Ruthie's Table 4: Eddie Redmayne

Welcome to Ruthie's Table four, a production of iHeartRadio and Adamized Studios.

A year ago, I used every bit of access and influence to get tickets to Cabaret for one reason, only to see Eddie Redmain, and I went back two times. I would have liked to have gone back more. And last week, conquering my enormous fear of being afraid, I watched him in The Good Nurse and was a bit unnerved about just how beautifully he made a mass murderer not only empathetic but almost lovable. But I and all of us in the River Cafe really know Eddie as

Hi, I'm Jess and I'm a chef at the River Cafe. We've been here for four and a half years, and we're making pizzas pizza section, so you want to roll it out quite quite.

Wise, I obviously made the rookie era to begin with, putting far too much stuff on top, which is I think it's.

Sort of like Day one exactly. All spledges over in a sort of.

Hi, pizza, that's great, Wow, thank.

You so much.

Today Eddie and I are here in the River Cafe about to begin our conversation, thank you so much with the so nice to see, so nice, so thank you. How is it making the pizzas?

It was? You fulfilled a childhood dream of mine.

I like childhood dreams. What would that be?

I mean it was watching Chef.

As a kid, we didn't really go to restaurants that much, but it became a thing when we were sort of I think about nine ten years old, that the weekends would be playing sport on a Saturday, and then the evenings we would go to Pizza Express, watch pizzas be made, take them home and watch. That was like sort of and so but my parents always said I would sit there sort of clutching onto the marble, kind of watching

You fulfill my.

Lifelong It's very dramatic.

You're absolutely right, and it's but also the process of watching food be made has always been something that I've just adored and so open kitchens. You think it's theatrical, Oh, maybe it is that. Maybe it is that. And it's also kind of organized chaos, you know what I mean.

There's also I always say, and there is something about the drama of a restaurant that the curtain goes up, yeah at twelve thirty, you know, and at that point everybody has to have you know, cleaned the carpet or grated the cheese or you know, made sure the olive oil was on the shelf, and that the menu had

And also the feeling of I think I imagine it's similar in restaurants, but of when we were doing cabaret, for example.

You have your own weird path of.

Superstitions that you've created over the run of the thing that involve for me, because I'm old, having to sort of roll out a lot in order that your body doesn't break vocally warm up and all that stuff. But then also as a group meeting on the circle of the stage and warming up together since greeting each other,

Similar so collaborative. But going back about working and food, I'm so intrigued about whether actors and if it's a matine, do you have munch.

Well, generally, what happens with me when I do theater is I lose weight because you're firing on adrenaline.

And the truth is I can't eat.

Just before a show, It's too soon. So I try and eat a really good breakfast. I try and drink a shed load of water first thing in the morning, which I'm not good at but recently doing cabaret, my wonderful singing teacher.

Said that apparently it takes the six out.

Your vocal cords are the last things that hydrate, and it takes six.

Hours for the hydration to get through.

So sort of first thing in the morning, you I would sort of come downstairs and down glasses of water. But then of course after the show, you're riding on adrenaline and it's late and you don't so on matinee days you sort of have to force yourself to eat, which is yeah, and normally for me it's something kind of it could be noodles with prawns or something that light,

At moments to push yourself to a place that's kind.

Of I thought it was a very beautiful scene in The Good Nurse that takes place at the very end and that diner where you're clearly going into a place of eating, a place where you sit down in a booth and there's the expectation that you're meeting and you're going to have probably something, you know, a meal that you're going to have, and then that conversation and it was very beautiful. I thought that dynamic of the two of you over a couple of you didn't have anything, did.

You, Yeah, we ordered the food.

And then that thing that also resonates so much as leaving. You know that you walking out of a restaurant is quite or a diner or any situation where the expectation of a nice meal and then that kind of thing of walking out is pretty pretty tough.

There was something about the architecture of that Dina. You know, diners force you to kind of sit opposite. There's no that and also the director to be, as Lindholms an amazing man to set the scene. It's it's a moment in the film when these two people who are close friends meet and my character has been doing horrendous things and this friend knows about it and is wired. So it's being is recording the conversation to try and get evidence, but hasn't given away that.

She knows anything. So it's filled with sort.

Of tension and to beis did this these interesting things? For example, giving these gigantic menus. You know that that that that that almost stop you from these obstacles to the scene, Like he kept having the woman in charge of the restaurant come and interrupt the scenes, so adding the kind of odd rhythms to a scene that is that is filled with angles and edges, I suppose, But no, you're right. Restaurants are extraordinary places because they're you know,

People do very private things in a very public space. So people get divorced in restaurants and now it's affairs and restaurants. They get fired in restaurants, and you know, you think of maybe you might want to do that at home. You know, in the office, and instead there's a safety net I think of knowing that if you're firing somebody or announcing an affair. We have had people, you know, spilled a glass of boy and very rarely

One of the oddest.

I have to say. I wish I had more dramatic stories. There's I've been asked, you know, I mean, just people. Very often people want to bring their own food, you know, which is a bit odd. Yeah, exactly, bring that, Yeah, bring that, choose fastive. But sometimes people will say can I bring somebody gave me a trustful Kenny grade and that's fair enough. They want to bring it or basically, you know, That's what we were saying before, is we just say yes, you know, people want a surprise. They

I once tried to hold I tried to hold her for Hannah, and.

She could see it straight on my face, like this group of people behind the door or else.

You call up somebody and say, you know it's your partner, so looking forward to seeing your Advan says, I didn't know anything about it.

No.

We we love restaurants and we love that as you say that, drama, I'm really pleased that you've chosen a recipe from the River Cafe book thirty to read what is that?

The recipe is Rigatoni with cavalonero and new olive oil. Serves six one kilogram cavalonaro leaves, two garlic cloves peeled, two hundred and fifty millimeters of extra virgin olive oil, five hundred grams of rigatoni freshly grated parmesan. This pasta is the celebration of two ingredients that arrive at the same moment in the year, cavaloneero and the first pressed peppery extra virgin olive oil. When we started the River Cafe in nineteen eighty seven, cavaloneo was nowhere to be found,

So I made vats of the stuff and froze it and it's lasted us.

For good that's good, you know. I think what's interesting also is that moment when you actually boiled the garlic with the vegetable, you know, so to fry it or if you were to chop it. But somehow the fact that it's a whole cold garlic, it almost almost makes it a bit creamy.

Doesn't have to do that, Yeah, it does, and it's and there's something so odd about throwing garlic clothes into and you have to kind of you have to sort of scoop them up with your maid.

I'm so glad that you chose this recipe. So, going back to the beginning of the Redmon family, did you grow up with a feeling that food was to be taken seriously or enjoyed or was it something was the feeling in your house?

I grew up.

My mum is a a wonderful cook. She she learned from her mother, and it's very It was vegetable.

So she had there were three boys.

I have two brothers and an older half brother and half sister. But it was three of us growing up at home, and she had a lot on her hands, like we were sort of running circles around and quite hyperactive, and so the food I remember from my youth was very.

Traditional British food. It was cottage pies, it was. It was also the eighties.

Was it from a region did she come from the She.

Actually came from Scotland.

She grew up in Edinburgh and so all those kind of things, like my mom learned from my grandma, who still lives in Edinburgh, is.

One hundred and one years old.

I remember my grandma makes the greatest bacon sandwich. She did, oh she It's streaky bacon fried to a crisp Then you use either the softest bap that you can find, or the cheapest white bread, but nothing posh about the bread, and the freshest, cheapest white bread, and you put the bread once you've done the bacon. You put the bread onto the frying pan with all those juices and you just fry that for a few seconds. That then what you have, I smother it in heinz ketchup. I can't

So back to your mother in the eight digress, what did we digress? We could be here for hours but go back because I heard you I say something about it. It was the eighties.

So my memory of the like when Mum would go, you know, get really stuck in it was things like Vollevon, like I love a chicken Volivart and I feel like's.

Need of resurgence.

Okay, not puff pastry with creamy sauces and tarogony chicken ey. But the thing about Mum that was really influential for me is because she had so much going on on. She again was quite a It was the most punch for the least effort, I suppose.

And so all the.

Recipes that I've learnt, you know, from her are they sort of got me through being a student. They got me through it's through, yeah, and it's interest. It's certainly why the cavalonera what appealed because I don't have.

A huge entertained. Did she make full of.

Off for her She did.

She did entertain And again she was like me, she has to she has to prep everything in advance, because.

Did you get involved? Did she get her kids to Yeah?

I would, I would always, you know, help when I could, and then do that thing of company. We lived in a very tall, very thin house, and I would do that thing of creeping down sitting on the stairs listening to her. And again, it was the eighties, so when it was like a proper dinner party, everyone properly got dressed up.

And I remember the glamor of that film.

And you know famously. I'd love the story that your brother Charlie, who eats in the River Cafe more often he ates in the River Cafe when Harper are down the road. Yeah, he telled a very funny story about your father and McDonald's.

Would you like to tell Yeah, there's I don't remember being there that there's apocryphals at the story about my dad going to McDonald's and asking for a rare hamburger which didn't.

Which didn't didn't exactly didn't go down.

So well, did you rests? Did you go to a restaurants?

We did?

We didn't other than you know, Saturday night before especially, but very occasionally.

I remember once and this was quite a seminole moment.

Actually, when I was probably about nine or ten, my dad decided to take his children just before Christmas to have a roast lunch at the Savoy and it was going to be a really this was a big, glamorous thing, and I don't know if it was something that his father had done for him. And I remember going into the Savoy and seeing the glamour and the.

Dance at the theater of it, I suppose. Anyway, we were sitting there.

And we had ordered food, and the soup came and I was sort of eating it, but I was being sort of fussy, and eventually my mum and mum were saying, you know that this is incredibly indulgent, like we were in this extraordinary place. Why aren't you eating your soup? And I sort of said to her, it's too salty. My mom was like, Dad, we have bought you this extraordinary place.

You know it's very dope.

Be ridiculous. Of course it's not too salty. This is one of the great restaurants. Anyway, Eventually Mum tasted it and she was like, you're absolutely right, it is too salty. And so they called over the waiter and the weather waiter tasted it, and I was like, I'm so sorry, and so the chef, the head chef, came out and he took my older brother, James, and.

I on a tour.

I apologized and said he had been on the phone or something when he had been seasoning, and he took us on a tour of the kitchens of the samoy and it was like I sort of watched that film ratted too, you know. It was it was again being low in height and seeing things being flow made, and I was completely hypnotized by.

It, you know. But also you didn't turn to your mother say I don't like it, which a lot of kids might just say I don't like it. You knew that it's too salty.

Well you were right.

What's interesting is now later in life, I'm a salt addict.

But oh yeah, yeah, but still I think that, and actually their response it's the same thing I always prefer. You know, sometimes people write a letter and they'll say, you know, I you know, my fish was overcooked on my pasta was undercooked, And you say, why didn't you tell us at the time, because of course you want that feedback. It doesn't matter if they're right or wrong, it doesn't matter. You just want them to leave having

I did.

I went to well I went to school in London, just across from where we are now until I was thirteen, and it's why I have whenever I come to the River Cafe, I have a mixture of like of joy mixed with slight PTSD because it was these towpaths that are right next to the River Cafe and on the other side that was where we had to run our

But I didn't have the ingenuity for that.

So what was the food like boardings for It wasn't great now, it wasn't bad, but it was also where you had this thing, a sort of tea time where you would cook yourselves, and that is where I first and because I didn't love the food at school, I would start sort of I mean, it was never something adventurous, but you learned to do something that you had one little hot what's it called the hot pa basically which which you share between ten students, and the sort.

Of one pot pasta became a thing you.

Could just cook they would let but then and then you would have.

Dinner, and then there would be dinner afterwards.

But if you kind of sustained yourself, then you perhaps didn't have to.

And so it was just and that the food was your brother actually said another he said that the British are very good at the British upper class would be very good in prison because they've been institutionalized since a very young age, you know, and so you get what you're you know, taken.

Yeah.

Now it's some yeah, But there were some people that were I remember, very adventurous. I remember one one person at Eaton who had come back, had been away for the weekend, and I was sort of cooking some sort of stirring pasta and and he just sort of threw a rabbit on a on a sort of on a on a frying pan and cooked himself.

Which I thought was pretty robust.

When I left home, I moved to Burrow and I lived there for a decade, right by the market. And my mom did this wonderful thing when I was about twenty three, I think two, and as a Christmas present she bought me this this class and this amazing woman took this group of us there was random people for different ages, and took us to the market and introduced us to the traders and taught us how to spot a decent produce versus the stuff that was being flung me.

I do you remember what they were?

Attitude or recipes and attitude obviously, Like one of them was a olive oil in the pan, a punnet of cherry tomatoes, salt and lid on and then fry, then squashed them once they get thingy, and at the end you can grate in some cheese if want, but I never do, and just put in some basil torn basil at the end, and then you the cherry tomato skins are so sort of fine that they almost disintegrate. And I sort of since then have never bought her a

And when I was just between school and.

University, I went and traveled and in Italy a bit, and we went to stay with her, and I remember it being this moment when it was all of the tomatoes that have been grown by her family, her extended family, had all been given to her, and it was that time of year when she made pasata basically, and I just remember her in the kitchen and I sort of helping to kind of grind the tomatoes through and that would be bottled off and back and then passed back

It's a beautiful thing to watch and as you say, a process. So if we've sort of talked about school and food and family and food and being young and food, and what was it like when you started your career working and food, you know, when you were acting.

I was starting to act and travel quite a lot. And travel has been one of the wonderful elements of what I do, you know, whether it's to Japan or I spent a lot of time in Hungary and Budapest, and then in North Carolina I remember, and then Dan in Louisiana and having grits and crawfish and sweet corn and the simplicity of that.

And one of the wonderful.

Things about my job is, particularly when you're filming, you were right in these cities and rather than basically it's a tourist but you're there to work, but often the crew are from there, and so you have this amazing thing of having an introduction to cities that means you can get quite quickly slightly beneath the surface and get told where the sort of great places are. And it was then, I suppose that my sort of food taste started expanding.

If you knew you were going to be filming in Venice or in Budapest, or would you start thinking about restaurants before you went? Would you ask people?

I'm not good at that, but I know many actors that are the greatest of those is Jeremy Strong. Jeremy wonderful actor and absolute passionate foodie. And it was great when we were making the Trial of Chicago seven. Wherever we were, I would just get a sort of email from him saying, right I've got a table at this place that was on Chefs Table. We shot a bit in Chicago and then actually.

In New Jersey, but we were based in New York.

We've had a lot of conversations people who say, mostly the directors were just like, really not to stop for lunch because it just stops the flow of the filming, of the acting, and then actors saying that actually the food on set could be terrible you feel about working and youto, No.

It shifts and it changes. I mean definitely.

When I was starting on British sets, there's this thing craft Service, which in the UK is a couple of sort of slightly MOULDI digestive biscuits and you know, some instant coffee. And I remember when I did my first film in America, which was being directed by roberts Niro and was a big.

Shepherd that movie. I love that movie, but it.

Was a big shock to me now because suddenly you arrived and on the streets of Brooklyn it was like it was like Borough Market had these sort of gigantic piles of bagels and and well, I think it's also an American thing. And of course I was completely seduced as my children remained. They came to the set of The of the Goodness and not quite sure what it is I do, But as far as they can see, I just work at a sweet shop.

And we're going to say something about Jessica.

Well, now, Jessica Chesstain was saying recently what sort of tips had she learnt from about being an actor, and one of them was that Alpacino had said that careers get ended at the craft service table people who become

But the span cruise, we're just wonderful lunch.

You suld pot her out and they put a table up with a kind of umbrella and that'd be just the most exquisite dispatch show in little cups for everyone just to sort of start, and then it felt like you were living. I mean, I think there was even wine on the table, which I think would probably have aided my performance.

Well, I think, you know, investing in good food for the people who work for you or that you work with, it's so important because we all work better, we all are better when we have good food. So I think that your mother is coming any minute, you do not want to keep her waiting. We always say that, you know, we've discussed, you know, food in childhood and food in school, and food and acting. I also say that food is comfort. If you needed food for comfort, is there something you would turn to?

Can it be any quite specific?

Can be a you know, ball of cereal, that can be anything you want.

So there was a restaurant in France, in a village called Grimau that was an Italian restaurant called Las Spaghetto. I'm not sure it's there anymore, but I went there as a child and.

They did a starter called which was well.

For years, I've been trying to work out how the heck they make it, and everyone does their version of mozzarella and cut off so that sort of thing. But I think it was done with sort of the cheapest mozzarella, you know, so of that that really sort of plastically stuff with bread crumbs, and it's just a very simple uh fried and then and it was and you could you had to eat it quickly before it got.

Before it got it.

And it remains my comfort. And my brother, my brother James, particularly my older brother James, and I would go and we would order it for starter.

For main course.

It was and so and we tried to ask how they made it, and they would never tell us.

Let's go find that. I said, you were a food lover. I did, and we love you. Thank you so much for today. Well, yeah, where's that. Let's go make another one. I'd never tasted your seats.

The River Cafe Look Book is now available in bookshops and online. It has over one hundred recipes, beautifully illustrated with photographs from the renowned photographer Matthew Donaldson. The book has fifty delicious and easy to prepare recipes, including a host of River Cafe classics that have been specially adapted for new cooks. The River Cafe Lookbook Recipes for cooks of all ages. Ruthie's Table four is a production of