went to Lordi Burke. I can't remember who
Speaker 2: told me about when I first came to London. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I think that was in probably nineteen seventy. Yes, and she.
Speaker 1: Looked totally out of cabaret. You know. Do you remember
Speaker 1: so your mother worked with.
Speaker 3: Her, Yes, they established it together. I don't really have
Speaker 3: many memories of that. But when she started doing it
Speaker 3: again after my parents got divorced, these people would flock
Speaker 3: and there were just women with their legs in the
Speaker 3: air outside the bedroom and I'd be hungover at the
Speaker 3: hoodie on trying to get to the bathroom.
Speaker 1: Just like you know, did she eat in a healthy way? Is?
Speaker 1: And now she was concerned about yoga and Alexander. She's
Speaker 1: never been weight conscious.
Speaker 3: She's never been conscious about calories or everything had butter
Speaker 3: and cream and you know, and I think there is
Speaker 3: something that's so incredible about being nourished by a meal
Speaker 3: cooked with love, which is what you do here every
Speaker 3: single time. You feel the love and the food and
Speaker 3: it's like going home.
Speaker 1: It's an ingredient.
Speaker 2: It is a really strong ingredient. You can taste it
Speaker 2: completely and tasted. Yeah, it is about sharing and about tasting.
Speaker 2: So you with your mother working, did you still sit
Speaker 2: down to a table every night and.
Speaker 1: After school, your sister and you and your mother?
Speaker 3: And I mean I went to boarding school at eight,
Speaker 3: so then it was just weekends.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I did.
Speaker 3: They got divorced when I was six, and then two
Speaker 3: years later I went.
Speaker 1: To boarding school.
Speaker 2: And when you left the comfort of home and food
Speaker 2: and as you say, the ingredient cooking with love, I
Speaker 2: was going to boarding school. Did you feel that ingredient
Speaker 2: was there and the food that you wed a boarding school?
Speaker 3: I mean it was a really My best friend is
Speaker 3: in the room and she's laughing at me with a
Speaker 3: pained expression. No, she didn't go to that school, the man, No,
Speaker 3: not the first one. I mean, I was about as
Speaker 3: high as this table. I was tiny, and it was
Speaker 3: too young, you know, but apparently I really wanted to
Speaker 3: go and it was this It was on paper, a
Speaker 3: really idyllic looking place. It was a manor house. There
Speaker 3: were only fifty two girls. But you know that first
Speaker 3: night you're in a room with ten girls you've never met,
Speaker 3: in kind of metal beds with tweed blankets over the top,
Speaker 3: and its lights out at seven, and it's traumatic. It's
Speaker 3: completely traumatic. Plus they used to feed us on Tuesday's spam,
Speaker 3: which and you'd have to finish your plate, you'd have
Speaker 3: to eat everything. I remember sort of sticking it in
Speaker 3: my pockets and finding dried bits of spam in my pocket,
Speaker 3: which was lovely.
Speaker 1: What are your other food memories of that school?
Speaker 3: Well, sometimes it was great, like big pots of lasagna,
Speaker 3: and every day at four o'clock the baker would deliver
Speaker 3: either ice buns or jam doughnuts, or there'd be some
Speaker 3: kind of delivery, which was the highlight of the entire thing.
Speaker 1: Then when you went home weekends, was it a big deal? Yeah?
Speaker 3: And Mum, you know, she'd make the most out of
Speaker 3: nothing and it was filled with flavor and filled with love.
Speaker 3: And then on Sundays all of her eccentric friends would
Speaker 3: come around for a big boozy Sunday lunch and we'd
Speaker 3: be made to sit at the table, however old or
Speaker 3: young we were. And some of my most I think
Speaker 3: formative moments were around that table because everyone's drinking, there's
Speaker 3: opera blasting, there's no one censoring the conversation, and you
Speaker 3: really learn how to kind of find your way in
Speaker 3: the world through listening to adult conversation and eating food.
Speaker 1: And it was very joyous and jubilant. Did you ever
Speaker 1: come back or did you stay? So it was every weekend,
Speaker 1: Now what I mean for the rest of your education
Speaker 1: that we were border.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so that was a weekly boarding. I was there
Speaker 3: for two years. Then there was a fire or it
Speaker 3: just closed down and I ended up going to senior
Speaker 3: school a year early. So I was ten when I
Speaker 3: went to senior school in seventeen. When I left, even
Speaker 3: though I finished it, I was that was in Berkshire.
Speaker 1: And what was that like? And that was by that
Speaker 1: point I was a season border. I was.
Speaker 3: I was again, you know, about three feet tall, but
Speaker 3: really confident. Really, I'd completely detached from the notion of homesickness.
Speaker 3: I'd gone through it in a really intense way, so
Speaker 3: I was I was quite strong by that point and
Speaker 3: up for it. And my big sister was at the
Speaker 3: same school, which I'm sure helped, and it was school food,
Speaker 3: but I loved I still dream about this chewy toast that.
Speaker 1: They have in the mornings.
Speaker 3: They'd had one of those things where you put the
Speaker 3: bread in and it's cheap bread and it rotates through
Speaker 3: and sort of half toasts, but obviously it's cooked a
Speaker 3: while ago and it becomes kind of bready and chewy.
Speaker 3: And we used to I used to make a butter
Speaker 3: and marmite mix with the cold butter that was thick,
Speaker 3: and spread it on and bend it over.
Speaker 1: And I still everyone's laughing. I'm a real pig. Now.
Speaker 1: It's just because you mix it with the butter. First
Speaker 1: I thought you can free. Yeah, it goes.
Speaker 5: I scrambled my eggs with the dollop of it in.
Speaker 3: They go kind of prey. But it's delicious. Botherel I'm
Speaker 3: a huge.
Speaker 2: Bother, which is you know, I say I've said it before,
Speaker 2: and this because other people praised marmite that when I
Speaker 2: first came to London, I went to a photography school.
Speaker 1: And we had to do a series.
Speaker 2: And I thought, what I'd like to do is get
Speaker 2: a bunch of Americans and give them marmite and butter
Speaker 2: and take a photograph of their face when they tasted it.
Speaker 1: Because for an American it was just like what are
Speaker 1: these people? What is yeast spread?
Speaker 2: And then I never quite got over it because Richard
Speaker 2: used to said marmite in.
Speaker 3: Bed, but the breath, the marmite breath is specific. They
Speaker 3: actually did genius advertising. They did you either love it
Speaker 3: or hate it? I remember this advert where it was
Speaker 3: like a girl and a boy and they were on
Speaker 3: a date and it was going really well. And he
Speaker 3: comes back to hers and she says, you know, do
Speaker 3: you want some coffee?
Speaker 1: And there's a there's an old.
Speaker 3: Piece of toast with marmite on it in the kitchen
Speaker 3: making the coffee. She just takes a bite of the
Speaker 3: thing and goes back in and there and then they
Speaker 3: start kissing and he goes and it said mom, like,
Speaker 3: you either love it or you hate it?
Speaker 1: You have to lean it.
Speaker 3: I think, raw, I wouldn't want to eat it out
Speaker 3: of its jar, go reel, I could, I could?
Speaker 1: I know this is really sounds stupid. What's the difference
Speaker 1: is beef spread? Okay, we're really both baric. It's the
Speaker 1: you as we have many years.
Speaker 2: I've lived here how long fifty years?
Speaker 3: Fifty years used to be, so I put it in
Speaker 3: all sorts of cooking. I sneak it in.
Speaker 1: It's even worse. You still use it, I do.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'll put it in gravy, a little bit of
Speaker 3: marmite and a bolonnaise.
Speaker 1: You love it. You know that day we head for lunch. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're canceled.
Speaker 3: You've got to wash your hair that night.
Speaker 1: Right, something really good? Do I want to watch?
Speaker 5: Do you have a favorite a favorite meal?
Speaker 1: What's your curious? My favorite meal? Yeah?
Speaker 2: I think there is a kind of meal that I
Speaker 2: like very much, which is based on having pasta first,
Speaker 2: so it's always tomato pasta, and then having vegetables cooked
Speaker 2: in different ways. So I'll have arti chokes that are
Speaker 2: slow roasted, and then I'll have spinaches that just blant
Speaker 2: with olive oil and their tomatoes. Will put them in
Speaker 2: the oven and get them that there's absolutely not one
Speaker 2: drop of liquid in them, and they've kind of almost
Speaker 2: stuck to the pan.
Speaker 1: I like eating that way.
Speaker 2: I'm much less in my old age, less interested in
Speaker 2: the first course, second course, third course, that formality of it.
Speaker 1: So it kind of breaks some of.
Speaker 2: The rules when you think, what are we having after
Speaker 2: the pasta or maybe nothing, you know, but we are,
Speaker 2: and then you bring out all being so it's quite
Speaker 2: It's a way that I'm quite liked.
Speaker 1: Did your parents take you to restaurants? Yeah, they did,
Speaker 1: they did. They took us. We had a local Italian
Speaker 1: called to Checo. We go there.
Speaker 3: I go to Johnny Rockets with my dad and have
Speaker 3: a foot long hot dog and a coke float Rockets.
Speaker 5: There are I don't know, I don't know coke floats.
Speaker 3: I love the idea of and but they're I always
Speaker 3: found them kind of disgusting, but I get it just
Speaker 3: because it was I was trying to connect to his
Speaker 3: American side. And then we go to fancier places as well.
Speaker 2: And when you became a kind of more independent person
Speaker 2: on your own, well, you always say that you were
Speaker 2: in New York and you were you were taking care
Speaker 2: of your friends, and you were the person that people
Speaker 2: went to for Sunday lunch or you still did that.
Speaker 2: But when you're when you were acting and when you're
Speaker 2: working on a film, what is it like when you're
Speaker 2: when you're working and when you are he's in theater
Speaker 2: or in film and you're trying to work, and do
Speaker 2: you have a special routine for eating.
Speaker 3: No, it all probably gets a bit goes a bit
Speaker 3: wrong in those moments. I mean, well, I'm never I'm
Speaker 3: not someone who's going to cook for themselves. I think
Speaker 3: so much of the joy of it is feeding other people.
Speaker 1: So I will end up.
Speaker 3: I'm a place well, just remote, like Shreveport, Louisiana. We
Speaker 3: lived on the side of the road in a holiday
Speaker 3: in or something.
Speaker 1: What were you filming?
Speaker 3: I was filming a movie about Decgate called Factory Girl,
Speaker 3: and we were all in a Marriotte residence in on
Speaker 3: the side of the freeway in Boje City, which is
Speaker 3: outside of Louisiana. You know, Shreveport. Jimmy Fallon was in
Speaker 3: that movie. Guy Pierce all these Tara Summers was in it.
Speaker 3: Jack Houston, who's just directed a movie that's apparently amazing.
Speaker 3: And I would cook in this tiny like you would.
Speaker 3: Still I would still cook. I would still find a
Speaker 3: way to cook.
Speaker 2: Every year, the River Cafe curates holiday gift boxes filled
Speaker 2: with Italian ingredients.
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Speaker 2: Up the River Cafe dot co dot uk or call
Speaker 2: me on seven. Sorry, okay, thanks your experience that you
Speaker 2: had as a person who was you know, doing their work,
Speaker 2: raising their children, having your privacy, doing no harm, breaking
Speaker 2: no rules. Had something horrible happened to her and we
Speaker 2: could bring it back to the food. I could say,
Speaker 2: what do you eat when a when a newspaper empire
Speaker 2: goes for you and tries to destroy you and goes.
Speaker 1: Into your phone? Did that? Did you feel hungry? Or
Speaker 1: did you get up eating?
Speaker 2: But it is part of our conversation life and food
Speaker 2: and fairness, and I wondered if you could say how
Speaker 2: you felt when you woke up in the morning and knew.
Speaker 1: Did you have breakfast or did you did real stress?
Speaker 1: I lose my appetite, you lose it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's interesting and I'm and I'm such a I
Speaker 3: love to eat more than anything. It's kind of it's
Speaker 3: where I get a huge amount of pleasure, but I, yeah,
Speaker 3: I lose my appetite if I'm under immense stress. So
Speaker 3: well was his life well, the paparazzi attention at a
Speaker 3: very young age was probably the most traumatizing and surreal
Speaker 3: because it happened from one day to the next. Ild
Speaker 3: I was twenty one and I'd fallen in love with
Speaker 3: my co star of my first film, and he was very.
Speaker 1: Famous, and there were pictures of us.
Speaker 3: We'd gone to the National Portrait Gallery or something, the
Speaker 3: Tate Modern, I can't remember. And I remember leaving his
Speaker 3: house the following day and getting in a black taxi
Speaker 3: and the cave.
Speaker 5: Saying have you seen the news of the world today?
Speaker 5: And I was like, what, you know?
Speaker 1: Twenty one?
Speaker 5: And he said have you seen the news of the world
Speaker 5: And I said no, and he said, you're.
Speaker 3: All over it, and he threw a copy of the
Speaker 3: newspaper in the back of the cab and there we
Speaker 3: were on the front. It was so it was honestly
Speaker 3: like normal life to absolute surreal, you know, life after
Speaker 3: that and I got home to my flat and there
Speaker 3: were photographers all outside my flat and that was it.
Speaker 1: That was it.
Speaker 3: It was gloves off at that moment in culture where
Speaker 3: the tabloids had all the power and young women were
Speaker 3: really persecuted and men.
Speaker 1: But it was really crazy.
Speaker 5: And at first it was kind of funny. I felt
Speaker 5: like Lara Croft.
Speaker 3: Or in some virtual experience, and my friends we'd like
Speaker 3: run away and try and hide, and it was giggly.
Speaker 3: But it became very quickly very insidious, because it was
Speaker 3: threatening and aggressive, and it really took over my entire identity.
Speaker 3: I felt like was being written and read by people.
Speaker 3: But I felt so out of control in a really
Speaker 3: formative moment. And this all happened before that film had
Speaker 3: come out, or any film would come out. I was
Speaker 3: at the very beginning of my career, and I do
Speaker 3: look back and wonder how different things would have been
Speaker 3: if I had been known as an actor first. It
Speaker 3: was a lot of a battle to kind of establish
Speaker 3: myself and be taken seriously and not seen as someone
Speaker 3: who wore ice clothes or had a famous boyfriend or
Speaker 3: It was a battle, and I think I definitely ate
Speaker 3: through it.
Speaker 1: I'm sure at.
Speaker 3: That time, but it was. And then of course the
Speaker 3: phone hacking. I knew that was going on at the time.
Speaker 1: It was very.
Speaker 3: Difficult because it would be well, it would be impossible
Speaker 3: for them to know half of what they knew without
Speaker 3: some form of eavesdropping. And I think there were bugs
Speaker 3: put in houses and in cars, and trackers on cars
Speaker 3: and all sorts of it was and you feel like
Speaker 3: you're going mad. But clicks on the line of my
Speaker 3: mother's landline. So it was relieving in a way to
Speaker 3: know that I hadn't gone mad when I found out.
Speaker 3: But to find out was really difficult. I had to
Speaker 3: take the met Police to court to get the evidence
Speaker 3: that they had in order to take the news of
Speaker 3: the world to court, and they wanted twenty one days
Speaker 3: to hand it over the evidence that they had, and
Speaker 3: the judge said, hand it over today in these four
Speaker 3: huge boxes with emails and phone numbers and numbers of
Speaker 3: my friends and anyway, in the end, I didn't settle
Speaker 3: out of court. I took them to court, which meant
Speaker 3: I got far less money than I would have done
Speaker 3: had I been quiet. But actually it's one of the
Speaker 3: proudest things that I did. And now some of the
Speaker 3: friends whose numbers they also had, got some money too,
Speaker 3: so it kind of feels like that's a lovely that's
Speaker 3: a lovely ending.
Speaker 1: To a saga.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was so comfort you could find in those
Speaker 2: days into cooking or to.
Speaker 1: The cooking was always a grounding.
Speaker 3: I mean, it was a decade really of harassment, but
Speaker 3: as much as possible, it's okay because it sucks in retrospect,
Speaker 3: but it also is a huge part of who.
Speaker 1: I am and why I am.
Speaker 3: The way that I am and what matters to me
Speaker 3: is very clear, and what doesn't matter and what's out
Speaker 3: of your control is also very clear. And I think
Speaker 3: I tried to control it for a long time and
Speaker 3: then gave up. And I know my friends, my family,
Speaker 3: the people I love, the restaurants I love, the food
Speaker 3: I love. The community around me is sacred and respected,
Speaker 3: and the rest I don't care. I feel like everyone
Speaker 3: in the world see my you know, dirty underwear. It's
Speaker 3: like there's nothing more I can. Everyone knows everything, whatever
Speaker 3: it's But I know the power.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's you're saying that gives you if you have
Speaker 2: been killed, you know there are people who have been destroyed.
Speaker 3: Well, no, I'm proud that I didn't go that far,
Speaker 3: but I understand absolutely why you lose your mind. It
Speaker 3: kind of perpetuates behavior that coping mechanisms that are toxic,
Speaker 3: drinking too much or going out too much, or just
Speaker 3: keeping moving, because it's also crazy and you can see
Speaker 3: why people unravel, and actually it suits them. The more
Speaker 3: you unravel, they're kind of encouraging you to do that
Speaker 3: because that sells mere papers.
Speaker 5: Now, So it's it's wonderful in a way.
Speaker 3: I'm not a fan of social media, but I respect
Speaker 3: that women now have an opportunity to that their voice
Speaker 3: is powerful, that anything anyone could write, or they have
Speaker 3: a means to retaliate. I just got incredibly litigious, and
Speaker 3: then you'd get an apology that's that big, tiny in
Speaker 3: a newspaper that anyone to use. I mean, it's nice
Speaker 3: that it's come full circle and we look back on
Speaker 3: that behavior and can't believe that that was allowed. It
Speaker 3: feels like another person, another world, another life.
Speaker 1: Do you remember the people who helped you through this?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've been fortunate. I've never had a friend seller
Speaker 3: story in my life. I had a very strong core
Speaker 3: group of friends from a young age, from ten from
Speaker 3: my senior school, one of whom is in this room
Speaker 3: right now, my first and oldest friend.
Speaker 1: Do you remember going through this, Yeah, very much. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: running away from.
Speaker 5: She's six foot tall and im and I'm not.
Speaker 3: She was my security. But also she was sometimes a decoy,
Speaker 3: so we'd put like a jump a jacket over her
Speaker 3: head and she'd run out of the theater. I was
Speaker 3: doing a play, even though I'd suddenly grown six you know,
Speaker 3: however many inches.
Speaker 1: They didn't really notice.
Speaker 3: It's such chaos, but but player doing My first way
Speaker 3: was as you like it, the windoms, Yeah, but I think, yeah,
Speaker 3: having that stability in my family, my mother, my sister,
Speaker 3: it kept it kept me anchored in a way where
Speaker 3: I feel like if I didn't have that, I understand
Speaker 3: how people derail completely.
Speaker 2: If you like listening to Ruthie's Table for would you
Speaker 2: please make sure to rate and review the podcast on
Speaker 2: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: Thank you. What did you do during COVID for food?
Speaker 1: It was interesting.
Speaker 3: All I did in COVID was cook We were Where
Speaker 3: were you?
Speaker 1: Upstate New York? Were in North Salem?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm from you know, I'm from right, which is
Speaker 2: a bit further, Ye, a bit further.
Speaker 3: Of course, you are Woodstock, so you could take the
Speaker 3: girl out of stuff you made.
Speaker 1: That makes so much sense. I wasn't really like that.
Speaker 2: Did you go to the festival? No, I had my
Speaker 2: tonsils out. I know my parents would let me go.
Speaker 2: I was having They scheduled that, well, nobody knew it
Speaker 2: was gonna be there, and I mean that could be
Speaker 2: like that. Also, it was an inwood stock because at
Speaker 2: the last minute, the town fathers or whatever, we had
Speaker 2: to do it on that guy's farm. Yeah, but I
Speaker 2: was kind of like slightly nerdy about studying. I was
Speaker 2: surrounded by people doing everything wild and I was a
Speaker 2: girl who did her homework for a while. And we
Speaker 2: were in My friend Libby and I had a test.
Speaker 2: So we went to the local cafe and we were
Speaker 2: sitting there studying and Bob Dylan sent a note. We
Speaker 2: saw him and it was just when he was kind
Speaker 2: of starting out, but he was already famous, and he
Speaker 2: sent us a note saying, would you like to come
Speaker 2: come back to my house and watch the band rehearse?
Speaker 1: And we sent back a note saying, no, we have
Speaker 1: a test tomorrow. Oh my god. So there you go. WOWE,
Speaker 1: Well maybe it's better. Probably failed it. I don't know,
Speaker 1: but I don't.
Speaker 3: Wonder if i'd gone back, Yeah, I think gone to
Speaker 3: I would have definitely.
Speaker 1: I know you know that song you'd never regret rim Well,
Speaker 1: there you go.
Speaker 3: Maybe that's when I would have actually instigated you were
Speaker 3: a better woman than I are. There's still time, maybe
Speaker 3: I should get to make it really nice.
Speaker 2: You remember fifty years ago when you invited that one's ready?
Speaker 1: Ready?
Speaker 2: Now I've decided, yeah, you could come back.
Speaker 3: Prize winning poet quite rightly, So yeah, I completely agree.
Speaker 1: He totally deserved it.
Speaker 2: So you filmed in Venice and your Venice Shreveport.
Speaker 3: I filmed in so many places all over the world.
Speaker 3: In Venice, I lived by the fish market.
Speaker 1: What was that like?
Speaker 3: Well, just the produce that you get, and I became
Speaker 3: friends with all the stall kind of the people proprietors
Speaker 3: at the stool, and the quality of tomatoes.
Speaker 5: That's the thing I really lament about living in England.
Speaker 1: But what month were you there?
Speaker 3: I was there from July June till November. So from
Speaker 3: the most kind of glorious boiling hot to it being
Speaker 3: really moody and foggy, but watching the transition of the
Speaker 3: seasons through the produce of the food and the fish
Speaker 3: market was just stunning.
Speaker 1: I don't cook enough fish. I need to get better
Speaker 1: at that. Okay, we can work on that. Yeah, that's easy.
Speaker 2: We just talk about going to a city, going to
Speaker 2: a town, and going to a market. It tells you
Speaker 2: where you are the way the Venetians might shout and
Speaker 2: towards Bologna they might just put everything out wait for
Speaker 2: you to come to them. And then probably in Naples,
Speaker 2: the arrival of the produce, and it does there is
Speaker 2: a dynamic, do you.
Speaker 1: Think, absolutely?
Speaker 3: And then markets in France very intimidating for me. I
Speaker 3: feel like as an english person trying to navigate a
Speaker 3: French market is just it's just intimidating. There is a
Speaker 3: superiority and often rightly so with the French cooking and
Speaker 3: the French produce, and sometimes it's it's charming. And I
Speaker 3: love the I love places in Provence and outside. I
Speaker 3: love going to a market is my favorite pastime.
Speaker 1: Do you find out if there are markets before you
Speaker 1: go there?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, and the days of them. But the Italians are
Speaker 3: just a little bit more gregarious.
Speaker 2: The French are a little bit more Have you ever
Speaker 2: tried to touch a mallan in France?
Speaker 1: Did you get hit.
Speaker 2: That's the worst the disappointment prog all the French people
Speaker 2: who are listening here. We really respect your food culture.
Speaker 2: We think it's amazing. It is abas, it is incredible.
Speaker 2: The way they will, you know, they really understand. But
Speaker 2: it took me. I lived in Paris for six years
Speaker 2: and it took me really a while to understand.
Speaker 1: You do not touch. Oh that's a really good touch.
Speaker 2: And maybe this is different but now but you know,
Speaker 2: if you see a peach and you might want to
Speaker 2: hold it for a minute, No, you don't. Do You
Speaker 2: just trust that they're all perfect? And how do you
Speaker 2: eat apart from cooking your own food? Do you when
Speaker 2: you know you're filming all day, will you eat a breakfast?
Speaker 1: You say you don't eat a lot?
Speaker 3: No, I will if I'm not that early often filming
Speaker 3: Europe at five or earlier. I'll be ravenous by the
Speaker 3: time it's you know, breakfast time, and I will have
Speaker 3: whatever they cook on set. I mean, I'm not too fussy,
Speaker 3: I think because of the boarding school upbringing. If I
Speaker 3: add enough salt to anything, I'll eat it. I don't
Speaker 3: love awful. I wish I did, because I feel like
Speaker 3: such a foodie, but I grew up loving steak and
Speaker 3: kidney pie, and now I don't think. I don't think
Speaker 3: I want too much awful.
Speaker 2: When you acted in Burnt, Yes you played. Tell us
Speaker 2: about playing a chef.
Speaker 3: Well, I love cooking, as you know, and food, and
Speaker 3: so the idea of playing a chef in a two
Speaker 3: Michelin star or a kitchen that was going for Michelin
Speaker 3: Stars was was incredible. We got trained by Marcus Wareing
Speaker 3: and who's lovely, and I actually got to do I
Speaker 3: did a service in his restaurant, The Barkley, which has
Speaker 3: two Michelin Stars, and I was on the fish station.
Speaker 3: He taught me how to fill it a turbot, which
Speaker 3: is really difficult, and then I was on the I
Speaker 3: was essentially on fish and we had a working kitchen
Speaker 3: for the entire duration of that shoot, and Marcus was
Speaker 3: on set, so every burner was on. You know, you
Speaker 3: really were part of a troop of a tribe of
Speaker 3: sort of chefs. And at the end of it, he
Speaker 3: said to me, you're a cook, and you've got a place.
Speaker 1: In my kitchen.
Speaker 3: Ah, And I know, so I've got this backup plan
Speaker 3: calling you Yeah, yeah, Well this is more my style
Speaker 3: of cooking, but his is very He's good, he's amazing,
Speaker 3: and it's but it's forensic.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but that's good as a kind of starter as well,
Speaker 2: that you start with it, you know, loading.
Speaker 3: Your lines exactly. And I went to the library with Brett.
Speaker 1: What did you do that?
Speaker 3: I kind of just sat in the kitchen for a
Speaker 3: service and watched and the differences in people's kitchens. So
Speaker 3: Marcus is very he's got a military background. It's incredibly christine,
Speaker 3: it's incredibly ordered. Brett's is kind of chaotic. Yours is
Speaker 3: like a family kitchen. You know, you so can tell
Speaker 3: the personality of a chef by the way they run
Speaker 3: their kitchen.
Speaker 6: Have you done improvisation the I've sort of I've been
Speaker 6: made to in workshopping a play or playing around with
Speaker 6: something on a set before you start filming.
Speaker 1: It's funny.
Speaker 5: I get quite intimidated by improvising.
Speaker 3: I did this film called American Woman that very few
Speaker 3: people saw, but I was so proud of it. But
Speaker 3: Christina Hendrix played my sister, and Jake Scott directed it,
Speaker 3: whose father is Ridley Scott, the kind of legendary film
Speaker 3: director family, and Jake wanted me and Christina to really
Speaker 3: have that sisterly bond before we started shooting, and he
Speaker 3: said to me, I want you guys to go upstairs.
Speaker 3: It was the day we met and put makeup on
Speaker 3: each other like you might have done as children.
Speaker 5: And we were just like, no, please, God, don't make
Speaker 5: us do that.
Speaker 1: It will be so uncomfortable. You know.
Speaker 3: It's there's such a trust that comes with it, and
Speaker 3: and comedians are amazing at it.
Speaker 1: I like to think of myself as really funny. But
Speaker 1: for some reason, thanks.
Speaker 2: Realthing, you had to improvise with Larry David and Curby
Speaker 2: Your Enthusiasm, one of my favorite programs of all time.
Speaker 1: What was it like?
Speaker 3: Well, I kind of accosted Larry David in the way
Speaker 3: I might Bob Dylan at the Vanity Fair party in Hollywood,
Speaker 3: which sounds so glamorous and it is unless you're me
Speaker 3: and you drink too many martiniz and sort.
Speaker 1: Of over excited.
Speaker 3: And there was Larry David by the bar, and Ollie,
Speaker 3: my boyfriend introduced me really to Cub's. He's sort of
Speaker 3: Larry in training. I think he will end up that way.
Speaker 1: It could be worse. I always say that Larry really
Speaker 1: never does anything wrong.
Speaker 2: He does the greatest humoring. Yehs just you know, he
Speaker 2: gets into trouble and he'd probably get you. But he's
Speaker 2: actually essentially such a good person.
Speaker 1: He's a great with a huge heart.
Speaker 3: And I think I was obviously so enthusiastically kind of
Speaker 3: pouring my praise on him that it got the cogs turning.
Speaker 3: And about six months later he was like, I had
Speaker 3: this idea for Curb and basically you're hitting on me
Speaker 3: and I.
Speaker 5: So obviously I was flirtatious, but Ollie was there.
Speaker 1: I wasn't deliberately anyway.
Speaker 3: I then you get a skeleton script. It looks a
Speaker 3: little bit like this recipe, and it's sort of like
Speaker 3: Siena is converting to guodaism, sees Larry at the at
Speaker 3: the temple and comes up and talks to him.
Speaker 5: So you get an idea of where the scene has
Speaker 5: to go.
Speaker 3: But you're improvising with one of the great if not
Speaker 3: the greatest.
Speaker 1: Ill if you were improvising, you did so well well.
Speaker 5: It was terrifying. I was not comfortable.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but he's wonderful because he finds the whole thing
Speaker 3: incredibly funny.
Speaker 2: The last question I will ask you is that describe
Speaker 2: times in your life or days in your life, or
Speaker 2: maybe places in your life where you had food And
Speaker 2: you actually asked me that question. When it becomes food
Speaker 2: becomes something that is not just to alleviate hunger or
Speaker 2: to share with your children or to experience together or
Speaker 2: to relax with with quickly, but it loss can be comfort.
Speaker 2: Is there something that you would go to in your
Speaker 2: whole life?
Speaker 3: There are several things, but I'm an enormous spaghetti bolonnes
Speaker 3: guy and Tory who's.
Speaker 1: In this room.
Speaker 3: We do lots of work with the International Medical Corps,
Speaker 3: which is an NGO, and as a result of that,
Speaker 3: we've traveled all over the world to really remote places.
Speaker 3: Northern Nigeria in a kind of Boko Haram region and
Speaker 3: it's dangerous, Congo and Haiti and all sorts of places,
Speaker 3: but you can often find a bolonnaise.
Speaker 1: Bizarrely, and one of the.
Speaker 3: Best spaghetti bolonneses we ever had, we were going to
Speaker 3: do a bolonnes tour of the world because we are
Speaker 3: obsessed with it. I think it's so delicious was in
Speaker 3: northern Nigeria in this tiny, very weird hotel. It was amazing,
Speaker 3: wasn't it. You didn't order it the first night, and
Speaker 3: then we both ordered it. I had it twice in
Speaker 3: our own You had it the second night.
Speaker 1: It was that good. Well do you know what made it? So?
Speaker 2: Do?
Speaker 3: I don't, And I'm quite a cheap date. But I
Speaker 3: think it was beef. But I think anything would have been.
Speaker 3: You know, something familiar in that in that environment is
Speaker 3: but I love a bolonnaise. I love chicken soup if
Speaker 3: I'm sick. I guess that's the Jewish influence.
Speaker 1: I love curry. You know. Do we just talk about
Speaker 1: the NGA? Yes, tell us about.
Speaker 3: Well, in twenty ten, I became an ambassador for this
Speaker 3: NGO called the International Medical Core.
Speaker 1: So they basically provide healthcare for displaced people all around
Speaker 1: the world.
Speaker 3: And I visit their programs and they it's water, sanitation, inoculations, feeding,
Speaker 3: and you get assigned different departments to kind of run.
Speaker 3: But they their ethos is really holistic in that they
Speaker 3: don't just go in and administer or band aid and
Speaker 3: provide this service and then leave. They train locals to
Speaker 3: become able to run the program, so it's becomes ultimately
Speaker 3: self sufficient. And it's an extraordinary experience to visit these
Speaker 3: places and meet these survivors of all sorts of terrible famine.
Speaker 3: You know, in the Congo it was rape was a
Speaker 3: method of war and incredibly harrowing places to visit and
Speaker 3: experience is to have. But they're an incredible organization and
Speaker 3: I think ninety eight point six percent of every dollar
Speaker 3: goes straight to the field.
Speaker 1: Are you still working with them?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I am, I am. I haven't done a trip
Speaker 5: for a while.
Speaker 3: The last one was quite intense and dangerous in Nigeria,
Speaker 3: and I then got pregnant and then COVID. You know,
Speaker 3: I need to do another one.
Speaker 1: But you can always do more.
Speaker 2: Thank you, sir, Thanks for one time, what a great play.
Speaker 3: Thank you for listening to Ruthie's Table four in partnership
Speaker 3: with Montclair