You're listening to Ruthie's Table four in partnership with Montclair. Sam Taylor Johnson is a close friend and director of Back to Black, The Story of Amy Winehouse. Checking in with her during filming, she always reassured me that it was intense, it was challenging, it was exhilarating, but really, Ruthie, the greatest thing about the whole process was working with
the brilliant and fearless Marisa Abella. One night a few months ago, Sam called me at home to tell me Marisa was in the River Cafe and might we send her a glass of champagne. When I told this to a friend who was visiting me from New York, he said, Ruthie, we're not sending her a glass of champagne. We're going there right now to give it to her ourselves. She's amazing,
and she was and she is. Three days ago, Back to Black opened in London, and though I was three thousand miles away in New York, the word travel that it was a great movie. Today we're here to get in the River Cafe to talk about performance in the kitchen and performance in front of the camera, and afterwards we'll have a glass of champagne. So talking about the movie, Yeah, it opened up Monday night. Yeah yeah, everybody's going to ask you who was there and what did you wear?
And I'm going to ask you what you ate? What did you what did you do for food?
Let's be honest. I'm wearing like a Fendy dress. It's very figure hugging.
What does the food have to do with the Fendy dress? That you were afraid of eating too much?
And then we kind of split the scene right right right. You just want to be you want to feel your best, but it's still just sort of about like pacing and whatever. And also you get so nervous that it's just the adrenaline so intense.
So what did you do? Did you eat before you? Did you have a good meal on Sunday night?
I had a good glass of red wine and I did have a good meal. I had a chicken seat. Did the premiere? That was very exciting?
Yeah, most exciting moment.
It was very important for me with my first ever premiere. So I was you know, I wanted my family to be there and my friends and then you get five people that get to sit next to you, So okay, who's that going to be my mom, my, dad, whatever. But I decided that it should be my best girlfriends because they're the ones that are going to be just
so excited. And I think the most purely happy moment was when I sat down next to them and the first ten minutes or whatever, all of them just turning arounding at one specific moment wet.
When you see the effect, that's yeah, I couldn't possibly compare it to what we do, but having to see the response. I was talking to Sarah Jessica Parker and we're talking the other day about audiences, and I was saying, can you know I can tell the night when we might be have the same team, the sort of the same food, the place is full, but you can have at the end of it thinking it didn't work or yes. And I said, does that happen in the theory? She
said sometimes, Ruthie. I just wonder if all those people called each other first before they came and so let's hold, let's have let's not laugh at any of the jokes, you know, or they you know, they call each other, they say, Okay, we're going to be really responsive. It's almost the mood. And so did you feel that from the audience. You know.
It's also difficult to tell, especially with a film when it's not when you're not rehearsing the scenes or the type. You film every scene and individually for three months, it's difficult to remember exactly what's going on. And then you watch it on screen and you know, within the first two minutes you get a big laugh or something, and you think so much about what the reaction to it's going to be, you don't even think, you know, people
find it funny. So then when people are laughing, you're like, oh my god, you know this is this is crazy and we've got a standing ovation at the end, which is and I didn't I think I blacked out. I didn't notice. I like walked straight up to Sam and I was like, I can't believe, how do you feel? And she was like, Marisa, turn around, like everyone is on their feet, and I was like, what you know? And it's just it's just it's wild.
When you're working, when you are filming. When if you knew that you had a long day of performing different scenes, different songs, what would you eat.
Well, this is different to most of the other work I've done because I had specific needs to meet as Amy. You know, I went through a physical transformation, So what was that? I lost a lot of weight to play her at certain points in her life.
How much do you remember?
Probably that's yeah, well let's stop.
There and tell me how.
You did that. Well, essentially a plant based gluten free day, free cop free. I mean it was sort of legumes and plants in the evenings.
In the evening. Yeah, And did you find that difficult?
I mean, very as you can tell food is you know. But the truth is is that like, what it does do is that it makes those four months of your life completely about the work. And I'm not a method actress in that I go home and I think, am I Marisa? Or am I am? Like? I know, I know what's going on, and that's not it's not important for me to do that. But what it does mean is that you can't get away from this work and it is the most important thing, as it should be
for that time. When it's a physical feeling like that, you can't you know, you can't change it, like hunger. For me, the most important thing though I wasn't going to do the classic. You know, you hear about these actors that are like I was on one whatever and a cigarette a date. But it wasn't that I ate because for me, the most important thing always was the rest of the work, like can I embody her? Can I inhabit her? Can I sing? Can I move?
Can I? You know?
And I wasn't going to be able to do that if I absolutely no energy. So it was a sort of like a science of finding the maximum amount of energy from the minimum amount of sustenance.
Essentially, as you say you were doing it for work. It was for a job. It wasn't because you wanted to fit into to get a boyfriend or yeah. I mean there's so many issues.
And also, you know, Amy had beliemia. I was playing someone with an eating disorder, so it's also about understanding the psychology of eating disorders, and also one eating disorder over another. It's interesting to me as an actor. You know, if someone has anorexx, yeah, it's something very different if someone has beliema. Someone's relationship to food is interesting. I think, you know, needing to eat and purge versus not eat anything at all says something different about a person. I
think from what age fourteen forever or pretty much. I think it's difficult to say exactly, you know, especially when she was in the throes of her addiction, what her appetite was like at that point, probably incredibly low, you know, versus only healthier with your relationship to drugs and alcohol. Your relationship to food might be different because your body changes, you know, if you're eating more because you're not using.
But what we do know is that she had a difficult relationship with food and with her body image from the age of fourteen. As an actor, having someone tell you that you need to look a certain way for a role when that role is fictional, it's very difficult,
and I think I would struggle with that. But when it's not fictional and she's existed, and you know her relationship to food and drugs and alcohol has affected the way that she physically manifests to all of us, then I think it's you know, my job as an actor to do that thing.
Do you think the food was overpowering in terms of her whole character, that it was defining?
Yeah, well, I think that. You know, part of the reason that her addiction hit her physically as hard as it did was because she didn't have the sort of physical capability to keep up with as much as she was consuming. But I also think that she was completely hounded by the paparazzi. One of the things that drew me to Amy as a woman was that she had this insatiable appetite for life and for music, you know, and that you can see that in her body when
she's younger. She's not afraid to be hungry for life and for experiences and for food. And as the world got more hungry for her, it's almost like they stole that appetite from her. It's almost like, you know, aerial and ursula, like they took her voice away from her, and they took her appetite. And it's when someone is feeding on you, is there that much left? I know it's kind of sounding a bit metaphorical, that I do
think that. I think that food, if you're told, is a woman in your life, like, don't take up space. You have to stop enjoying one of the simple pleasures, you know, it's a sensual pleasure, and I don't think she has afforded many of those.
Tell me about the joy that you heard during filming, and about that you told us about Christmas.
My birthday is in December, and obviously Christmas is also in December, and my trainers said, listen, you have to give yourself one thing to work towards, so like you know, you're going to be able to give yourself whatever you want on that day. And it can either be your birthday or Christmas, because December kind of works for us. And I was hosting Christmas that year my flat, so it became all I could think about if I was hungry.
I remember one time I got a massage. I booked in a massage and it was an hour and a half and instead of relaxing during this massage, all I was thinking was, well, I'll sub you know, little bagels with crumbrushion, and I'll do caveat and I'll do this. And it was like, you know, it was a Christmas for four people, and I had a ham, a lamb, a chicken because I was just so fixated on this food.
Did you know the River Cafe has a shop. It's full of our favorite foods and designs. We have cookbooks, lin a Napkins kitchen, were toad bags with our signatures, glasses from Venice, chocolates from Turin. You can find us right next door to the River Cafe. In London or online at shop Therivercafe dot co dot uk. Tell me what it was like cooking with Sean here in the kitchen. Do it you did zucchini trifilati?
Well, I think the thing about cooking is that you know, we all. It's the same with films, right, everyone watches movies all the time and knows what they love. Who doesn't necessarily know how they'd make it? And it's like I know what I would love to eat and how I enjoy food. But watching someone really know what it is that they're doing make something that you know is about to be delicious, It's probably the same feeling that people get when they come on certain watch movies being made.
Hi, I'm Sean Owen. I'm here with Marisa Abella and we're going to make zucchini trifilati. In case you ever have guests with you decided you're going to make zucchini trifolati. You can cut it on the chopping board or you can just cut it like a housewife.
That's my preferred message.
I love that.
So I've just cut it in my hand, like turning the zucchini as I.
Cnu't so cool, just like just put yourself.
In the mindset of the Italian housewife. Yeah, just turn and cut and turn and cut.
I cut apples like this sometime, got it.
And so as many as zucchini as you want.
I'm not sure how many of.
The recipe it's going to be four. Probably four. You'll just have a bit of garlic. We've got spring garlic. Now that's just it also really amazing because the skin is so soft that you can need the whole skin like you have to cut, you don't really have to trim it off, and that will just get in as well. And then we're just gonna fry the zucchini with like olive oil, garlic, salt and pepper and a low heat for about maybe an hour or so. You get perfect
zucchini triflaty like super slow because it's supers slow. And then we finish it with zucchini flowers. At the end. It looks really fresh. It's a really nice thing if you have like fresh zucchini and you're.
Growing in your garden, it's amazing.
I mean I have a garden, but the flowers are amazing in the summer, you know, and you can fry them. But also the beautiful added to this, and this is such a nice thing to have like on its own, with fish or meat.
Chickens in a nice bit olive oil.
Then if you can see that there.
Looks a bit like sludge.
No, it looks so delicious. Don't not put that in.
But is it?
Is it all in the intensity of the When you slow cook something, it goes.
Really an olive oil. Right, okay, exactly at the end? Right Zuccini.
I hope it's cooked long enough.
For rufe.
Zucchini trafilati Eighteen small zucchini, trimmed and cut, three tablespoons of olive oil, two garlic cloves, peeled and sliced, a handful of mint or basil, roughly chopped, sea salt, and freshly ground black pepper. Heat the oil in a large frying pan. Add the garlic and gently brown. Then add the zucchini and cook slowly for fifteen to twenty minutes,
when brown on all sides. At one hundred and twenty five milli liters of boiling water and stir, scraping and combining the juices until the water has been absorbed and the zucchini is soft. Add the mint or basil, seasoned with salt and pepper and serve.
You chose the recipe for zucchini trifilati, I did? And why why did it have all the recipes? Because it's one of my favorites. It's one of the first vegetables I ever learned to cook. In that process.
I love eating zucchini out courgette, same thing, same thing, French or Italian. I love eating it out. But whenever I cook it, I don't get it quite right. I fore, like, I don't know whether I don't season it completely right, or it can go kind of like too soft, too easily, or whatever it is. But so, but whenever I eat it out, it's like, oh my god, what is this delicious? Especially impasta? And then so I think when I saw it today, I was like, well, this is a perfect
way to just maybe it's quite selfish. And also the timing, she said an hour. I'm bad at putting things on high for a short period of time. I guess I'm quite impatient book, Yeah, exactly, I come on, let's go. Let's Also I get very hungry very quickly, especially when I'm at home. I'm just sirring, oh, I'll make dinner tonight, don't worry about it, and then all of a sudden fifteen minutes, I'm like, I'm starving. I don't know about you. I'm going to die by.
Oil water right faster. Yeah, I think that the French are like very Healdente, you know, they're like things quite crispy. And the Italians really like to slow cook their vegetables. I get more flavor out of it. Maybe it's the olive oil that is then absorbed into it over a longer period of time, the process of sort of slidy going brown and then soft and then brown again. The Italians cook vegetables for your British I know, so I
have to be careful not malt okay. So then I would say that why is it that when the Italians cook vegetables for a long time they get better, and when English people vegetables for a long time, they kind of get worse. Friend of mine said, I remember saying years ago that nobody really had time to cook anymore, and that's you know, it's a shame. And he said, yeah, but except for the English. Maybe cabbage, but they'll say, oh, we only have forty five minutes the cabbage. Yeah, maybe
that would speed up. But I think zucchini. Does we do some that. Actually, I don't think we do any zucchini that is, Chris. But because even if we boil it, we boil it for longer whole and then slice it up and put it with olive oil and mint.
But well that's something that I've learned today. Yeah, see, that's good.
So what was it like growing up in your home in terms of food, because you do seem to say you love to eat. Tell me about the early days of your childhood and food. What are your memories.
I grew up at home with my mom and my brother and me. It's just the three of us, and my mom is a great cook. There was always a lot of food, you know, like that was the thing. Quantity was keen in my house, like loads of food. There was never a question of anyone going hungry. And it was also such a big way of showing love. I think, you know, my mom, if I was feeling sad, it was food. If I was feeling happy, it was food.
What was her background? Did she grow up in a house like that? Well? I don't know.
Actually, I think my mom grew up quite scared of food. My mom is Jewish. I think food in the Jewish culture is so important, you know. So I think she and my mom didn't have a huge appetite growing up, but it was very like finished, what's on your plate?
Do you know? Have your grandmother where she came was she born in Britain?
Well, so there are two sides, both sort of during a Second World War. There were my mother's father's family emigrated from Poland and my mother's family were from Austria, you know.
Yeah, because I think there's also something perhaps about an immigrant family in a possibly threatening environment. My family came from Russia and from Hungary again emigrated and there definitely was a feeling that in an alien environment where you were concerned about the protection of your children, food was a kind of way of almost creating a barrier of safety for your kids. And you know, the thing of
coming home. I always tell a story that apparently my grandmother came to visit her first grandson, my brother and first grandson, and she came. She used to travel with her rolling pit, you know, and so she arrived in the house of the country and my mother said, do you want to see that baby? And she said, let's eat first.
Yeah.
So I think that culture but it may be. You know, I'm Jewish, and so I think that probably is a Jewish characteristic. But probably if you had an African family in you know, a white society that felt threatened, or you know, a Catholic family in Belfast, that food would maybe become even more totally.
And like my mom grew up in Northwest London, so I grew up in Brighton, So there's not really a massive Jewish community at all where I grew up, but we were probably the only household there was. You know, there were lots of supermarkets in Brighton where you could get whatever it was you wanted to eat, but my mom would have to go to the waitrose if she wanted anything that was kosher. Yeah, you're right, no, no, but she liked My mum will only eat Kosha smake salmon.
She doesn't like other smoke salmon because it's too oily.
You know.
She likes sort of kosher sausages and could filter fish and you know, she likes that food. So if she she wouldn't eat necessari and keep kosher, but she had to go to that waitrose to get that food. So mine was the only house in Rotting Dean. You know, right, and I had chopped liver in the fridge, but it was I mean, but my brother and I were quite kind of embarrassed at that food. I think it's weird.
It's kind of weird to kind of adapt. I mean, I think you want to. Whereas your mother might have been proud to do that, the children are much more protected of their identity and wanting to, you know, become like the people next door, school friends, not be different.
And I think that because she was a single mother too, it was very much like she I think, you know, when you have two kids under the age of four, necessarily, you know, we're not eating filter fish. So she would eat alone a lot, not alone with us, but eat her own meal. And I we did that a lot actually growing up. You know, my brother loved oldfish and I loved red meat, and my mom loved whatever, you know, and we would eat different at the same time totally,
and I was fine. I was actually telling a friend just now that you know I eat. Before I met my boyfriend that I'm with now, I didn't like to share food. And I think that that's kind of why, because we'd go out for dinner and it would be like, I'll have my thing, you have yours. It was weird for me. Also, small plates restaurants is such a thing now, you know, thing in London. For me growing up, if we went out for dinner, I would get a bowl
of pasta, you know, carbonara. Let's say, my brother would get the prawns with garlic and chili, and my mom would get the chicken and we wouldn't share. You know. It was that and my mom. But my mom was very good at spending that time making what it was that we wanted. It's a lot of work, but what it meant was that I'm up. Until a couple of years ago, really I was not good at sharing food were now the only thing that I refuse to share is soup because I think that's gross.
Yeah gross, right, thank you, thank you.
And people also say you shouldn't share omelets, Okay, I like her. I don't mind sharing enough.
Well, it's all about the double dipping, right right, right, But the COVID also changed a lot of job don't you sure sort of fear around around that? Yeah? And did you have Friday night suppers? Well, I guess you didn't.
At my at my mother's family's house, you know, we would we would go, we would travel up to uh Highgate by that point where my grandfather was living, and we do pass over. Definitely.
Does your father cook.
My dad does cook, but he cooked my dad's Maltese.
What is Maltese food.
It's kind of like a mix, just like the language of arab and Italian because it's in between North Africa, Libya and.
Sicily, so great, great mix.
It's incredible. But the food is, you know, it's also in terms of produce, it's not the best place. So like the food is yummy, but it's lots of rabbit.
You know. The Friday night supper and Jewish households is like, I guess it's a bit like the Sunday lunch with religion, you know, yeah, read did you do the readings? And the I did?
I had to sing, the managed to know and all of that kind of stuff. I mean, I remember, you know, the actual food on Passover being just sort of like some horrible cool events. But then it's like, you know, roast chicken or whatever it was. Yeah, lots of fish too, And I only started liking fish a couple of years ago.
So you grew up really loving food, loving loving to eat, yeah.
Very much so. And you know, if I was if I woke up one morning was like, I don't want to go to school today, A bribe me by taking me to the bakery before school so I could get across like it was, you know, and I'd have sometimes she'd pick me up every Thursday night with a chicken katsukari before I went to netball, because I don't know how I did that, you know.
Yeah, if you liked listening to Ruthie's Table four, would you please make sure to rate and review the podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. When you grew up in this household of your you know, everybody having a meal, whether it was all three separate foods, and then you left home to go to did you go to Rada? Right? And was that an awakening? Was it?
It?
Was it different? It was apartment.
I lived in an apartment in Wilston Green with three people that were in my year but I'd never met before that time. I mean, I ate a lot of like things on toast, to be honest, mushrooms on toast. I had a lot.
That's good.
I'd put like pestle into my mushrooms and I'd have that on tits almost every night. There was a fish and chip shop. I didn't like fish then, so I'd get like a savaloy and chips.
Mate, you start liking fish, do you.
Think When I had a year off, I went to Fiji, there was like a sustainability thing that we were living on this tiny island. And if you.
Didn't eat fish, that's fun.
Yeah, very far. If you didn't eat fish, you had to eat pumpkin. I was like, great, I'll eat pumpkin. But after a month of eating pumpkin, You're like, I'm going to die if I don't eat something other than pumpkin. So I started to try fish, and I got better and better. Back eighteen and.
Apart from Malta, did your parents take you to Italy or to France? Did your rooposed to other cultures of foosh?
You know, my mom was very busy trying to keep everything afloat if I went on holiday. I went away more with my dad, but he took us to some amazing places. I went to Egypt when I was eleven, and I remember my dad having pigeon a whole one yeah, a whole pigeon and getting food poisoning, and then we went to the pyramids and my dad passed out in a pyramid, which was quite scary. Yeah, so I remember, you know, I remember going away a lot. You know, I went away with my dad, but it was mostly Malta.
I didn't like travel a lot, you know, as a kid. To be honest, I only went to America for the first time a couple of years ago, and I'm about to go to LA for my first time.
So he's La the premiere in La.
There's there's a screening in La, and it will be.
My first time wearing the same friendly dress or do you get to know a different thing? I think you have to give it back and that's fine.
I think it's custom. So I think that's my I mean, I had my name in the label, so I keep up. So but yeah, and again it's like, that's what's fun to me is where am I going to eat in La? Where am I going to eat in New York? When I'm there in Paris? At all of those things.
I think that's always like that question when you know, asking people who do travel for either they're you know, acting or for other reasons that they have to travel. They're the people who really research where they're going, to find out where they're going to eat, and maybe go to the markets to see, yeah, what's in what's in season, and what's in the in the market. Do you go to sleep at night thinking what you're going to eat the next day?
I definitely did while I was on this day for what I love to eat, you know, but I've become better at understanding what it is that my body needs at different times. I'm not as obsessed with food as I have been at certain points in my life.
How do you feel having finished playing Amy?
It's been a while since we wrapped, It's been about a year. But no, it was difficult, you know. It was I was so invested emotionally and physically and psychologically in that world, so it was kind of insane to step out of it. It didn't really feel real. Every time I see Amy anywhere and hear her anywhere, it's definitely means something different to me now than it did before. I'm incredibly proud of what it is that we've made.
And you know, when you get to finally enjoy the work and sit in the cinemar and watch it with those people and had the kind of reaction that we had on Monday night. It feels like, oh amazing.
You know, before we started, we were talking about comfort and I was saying that we always ask everybody because the answers are so different. But if you were to think about a food that you would go to for comfort when you were either worried or concerned or sad or a loss or whatever it was that you just wanted something that would make you feel better through eating, is there a comfort food that you would go to?
Yes. I mean my mom used to make me a risotto when I was younger, and it was very much the like Marisa is having a bit of a sad day and this is what she needs to eat. And it was a resulto. Really that was probably for about four people that I ate all by myself. And how do you know, I don't know how sort of like authentic it was. I think sometimes she would use like resorto rise and sometimes it would be like basmati rices.
That's what she had in the fridge in the carbeard but you know it was a bacon and pea resotte and it was delicious. And now if I'm feeling sad still, I would call my mum and ask her to make me that resotte.
Okay, well then she would. I'm sure you'd have to. Would you have a bake yourself?
I don't think it would be the same.
We can make that. The piece are in season right now, so the next time, if you come and call me and we'll make that for you.
Okay, God, amazing? Why not? Thank you, thank you so much, thank you, thank you.
I have that. Yeah, thank you for listening to Ruthie's table for in partnership with Montclair