From the Archive: Benedict Cumberbatch on Living with Wes Anderson, Imitating Ruthie & ‘Daddy Pancakes’

0:00Speaker 1:If life is about connections, I feel connected to Benedict Cumberbatch. Rick Rubin, Season 2, Table 4, seated us together at a dinner a few years ago, and I remember it as if it was yesterday, Benedict talking about the food he was cooking for his kids. This morning at breakfast, Carrie Fukunaga, Season 2, recalled asking me to find a fishmonger to teach Benedict how to fill a sea bass for his role in the thriller Blood on Snow and how he passed with flying colors. J.J. Abrams, season three, texted me late last night saying, Ruthie, Benedict must not be of this earth. Describing him as a limitless talent somehow feels like an understatement. And Wes Anderson, season three.

0:45Speaker 1:When I told him I was seeing Benedict, described him as one of the great actors of our time. He's like an Olivier or a Gielgud mixed with a De Niro or a Hoffman.

0:55Speaker 2:That's me.

0:56Speaker 1:You're going out of here. Bye. There was somebody here. Who am I going to put on this podcast? Okay. Benedict and I are also connected by values. We're both politically and socially active. He thinks about the food he eats, the issues of sustainability, fairness, and civil liberties. He's here with me now in the River Cafe to talk about food and film, family and friends. Benedict is someone I respect, I admire, and I love. That's the real connection.

1:24Speaker 2:Oh, my goodness. Ruthie.

1:26Speaker 1:So we start with reading the recipe, and then we've got that over the edge. And you can read it any way you want. Okay.

1:32Speaker 2:You can change it.

1:33Speaker 1:You can read it.

1:34Speaker 2:Okay.

1:34Speaker 1:Oh, it's Ruthie. I heard that.

1:37Speaker 2:I don't know if I can read it as Ruthie. I'll try. I'll try to read it as Ruthie. Do you want me to try it? I find it impressive. I also do impressively. I feel really cruel.

1:45Speaker 1:No, you can be cruel.

1:46Speaker 2:It's okay. I'll just cry.

1:48Speaker 1:I'll take that introduction back.

1:50Speaker 2:And say, actually. What a shit. It's a shit. Okay, I'll try. I'll try. Split and roast two langoustines. Twelve langoustines. Two tablespoons of dried oregano. Three to four dried chilies. Three to four dried chilies.

2:07Speaker 1:It's a bit lower, my total was, I think.

2:09Speaker 2:Two lemons.

2:09Speaker 1:Yeah, that's better.

2:10Speaker 2:Extra virgin olive oil. It's getting quite Kathleen Turner. Now we're getting Kathleen Turner. Okay. Okay, I'll do it seriously, sorry. Okay. Split and roasted langoustines.

2:20Speaker 3:Twelve langoustines, two tablespoons of dried oregano, three to four dried chilies, two lemons, extra virgin olive oil. Preheat the oven to 220 degrees C, gas seven. Cut each langoustine in half lengthways. Sprinkle the flesh side with oregano and crumbled chili and season. Drizzle with olive oil and squeeze over the juice of one lemon. Heat a large tray and place the langoustines on it. Cut side up, side by side. Roast in the preheated oven for four to five minutes. Serve hot with lemon. That sounds within my capabilities.

2:55Speaker 1:You think you could do that? No, but you're a cook.

2:56Speaker 2:I do cook, yeah. I love it. But I love the story of your place, Ruthie.

3:00Speaker 3:I love that this grew up with the limitations of being somewhere for people to eat nearby and then you got a Michelin star and blew it out of the water.

3:08Speaker 1:It's just insane. We use the word organic because We're just looking, we've never done another restaurant, you know, and this one just has grown from being four seats.

3:17Speaker 2:It's all organic, yeah.

3:19Speaker 1:It's how you grow, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. Do you look at doing films that way, the kind of films you.

3:25Speaker 2:I mean, yeah, that's the nicest way to do it.

3:27Speaker 3:You just kind of, a conversation grows around an artist or a particular story or an actor. Actors are artists, but you know what I mean. So, for example, Olivia Colman and I are friends. We have been friends for years.

3:40Speaker 1:Oh, season three? what episode episode four oh she's good she might have been season two.

3:51Speaker 3:But you know we've been friends for a while and we said drunkenly every time we met we should do something together you know it never have happened and then some grown-ups uh I had a good idea.

4:00Speaker 2:And here we are. The Roses comes out in August, which is fantastic.

4:03Speaker 1:I cannot wait to see that.

4:05Speaker 2:I think you'll love it.

4:05Speaker 1:Because I'm probably the only person in this room that really remembers the War of the Roses. Oh, I do. No.

4:11Speaker 2:It's Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner.

4:13Speaker 1:And Kathleen.

4:13Speaker 2:Your voice double.

4:15Speaker 1:What?

4:15Speaker 2:My voice double.

4:16Speaker 1:Kathleen Turner. But tell me about it.

4:20Speaker 2:I mean, so I'm playing an architect.

4:23Speaker 3:Olivia Colman, you've already had on the show, plays a chef. And it's about their relationship based on the original book. And then obviously, the iconic film with Kathleen Turner, Michael Douglas, and Danny DeVito, who directed it. You know, it's based on that paradigm of a couple who start with a furiously wonderful, beautiful archetypal romance, and they're impulsive and physical, and they have a family and One person's career is kind of stagnated because of the family. The other person is doing really well, has a disaster. The other one goes on the up and up, and that's Olivia's character as a chef. And she becomes this huge big deal, a bit like you. I'm sure.

5:03Speaker 1:Anybody could be bigger than me.

5:04Speaker 2:Come on, come on.

5:05Speaker 1:There's a lot of space.

5:06Speaker 2:Yeah, come on. And unlike Richard, mine has a nosedive.

5:09Speaker 3:And it's about then what, I don't want to give it away, but just the joy of bringing this, just the kind of raw ingredients to you because of your life.

5:18Speaker 1:The chef, the architect.

5:20Speaker 3:And he supports her as well. That's the other beautiful thing about it. He helps her with prize money that he's won to start her career. He pulls her out of domesticity and says, you should be doing this. For people at large, you can't keep treating us to iconic desserts every other day. You should be doing this and being celebrated for how brilliant you are. So it's a really magnanimous, loving gesture. But it's about what happens when two people don't hold each other in mind, I guess.

5:46Speaker 3:They lose the conversation of the couple. And these little things start to build these kind of antagonisms, this kind of, you know, the dreaded word, resentment. And it poisons their relationship. And food is such a central point of talking about poison because obviously it's her artistry. It's how she succeeds in the world. It's how she expresses herself, how she evolves in the story. And it's also her downfall. It's also what takes her away from family, what takes her away from her husband. And it's in a way also what he uses to sabotage her without telling what happens.

6:22Speaker 1:And when is it coming out?

6:23Speaker 2:It's coming out late August here. Okay, well, that's good.

6:26Speaker 3:Labor Day weekend in the States and then just, just, just afterwards it's global.

6:30Speaker 2:So, yeah. Exciting. It was such fun and it's gone down very well.

6:33Speaker 1:It's good to work and have fun. That's what we, that's what we really ultimately, or, you know, what it is.

6:39Speaker 3:Well, I think sometimes the fun can be a bit perverse. It can be, the hard work can be the joy. You know, Carrie Fukunaga, what I did with him was great fun. And that's not for a while, but we could talk about that because.

6:50Speaker 2:I know he's a friend of yours. It was great. I mean, it was a.

6:53Speaker 3:Three-day punch in, punch out. I was the sort of bad guy at the end of this. Tom Harley couldn't do it, so I stepped in to do it. And I have no shame about that. Again, that's public. I just thought, I want to work with Carrie. It's fun material, shooting in London. And Aaron's in the scenes with me and Eva Green. I mean, what a great talent to work with. And it's a cracking character. It's sort of very dark, omnipotently powerful presence in the film. And it's a bit like, you know, God turning up at the end in terms of storytelling. So I just had a lot of fun with it, a lot of fun with it.

7:24Speaker 2:And a big character.

7:26Speaker 1:He loved working. I mean, he really, he wanted to be here today. He said he would come and say hello. He left, I think his flight was at 1032. He's great.

7:33Speaker 3:I've worked with him again in a heartbeat. We got incredibly well. I love what he did. And he was just so brilliant with his crew, but with his actors. And also at the end of a long shoot to get this thing in three days. And he was remarkably relaxed considering.

7:47Speaker 1:What was it like filleting the fish?

7:49Speaker 2:Hard and stinky and it's hard.

7:51Speaker 1:It's a really hard thing to do i mean i see them.

7:54Speaker 3:By take three the boys that helped me out were like it's not half.

7:57Speaker 1:Bad they were impressed with your you know because it isn't.

8:00Speaker 3:It's i mean it's not easy um and especially when you're acting with your back to one of the greatest and also most dangerous and iconic french film actresses of a generation eva green yeah and i i was like i'm trying to hold the scene with her i've got a And I wanted to look really good like I can just do it blindfolded. You know, I'd only had one afternoon.

8:22Speaker 2:Trying to learn. And they're big. Salmon are so big.

8:25Speaker 1:It's a big fish. Well, you have to come in here and fill some fish for us. Because you do a film. I've seen it with my friends. And, you know, it's a family, isn't it?

8:34Speaker 2:It's an intense, crazy family.

8:35Speaker 1:Really intense. And then it's over. A friend of mine said that he kind of felt. sometimes at the end of movies, like his parents telling him that they were getting a divorce. I mean, maybe that's extreme, but he said, you just felt the family.

8:48Speaker 2:If that's your job, that's quite a lot to go through. Exactly, you have to go through every time.

8:52Speaker 1:But Wes particularly does, doesn't he?

8:54Speaker 3:Wes is, yeah, well, Wes is very, there's a lot of repeat custom, both within the cast and the crew of Wes's, you know, he holds his team together.

9:01Speaker 2:And so that's, you feel like you're going back into a repertory with him. It's wonderful.

9:06Speaker 3:And I absolutely adored both experiences. Henry Sugar was very particular in the sense that it was lockdown.

9:15Speaker 2:Well, there was a lot of COVID around. Actually, it wasn't lockdown. But it was, what was it, early 2021, I think.

9:21Speaker 3:And it was at the same time as the Power of the Dog Oscar campaign. And I was toing and froing from L.A. to do two weeks and then go back to L.A. I don't know if my family were in L.A. because we decided to make a few months out of it. and they went to school out there and it was it was just great we had a proper proper life for a bit um there which is incredible incredible and and yet then this job came up i was like oh my god i'm now gonna have to go back to england so it was a bit weird the swiss cheese experience of me coming and going but it was magic with west because he really held us and there was an option you could stay at the hotel down the road or you could stay with Wes in his home. And I kind of, I went, no, I'm going to go, I'm going to go hard on this one. I got to go the full, the full Wes.

10:04Speaker 2:But it was magic.

10:06Speaker 3:You know, Rafe was there and other actors were there every night again, coming in and out and, um, you know, to be, to be held by him and his family. and the people who work in his home, and this extraordinary food culture that he adores, with recipes from the New York Times all the time, your food being carted from London on a weekend, which is just like, well, that's amazing. I think I'll stay here rather than go home.

10:29Speaker 1:No, he really cares, and I think he is.

10:30Speaker 2:It's great. And it was like film school, you know, after we'd sit down and watch a movie. You have to watch a movie. And, you know, I was very honest.

10:37Speaker 3:I thought, okay, this is the one time I have never seen Lawrence of Arabia. I'm just going to say it in front of this cineast in, extraordinary um creator of cinema and iconic cinema at that oh great well we can watch it and it's got an intermission so that's good um watch the rest the next day yeah and then we'd get up at a very leisurely sort of you know we'd have a call at about 10 30 or 9 30 it was unheard of in filming but then you go into the set these amazing out of stock hours and creations which is just like i mean like pop-up things with with old-fashioned flats that would just fly up into the rigging and you go back so you'd start walking on the street and then you'd be in a in a in a casino atrium. Then you go through to the main body of the casino with like, you know, a hundred extras moving about and doing all their things meticulously. Then sit down at a roulette table and talk, you know, whatever it was he was playing, Flap Jackal, you know.

11:27Speaker 2:And then look up at a camera thing that was there. I mean, unbelievably technical.

11:30Speaker 3:And you were spitting out sort of sometimes six, seven, eight pages in one take, continuous take, and doing it 45 times to get it right once for use in the film. And, incredibly focused, hard work and really difficult. And the amount of sort of, can't use that one, can't use that one because I forgot a thing or a line went askew. I mean, it was, there was so much to get right. And you were dancing with the crew all the time. Sanjay, this operator, Bob, who's his DOP, making everything's work, but also all the prop and set guys who are moving things, giving you things.

12:04Speaker 2:All the other actors.

12:04Speaker 3:It was like, you know, this, this perfect balance of everything.

12:09Speaker 2:But it was the ultimate Wes experience.

12:11Speaker 3:And then we'd be done by four o'clock and I'd go home and go, oh, in a bath.

12:15Speaker 2:And then, you know, up the stairs, Benedict, it's almost Negroni time.

12:18Speaker 1:Are you partaking?

12:19Speaker 2:I was like, yeah, sure. And then the cycle of good food and film would start.

12:23Speaker 1:And he loves that. You know, we talk a lot about that idea of that, whether it's you or Tilda or Rafe or the people, Owen, that getting the people back. I haven't seen the new movie because you're with Benicia.

12:36Speaker 2:It's fun, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I was working with Benicia, which was just.

12:38Speaker 1:Were you in Berlin? That was in Berlin, wasn't it?

12:40Speaker 2:And that was another thing as well. Babelsberg Studios, the legendary Babelsberg Studios, which I've never been to.

12:44Speaker 1:Well, tell me about them. I don't know what they are.

12:46Speaker 2:So they're huge. I mean, you know, they're sound stages from before the Second World War. I think they might have even been during the first. You know, Marlene.

12:54Speaker 3:Dietrich's stage is one of the longest stages in the world where Wes built two trains that meet in a huge underground railway scene.

13:01Speaker 2:And, you know, it's just epic.

13:04Speaker 3:And the amount of great filmmakers, all the kind of Germans from, you know, Fassbender and Herzog and et al.

13:11Speaker 2:And then you've got.

13:13Speaker 3:all the modern greats like Wes, like Tarantino and Scorsese, they've all come through there.

13:18Speaker 2:So it's a wonderful, rich history.

13:19Speaker 1:You feel that when you go to a film studio, because when I've been.

13:22Speaker 3:To visit Star Wars, you go to.

13:24Speaker 1:Pinewood, you feel that those early spent films.

13:28Speaker 3:Yes and no, Pinewood, and I don't mean to do my hometown, because it's my hometown. I think hometowns never carry quite as much romance as a foreign location, you know.

13:37Speaker 1:What about Chinachet? Did you do one in Italy?

13:41Speaker 3:I have, but only for a fitting. But I filmed in Rome after that. I touched the thing.

13:48Speaker 2:And I kind of loved it.

13:48Speaker 3:It was very ramshackle when I was there. I'm not sure what it's like now. This was a while ago, and there was sort of grass growing out of the pavement and stuff. And I thought, it's half abandoned.

13:55Speaker 1:But still a hive of activity.

13:57Speaker 2:This is it. It's amazing.

14:00Speaker 3:It's going to be interesting what the future holds in this kind of digital time of, you know, volumes, have you heard about volumes?

14:06Speaker 1:No, tell me about volumes.

14:06Speaker 2:Spaces like this that can just be anything. Anything.

14:09Speaker 1:So you just do it in a space and it becomes Rome.

14:12Speaker 3:It's all to do with how you create an environment that's utterly AI.

14:18Speaker 2:It's all virtual reality.

14:19Speaker 3:And so you enter a volume and you have minimal props and furnishing and then everything else is sort of.

14:25Speaker 1:It saves a huge amount of money.

14:28Speaker 2:I've never done it.

14:28Speaker 3:I mean, I've done sort of, I've done a mocap stage, which is where your body then gets, your movements get turned into an avatar that gets turned into the character, in my case, a dragon. But, you know, it could be anything. And that's extraordinary. But it's like being a sort of tax return office.

14:43Speaker 2:It's really bland.

14:45Speaker 3:It's sort of carpeted and neon lighting and none of the glamour of a set or location. But, you know, you're free like a child in his bedroom just to imagine it all. And that's a kind of gift in itself. But a volume, I think, is slightly different. I've never experienced it. I met Jeff Bridges and, oh, gosh, who was the other actor who was coming out of one? And they looked utterly shell-shocked of a different generation kind of going, what are we doing?

15:07Speaker 1:I think that's the thing, generational. It's like you knew it was before, but there'll be a generation who'll just know that.

15:13Speaker 2:Who will know.

15:13Speaker 1:I think it. Yes, it's a conversation we have a lot, which is, are you scared of AI? And how scared are we of AI? And why should we be scared? I'm scared because I.

15:23Speaker 3:Don't think there's anyone in a room somewhere kind of, you know, overseeing the.

15:27Speaker 2:Rules of this.

15:32Speaker 1:Tell me about growing up. Where were you born?

15:34Speaker 3:I was born in London, in West London. And mum and dad had a flat in Kensington, which mum had had since the early 70s. It was like three grand and.

15:44Speaker 2:They're still there. They are both actors.

15:46Speaker 1:Are they?

15:47Speaker 2:Yeah, they played my parents in Sherlock.

15:49Speaker 1:Oh, right.

15:49Speaker 3:It's quite sweet. That's not their only credit. It's kind of the most relevant one to me, I guess, in my career. But they are wonderful.

15:56Speaker 1:So you grew up in a theatrical home. Were they there in the evenings? Were they in plays?

16:00Speaker 2:Yes, by and large.

16:02Speaker 3:But yes, when one of them was working, you know, there was a lot of theatre when I was growing up. Mum did a lot of farces in the West End, lots of raccoony farces, until I told her that I couldn't bear it. coming in on her husband and his male assistant pulling his trousers anymore.

16:18Speaker 2:One more time. I'm 16 now, it's getting really mortifying.

16:20Speaker 3:You've got to class up a bit. But having said that, I mean, if you could do farce, you can do anything. Donald Sinden and Michael Williams used to do it, you know, in productions with her.

16:30Speaker 2:So they are, They're very comedy stars.

16:32Speaker 1:Did you ever see Noises Off? Yeah, yeah.

16:35Speaker 2:It's brilliant. My dad was in the second cast of that. Was he?

16:38Speaker 3:And that was the most proud of the kind of farce era I was because I remember practicing. He had this whole bit where they were throwing a plate and he had to either throw it or catch it. So we go into the park and instead of him kicking a football to me, I was kind of throwing crispy to him. And he got it every time I saw him do it. But it was magic that play would have a play.

16:56Speaker 1:But how did that work for life at home?

16:58Speaker 2:Difficult. I went to boarding school when I was eight.

17:00Speaker 1:Difficult, no, for your parents as well. Yeah, I was in boarding school.

17:04Speaker 2:Yeah, for a long part of my childhood. At eight. What was that like? Kind of wonderful when I was eight.

17:09Speaker 3:I mean, you know, I remember those first anxious moments and watching the parents cry as they walked away. But I found a band of brothers. I was an only child. My sister from mum's first marriage was 18 years older. So she left home when I was literally when I was born practically. Um, and was always a best friend and like a sort of elder aunt figure and someone I could always have on my side, but she wasn't there. So I, I didn't have a community at home at all. Um, and I found it at school. So it was a mixed thing, you know, the initial lurch of like, Oh God, this is weird.

17:42Speaker 2:Where are they going? You know?

17:43Speaker 3:But then I had a blast. I went there to last weekend. It was my old headmaster and her mistress's memorial. And it was in a theater that Judy Dench, who's a friend of mine, had opened.

17:55Speaker 2:And I did a little reading at the end.

17:57Speaker 3:And it was like walking through all these Proustian, Madeleine Kate memory moments, just like wave after wave of ghosts and just trees that look the same that I did my first ever drawings of, you know, playing fields where I first tried to play tennis and cricket and rugby and all the rest, and the classrooms had changed a lot, and the standard of artwork and stuff in the art department was off the scale. It's a beautiful, beautiful school called Brambletie in East Grinstead, and it was idyllic, and it was outside of London. It gave me my love of literature and food, and not food, and I'm saying that because I'm here.

18:31Speaker 2:So nice to have good memories. Literature and, oh, amazing memories. So nice that you have good memories of school. But everything, sports, culture, music, drama. not really Ruthie no I said food.

18:41Speaker 3:Because we're here and I can hear people praying in the background but that would be really disingenuous it wasn't I didn't go away going god damn it food's great I came away going okay it's just something to eat to keep you going a bit yeah I mean we had treats but it was you know The roast, you know, Yorkshire pudding was something to look forward to.

19:00Speaker 2:I guess.

19:01Speaker 1:But you were in boarding school from?

19:02Speaker 2:I was in boarding school from 8 till 18.

19:03Speaker 1:Yeah.

19:04Speaker 2:The whole gamut.

19:06Speaker 1:It's nice that you have good memories. I have good memories of school. Do you? And it's kind of rare that people, I mean, maybe more, but I loved my school. And I was also, I went for the last few years.

19:15Speaker 2:Yeah.

19:15Speaker 1:I was on a ranch in Colorado, so I didn't learn anything, but we had, it was very.

19:18Speaker 2:You were at a ranch in Colorado? Yeah. Oh, my God.

19:20Speaker 1:Yeah, that's why I'm not very bright.

19:22Speaker 2:Oh, come on, Ruthie.

19:24Speaker 1:But you do rarely meet somebody who says that they love. loved their school so that's you know good but then you when would you eat well then would you eat your mother would cook so.

19:33Speaker 3:Would you come home as well like mcdonald's was a big treat i'm afraid hate to mention those words on this but yeah.

19:38Speaker 1:No i'm empathetic to mothers who can't cook because they're working and.

19:42Speaker 3:Uh no it was just a treat i mean she really could cook but it was like.

19:45Speaker 1:Should we have a dance? No, I don't mean can't cook, but they were working.

19:47Speaker 2:Oh, I see.

19:47Speaker 1:She was in the theater.

19:49Speaker 2:She still managed to do it, especially at the weekend.

19:52Speaker 3:I mean, God, I remember her doing an amazing Christmas meal and then pissing off for the Boxing Day matinee at my grandmother's.

19:59Speaker 2:It was not even her kitchen.

20:01Speaker 3:With this old oil-fueled Argo, which was just very haphazard, like read for one hour, three, three and a half.

20:08Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.

20:09Speaker 3:And even then, it could suddenly shoot up and burn at the last minute.

20:11Speaker 2:I mean, it was a nightmare.

20:12Speaker 3:So she constantly had her face in the oven. She had me when she was quite late. She was probably going through the perimenopause as well. So just like sweating away in this kitchen, serving people who were pretty lazy and inept domestically. I loved my grandmother and my dad. No, dad would help, obviously. But yeah, it was quite an ordeal. And then she'd be the one working, you know, literally the next day.

20:33Speaker 1:What about your father?

20:34Speaker 2:Respect for that. Dad could do a mean grilled.

20:39Speaker 3:pork chop and two meat, you know, they mean two veg, you know, peas and potatoes, that kind of thing. And we had this little grill at home, which was also a rotisserie for chickens.

20:48Speaker 2:I can't remember what it was called.

20:49Speaker 1:A rotisserie probably. Like, oh, you mean, did it turn around?

20:51Speaker 2:No, it's a specific thing.

20:52Speaker 3:Yeah, it was like a turn around, but it could also be a grill, but it had a little rotisserie thing on the side and a little small thing that would fold up.

20:59Speaker 2:Yeah. Mum and dad gave me their old ones.

21:00Speaker 3:One of my heartbreaks and moving into my new flat and I left it outside whilst I was moving other stuff in and it just went in a communal hallway.

21:06Speaker 2:Someone took it.

21:07Speaker 3:I was like, which of these 50-odd flats have taken my grill?

21:11Speaker 2:Trying to sniff out, you know.

21:12Speaker 1:Lovely grill food. Yeah, but that's important, isn't it? It's a memory.

21:14Speaker 2:It is a memory.

21:15Speaker 3:And so dad coped. There were quite a few sort of frozen stir fries out of packets. You know, they're the baby boomer generation that kind of went, hey, we don't have to prepare or think about the ingredients. So it took me a while to go and kind of go, oh, farmer's market.

21:33Speaker 2:Where does this come? What's the provenance of what I'm eating? Even though.

21:36Speaker 3:You know, I was with people who could cook. I mean, especially mom. Home cooking was not done with a lavish budget. We didn't eat out a lot.

21:44Speaker 2:You didn't ask about restaurants.

21:45Speaker 3:No, I mean, Garfunkel's, McDonald's, you know. One of my slightly more well-to-do friends and his family, the first time I had Chinese food.

21:56Speaker 1:When was that?

21:57Speaker 2:Golden Bowl. It's that restaurant. I don't know if it's still there, near South Kensington.

22:00Speaker 3:And there was a Lazy Susan, the thing that turns in the middle.

22:03Speaker 2:I didn't know what to do with myself. I was like, it's not just meat and two veg. It was amazing.

22:09Speaker 3:And I just fell in love with the idea of tastes of things, little pieces of things.

22:15Speaker 2:It blew my mind.

22:16Speaker 1:Did they entertain?

22:17Speaker 2:Yes, very rarely. They were very, they are. They're still with us.

22:21Speaker 1:What are they like? What do they do?

22:23Speaker 2:Oh, well, Dad's very funny.

22:24Speaker 1:You should do a podcast with them.

22:25Speaker 2:You should. They're much more interesting.

22:27Speaker 1:Yeah, I think so. Can we call them up?

22:28Speaker 2:Yeah, definitely.

22:29Speaker 1:Definitely, definitely. They sound great, though.

22:32Speaker 2:Yeah, they are.

22:33Speaker 3:Well, mum especially is larger than life, and dad is a creature of habit when it comes to food and drinking and all that sort of thing. Yeah, tea at a certain time with a biscuit, and then he'd start with either whiskey or a G & T, and then a couple of glasses of wine at dinner.

22:48Speaker 1:Kind of structures your day.

22:50Speaker 2:Yes, yes.

22:51Speaker 1:Or your week or your month.

22:52Speaker 3:I think that was his curse from boarding school as well. And then mum, for me, the kind of routine was the weekend cook.

22:58Speaker 1:Yeah.

23:00Speaker 3:I learned, first of all, actually, with my godmother. And it was all sort of desserts. It was meringues that were gooey in the middle and brownies. And then I remember having a tiny little Star Wars, square Star Wars pencil, this tiny little notebook, which I very diligently wrote down the recipe.

23:15Speaker 1:For one of these meringues. Oh, do you still have it?

23:16Speaker 2:Somewhere, yeah. Somewhere, find it.

23:18Speaker 1:I don't know.

23:18Speaker 2:I must, I must, I must.

23:20Speaker 1:We have a thing about notebooks here because Tom Hollander, you know, his grandmother, he has his, I think his grandmother's, was his mother his grandmother's cookbook? Yeah. A lot of people, and so did, was it Kirsten Scott Thomas? And people come in with, and it's a very beautiful thing to be handed down the memories and what you ate as a way of saying, you know, this is who we are as a family.

23:42Speaker 2:My mum's mum did a mean stew. I don't think I've ever got any recipes from her, though.

23:48Speaker 3:I don't think I really, I really did learn from my godmother and mainly with mum, actually, just helping her out in the kitchen.

23:54Speaker 2:Yeah.

23:54Speaker 1:Interesting the way people see performance and food, isn't it? People who want to eat. When they're in theater, I wonder what your mom did. She was in a matinee.

24:06Speaker 2:I think theater is a nightmare for food. What did she eat before? I can't bear it because you're eating. You often have friends in and then they want to go out to dinner, so you're eating at 11.30 at night or something stupid.

24:15Speaker 1:Did you always know you wanted to act with your parents? I did. But they wanted you to go to university first? Or did you want to as well?

24:22Speaker 3:Well, they paid for a very expensive education. I think they wanted me to at least have some kind of a backup.

24:27Speaker 2:And for a while it was the law.

24:28Speaker 3:I mean, for a very short while, you know, after I got some very good GCSEs, everyone was like, oh, oh, Oxbridge maybe. And then I sort of met lawyers further down the line or people who were at the bar who just went, if it's not your first choice, don't do it. You know, I turn back now, it's oversubscribed, it's peripatetic, it's precarious, you know, that sounds a lot like acting.

24:48Speaker 2:I'll stick with that one.

24:50Speaker 3:Also, my idea of the law was this very kind of romantic notion of advocating criminal law.

24:55Speaker 1:So you did law, you didn't do law.

24:56Speaker 2:Rumpel of the Bailey style. No, no, I didn't. I took humanities for my A-levels.

25:01Speaker 1:Did you act at Manchester?

25:02Speaker 2:I acted a lot at school and then a lot at Manchester. What did you do? We did like three productions a town.

25:08Speaker 1:Is that encouraged by the university or did.

25:10Speaker 2:You all come together?

25:11Speaker 3:No, it was very self-generated actually. We had a bit through the drama department because I did a drama degree there. But It was mainly what we got up to in the drama societies, you know.

25:20Speaker 1:What did you do?

25:21Speaker 3:First thing I did was Tesman in Hedda Gabler. And then I did, God, what did I do? All sorts of things. I did Arturo Uri terribly.

25:30Speaker 1:Arturo Uri?

25:30Speaker 2:Yeah, I did it really badly. It was awful. I wasn't really, I wasn't, I didn't really have possession of the text. It was a bit hairy. But I, oh, Ricky Romer and Gary Graham Ross, Sally.

25:41Speaker 1:Airey and Mozart. Did you direct at all?

25:42Speaker 3:I played George and Kvatch and the head. I can't remember his name, but the husband in Duramax, The Visit.

25:48Speaker 2:And I didn't ever direct. No, no, I didn't. I'd love to. I'd love to.

25:52Speaker 3:But there were far better people doing that at university.

25:55Speaker 2:I'd like to one day, yeah.

25:57Speaker 1:Do you remember the food?

25:59Speaker 2:At university?

26:00Speaker 1:Yeah. Did you guys cook for yourselves.

26:02Speaker 2:Or did you eat at? Yeah, we did.

26:04Speaker 3:That was our sort of, you know, the burgeoning moment of attempting to cook something nice and fresh. But, you know, a lot of that was just sort of, Tins of something or grabbing something from, you know, the Union Cafe.

26:18Speaker 2:Endless sandwiches on the hop. I mean, the best, the most nutritious thing we'd have is a scotch egg.

26:28Speaker 1:Ruthie's Table Four is now a book.

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26:49Speaker 3:I think the first really grown up good meal i had would have been after my first pay packet or two and like going to the anglesey arms that was a place that was the first kind of local that i had in.

27:01Speaker 1:My life after your first play.

27:03Speaker 3:Did you say that was yes what was that i was demetrius in the midsummer night's dream at the regents park open air theater and then uh the king of navarre and love's ape is lost um And that's, yeah, I mean, that was such bliss. There's such bliss when you go, oh, my God, I'm being paid to do what I love. I can start to pay the debt back to my parents. I can start to afford my rent. And, you know, and then after a little bit, a mortgage and having an odd meal or two. And my local restaurant was the Anglesey Arms. I had a flat in Shepherd's Bush.

27:33Speaker 1:Is this right here?

27:34Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah, Ravenscourt Park. And wonderful, wonderful food, wonderful kitchen there.

27:39Speaker 1:But you're a cook, aren't you? You cook.

27:41Speaker 2:I do cook, yeah. I love it.

27:42Speaker 1:And you do cook for your kids. I am right about that conversation.

27:45Speaker 2:No, no, you're completely right.

27:46Speaker 1:How old are they?

27:46Speaker 2:They are six, eight, and ten.

27:48Speaker 1:Wow. And so what do you feed them?

27:50Speaker 3:Well, we have a kind of, we have daddy morning pancakes on a Saturday.

27:54Speaker 1:Oh, do you? Do you have a good recipe for pancakes?

27:56Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it's nice.

27:57Speaker 3:I mean, it's kind of, it's kind of traditional. It's more on the crepe side of pancakes rather than the fluffy. So I use just plain organic flour and I use, I put a little bit of vanilla essence, a little bit of cinnamon in, and sometimes two or three eggs.

28:14Speaker 2:Milk. Amounts? Do I have to do amounts? I never really measure the flour. No, no, it's just the theory. No, we don't give it.

28:19Speaker 1:I make the whole.

28:20Speaker 2:I do the eggs in the whole.

28:21Speaker 1:I whip them around.

28:21Speaker 2:I pour the milk in.

28:22Speaker 1:And where are the kids during all this? They come down in the morning?

28:24Speaker 3:I'm trying to marshal them into sort of taking part. So they usually fight over the fun, easy jobs like squeezing the lemons or cracking the eggs. But they can be really helpful.

28:34Speaker 2:They can be really helpful. I've completely destroyed any sense of a line for me on a Saturday, I think, forever now.

28:39Speaker 1:Yeah, that's it.

28:40Speaker 2:That's it. I'm up when they're up, like a weekday, no matter what Friday night. It's a nice tradition.

28:44Speaker 1:Like, it's called Daddy Saturday.

28:46Speaker 2:Yeah. There's a daddy special.

28:48Speaker 1:I interview people, you know, sometimes on things that remember that. You know, they say, oh, when I was, you know, every... Tuesday night my father did something or my mother did something or we went to a restaurant those rituals are important those rituals and those memories I have to say.

29:05Speaker 3:I was partly inspired by I mean I'd already started doing it but I thought okay I have to make this a continuum by Rory Kinnear who remembers his dad doing pancakes for him nice putting on a silly French accent I I've got three of them and I'm silly for a bit and then I get quite serious because.

29:21Speaker 2:It's just like martial arts.

29:22Speaker 1:What's your kitchen like?

29:23Speaker 3:Very dangerous, small people with blunt instruments. It's good. There's too long an island in the middle. For some reason, we went for this crazy long island, which I quite like because I do a lot of prep. Everyone else who doesn't use the kitchen for cooking is like, what's this thing in the way? But I kind of like it when it doesn't have bits of.

29:40Speaker 1:we work on islands here well we really like the chefs having that time to look across at each other to talk to be around you know you can see them they're there they're prepping they're talking.

29:53Speaker 3:I'm not going to have to spy later because I'm always fascinated to.

29:55Speaker 1:See how the ergonomics of the.

29:57Speaker 3:Kitchen work yeah it's very difficult if there's two i'm quite pancakes is a different deal but if i'm doing a recipe from a recipe i'm quite i can't do that multitasking thing that really good cooks can do of talking you know getting people's drinks ready as well as chopping preparing frying.

30:15Speaker 1:I get that it's hard i think you need to focus.

30:18Speaker 3:Yeah and then if it's a dish i've done a lot or a one pot wonder then i'm fine or a roast where you can just leave it for a bit and then get busy with the.

30:25Speaker 1:Do you eat in the kitchen as well?

30:26Speaker 2:Yeah, we do.

30:28Speaker 1:That's a distraction as well, isn't it? Sometimes when people are there. Do you like it when people hang around you when you're cooking? Because I don't terribly. I don't.

30:37Speaker 2:No, I don't.

30:37Speaker 3:And I get why they want to. And it's frustrating because it's so... I'm drawn to it as well. Everyone's drawn to the heart of the home.

30:44Speaker 2:I think.

30:45Speaker 3:When I know what I'm doing, when I'm really secure about it, or like I say, something you can just put in to heat and cook and just leave alone, then I'm fine with it.

30:52Speaker 1:What are some of the other things you cook other than pancakes?

30:55Speaker 3:I do the roast chicken or the roast whatever on a Sunday, but usually chicken.

30:59Speaker 1:So you do the family roast thing.

31:01Speaker 2:Yeah, and I do the barbecues. I do the kind of dad things in the garden.

31:05Speaker 1:Don't you eat what you're filming when you're working on a film? Do you stop for breaks? Do you have a special diet that you go on?

31:12Speaker 3:It depends what job, yeah. exercise, I'm pumped for something like the Marvel films as Dr. Strange, which even though you've got all that garb on, you need that strength anyway to hold your posture, to have core strength, to be strong in the harnesses, all the fight.

31:27Speaker 2:Scenes and the flying.

31:28Speaker 1:Tell me more about that.

31:29Speaker 2:It's great fun. I love it.

31:31Speaker 3:I love body transformation in my job. I think it's part of the kind of, what a thing to do. If you have the right guidance, which nowadays is pretty brilliant, you know, the teams they put on that sort of thing. If you don't have the budget, you have to do it very, very carefully. But on Marvel, it's a big sandpit, so they've got resources.

31:49Speaker 1:So what do they do?

31:50Speaker 3:Well, you have someone who can prescribe you what you're eating, and they can cook you. We had a fantastic chef on the last Doctor Strange film. And then suddenly you go, where's my food? Oh, well, the director and the first AD and the DOP have got in first. So you're like, okay, it's fine. I'm not paying for it. But it's this amazing facility to go, right, he needs to be on this many calories a day. He needs to have five meals a day. He used to have a couple of boiled eggs between those five meals or some kind of high-protein snack, cheese and crackers or almond butter and crackers, lots of crackers. And for me, the exercise is great and the end result is that you feel strong and you feel confident.

32:27Speaker 2:You hold yourself better.

32:28Speaker 3:You have a stamina through the exercise and the food that makes you laugh through the gig. But it is horrific. I don't like it personally. I think it's horrific eating beyond your appetite.

32:39Speaker 2:It's really.

32:40Speaker 3:And again, going back to responsibility and resourcefulness and sustainability, it's just like, what am I doing?

32:46Speaker 2:I could feed a family with the amount I'm eating.

32:49Speaker 3:It just slowly, slowly, you have to meet people where they are on these issues in filmmaking, but it's a grossly wasteful industry. So you may think about set builds that aren't recycled, think about transport, think about food, think about housing, but also light and energy, the amount of wattage you need to sort of create daylight and consistent light in.

33:07Speaker 2:A studio environment. It's a lot of energy.

33:10Speaker 3:So, you know, the first people to stick their head above the parapet to talk about anything to do with climate and excessive use of things or hypocrisy or systems that don't work get slammed if they're actors because they're.

33:20Speaker 1:Ferried about in high class.

33:24Speaker 3:Yeah, and actually it is a systemic thing. But as a producer, I'm really hot on that. And we try to push the green and I try to push the green initiative, the green handshake into every agreement I can. whether it's just a gentlemanly discussion about can we not have any single-use plastic?

33:39Speaker 2:Really, I think we're beyond that.

33:41Speaker 3:If people have water bottles now, they can bring in, you can have an urn, you can have a tap that's a good source of water. You don't have to give the crew plastic bottles. If you're in the middle of a desert and you can't get glass bottles there, fair enough.

33:52Speaker 2:But we're in the 21st century.

33:55Speaker 1:My last question of this really beautiful interview, and thank you for coming here.

34:00Speaker 2:You're so welcome. I feel like we could talk for ages.

34:02Speaker 1:We could talk for ages, and we will. is to ask you if you had to have a comfort food. Is there one that you would reach for when you need that? Kale. Yeah.

34:13Speaker 2:Sort of shocked in a pan with a bit of olive oil. Yeah.

34:16Speaker 3:And then lemon juice and some chili flakes and then a tiny bit of water just to steam it. So the flavor's locked in by the quick heat and then cooked through a little bit more thoroughly but not soggily.

34:27Speaker 2:I crave that vegetable. I really do. If it's flavoured well.

34:32Speaker 1:If it's flavoured well.

34:33Speaker 2:It's a great, yeah, Cavalinero and kale.

34:34Speaker 1:Cavalinero and kale.

34:35Speaker 2:Cavalinero really is my favourite.

34:36Speaker 1:Do you love Cavalinero?

34:37Speaker 2:I prefer that to kale, yeah.

34:38Speaker 1:Okay, well, we will give you both when you come in next.

34:42Speaker 2:Thank you. Thank you. You're so welcome.

34:44Speaker 1:Thank you.