Welcome to River Cafe Table four, a production of iHeartRadio and Adami Studios.
When Maggie john Noll enters a river cafe, I stop whatever I'm doing, even if mid service a rare admission from a chef. But then Maggie is a rare person for whom the world should stop. She's a brilliant actor, a strong director, and a beautiful writer. She is a truly passionate woman, and I am truly passionate about her.
That's so beautiful, That's true.
A little love letter from Ruthie Rogers. We are going to read the recipe that you chose for a taggy telly with figs.
Three hundred and fifty grams egg tagliatel eight black figs cut into eighths, two dried chilis, crumbled, two lemons, parmesan grated extra virgin olive oil one hundred millilters double cream. Grate the lemon peel of both lemons and squeeze the juice of one. Heat a frying pan large enough for the figs in one layer. Add olive oil, and when hot, place the figs in the pan, turning them immediately to caramelize.
Season and add the dried chili. Stir the lemon, zest and juice into the cream and mix with the figs. Cook the pasta and add to the sauce. Serve with parmesan.
Thank you. It would be nice to talk about the lost water and food accommodation of movie and food work in food Greece and Italy and figs and pasta. So how was it filming in Greece? Was it last summer before.
The Last Daughter?
It was this summer before last summer, so it was August September October, although we only shot for a month of that time of twenty twenty.
Yeah, so two summers ago.
And were there fixed?
Oh yeah, there were figs your name later. It's very provocative. You're thinking about the Yates.
I bet you know it by heart in Italia touto di corpo.
There's a few interesting food things in The Last Daughter.
The rotten fruit in the very beginning. Yeah, picked up the boat.
Yeah, but I think like hunger as an idea, especially for women.
I think.
Often we're told that our appetites are too big, you know, for what it is we want, what it is we need, even the amount of rage, the amount of confusion, the amount of need, the amount of love, the amount of desire, Like it's too much.
What were your daughters like when they were little? Were they like this willful little creature. I don't mistake my command them much. Actually, I don't know. You can't forget anything about your own children. I was thinking about food in some ways, in terms.
Of desire and hunger versus deprivation. So like even that scene with Callie, the pregnant sister in law when she offers her the cake and she who eats cake? And who doesn't? From one woman's hands to another, and Olivia takes a bite, and at least the way she plays and that take, I feel like it actually was delicious and you know, really something she was sort of trying not to eat but wanted to eat. And what we really remember food wise in my family. And Olivia Coleman too,
I mean she was a part of this. Was like this kind of obsession we had with spinach pie, you know the Greek spinach pre that's a cheese.
Yeah.
I found that.
I needed fat, like I needed like my brain needed fat and I could eat four.
No, four was too many. That's what we decided.
Three spinach pies throughout the day was the right number and four was too many.
It was that different from other films you've worked on. Do you think being director, you needed a different kind of way of eating.
Yeah, I did.
I needed a different It's a totally different kind of I was constantly moving and thinking. For example, it's so different than editing. When I was editing, I was editing in the middle of the pandemic in New York in the winter, just me and my editor. We needed like nourishing. I bought him lunch every day and we had like steak sandwiches and pasta, and I don't know, I needed something more streamlined when I was shooting, like just straight
like black coffee and spinach pies, spinach push. I was thinking about the last time I saw you actually when what that was. I don't even know if you knew
really what that dinner was. But I invited the people who not the people who had literally paid for the movie, but the people who had organized all of that, the people who had gotten it sold to European distributors, the people who had you know, made the deal with Netflix, the people who had connected did me with our financiers, the people who were like doing the sort of.
Business side of it.
Who always take me to dinner, and they had just done something like really brilliantly in what they do, and I really wanted to take them to dinner, and I wanted to take them to like the most beautiful, bountiful dinner with the best wine and all the desserts.
And I in fact got to.
Do what I didn't even realize I wanted to do, but like I ordered for everybody because I remember this, I remember, yeah, but I thought it gave me so much pleasure to offer to them, I mean like a real thank you, you know, like in a special place. And then I remember like we weren't sure. We're like, oh, is this enough pasta? And I was like, no, no,
no it's not. Let's get another two pasta, you know, like that so that nobody nobody felt I mean, you don't want also to too much that you don't care anymore, but.
That everyone felt that they could eat their fill.
I remember that night that you were there, and I remember the feeling of it that you were you know, you you were so happy and you were so wanting to.
Give I kept texting you and saying, oh, could one more person come.
Oh, could just one more person come? Could one more person come?
And I felt good, I felt really bad because you were like fitting us into the world of your restaurant. Then at the same time, everyone was like, sort of more people wanted to join, you know, could I you know, and don't you always kind of want to say yes, right, like like of course you can bring your boyfriend. Of course I didn't realize to invite her, and of course she should be invited, and you know, so you're just kind of opening your arms more and more, and this is interesting.
It was.
It really was a special night.
And one of the thing I just want to say about it is, you know, in terms of Hunger and my film, and you know, even like we were talking about deprivation versus being satisfied, I think I felt something interesting about that night too, because of course we were there to do press for The Lost Daughter. We all had to wake up at like six o'clock in the morning the next day and go do press all day and then go to the opening night. And we had all eaten all this food, drank tons of wine and
champagne and chocolate cake. And I was thinking the next day about like consequences what's worth it and what isn't you know? And I was like, this feeling I have today is totally worth it. I'm not blindly having this dinner and drinking wine and you know, eating all this delicious food. I understand that I will sacrifice something the next day. If I'd gone to sleep at nine and had green juice or something, I would feel different. But what it gives me in exchange, I felt was was worth it.
I remember exactly where you were sitting. You were outside and you were and I came in to see you. I always say again, like you, I try and say yes as much as well. I just I think I say it to my grandchildren. I say it to I say it to the way it's just saying, you know, it makes life actually much nicer and much happier. So going back, what was it like growing up in your household in the chillinal household? And food? Did your mother cook?
Yeah?
Both of my parents cooked and cooked pretty well. I think you know that my brother is a you know, like.
A really like a like a gifted cook. You know.
I don't think my parents are gifted cooks, but they know what they're doing and they care about food. And they enjoy food, and I think that's definitely something that can be handed down. Like my mom always jokes that I remember things that were happening in places that I went by what I was wearing, and she remembers by what she was eating. But I also remember by what I was eating, and I plan my days around.
Around food, you know, all the time.
I think, like growing up, you know, my dad would make us a really nice breakfast in the morning, and we still do that for our kids, Like they always
have breakfast and something nice, and I like to. You know, the thing is like even just cutting up an orange nicely and putting it on a cutting board and putting it in the middle of the table at breakfast along with whatever else you're making, all of a sudden makes it a nice meal, or you know, putting having a nice sort of butter bell and having some nice gams
around it. You know, even if you're doing the simplest thing, I do that, Like, actually, I mean, I mess up all sorts of things, but I do really take care of food.
You know.
When I've traveled to other countries, as I'm sure you have, I always think that the way a person cuts a piece of bread. The way they slice of bread tells you something about the culture. And Richard and I went to Syria, and you know, it's done by the museums, and I was moved by the architecture. And then you would go into a small little place and you'd see the way, as you say, they would cut a piece of bread, or they would put a piece of cheese, or they would serve it in a bowl, and it
meant something. You know, if you do that for your children and.
Those little things that you know, would just make a difference. I believe in that, and I so in my house, we always had breakfast.
What do you have, Maggie? What do you have for breaks in our house? Now? I have a breakfast? Was Gloria there? She could tell us.
Gloria's right here, Yeah, she can hear you. You want to tell her a little bit about breakfast at our house? What do we have? Okay, Gloria is gonna Gloria, who is my.
Daughter who's nine, who's home from school with a cold today, is gonna keep me honest?
What do we have for breakfast? You're come over close to the microphone.
Like we have like eggs and we have toast and oranges m hm. And sometimes my mom puts out a little bit of juice like Dorsley apple.
Juice, and do we have We also usually have tea, and sometimes we have cool things like sometimes.
We have like egg and a hole.
What's up right?
What's egg and a hole?
It's like it's a piece of bread with the inside cut out and instead there's a bit of the middle of the eggs inside of it, and the outside there's also an egg. So it's kind of.
Just like an egg.
Yeah.
You take something that makes like a perfect circle, like a little cup, and you push out a perfect circle, and then we toast that little circle in the pan too with some butter, and you crack the egg in the circle so that it stays in the circle, and.
You have like a little egg and a hole coming for breakfast? This household? Did you grow up with a household where where you had breakfast every day, where you sat around the table with your parents and had breakfast? Is something that you were brought up with that you want to give to your children because your parents give it to you.
Well, my mom, like me, likes to sleep late, so she would like stay in bed and my dad would make her a coffee, which just seems like such a luxury to me. It's so nice. And then my dad really made breakfast for us. My mom, I would say, more, made dinner. My dad too, both of them cooked.
Did you have dinner?
Yeah, always almost all.
And you did. Jake said that you did when your parents entertained. He described sitting on the stairs and listening from above. And so when you left home, did you cook for yourself?
I was not taught, not really taught how to cook. I mean, it's funny. I remember going to a dinner party at somebody's house when I was in my early twenties, and this woman was making a tomato sauce like Apasta sauce, and she put raw onions in at the end, and.
I was like shocked. You know, I knew, I knew.
I mean I always knew, like enough to know not to do that, and I could always cook a little.
But I I don't know, maybe I'm wrong, Maybe I.
Always sort of basically had the basics just from growing up around people who cooked. When I first left home and I went to college, I you know, ate Chinese food at four o'clock in the morning and bagels with butter and just whatever I wanted, which I think is not uncommon probably, And then when did I start to cook, I don't know, kind of snuck up on me. It definitely had to do with mothering. I think that I really wanted to feed my kids well. I always want
to feed my kids well. And I don't mean like super super healthy. I don't actually think about it like that. I just want them to feel nourished and satisfied and excited about food.
So it is food always when you're working. Does it depend on what you're working on?
Well?
I remember actually when I did Three Sisters with Peter with my husband, I would drink lots of coffee. I remember a friend of mine who was in the play with us, was like, I can't believe how much coffee you drink, you know, Like I would have one that was like a latte, one that was just a regular drip coffee, and one that was an espresso, and I'd kind of sip from different ones at different times in the performance. And I found also I was in a corset, so you can't eat.
A lot, like you'll burp. It's weird, but I and also you.
Need that kind of streamline feeling, but you know, what I found worked really well and would sustain me for long enough through a whole long check off play was sober noodles their buckwheat and there's a kind of I would go to this place, this really good place in the East Village and get sober noodles with shrimp tempura and the seaweed salad, and it was just exactly perfect. If I had that early enough, that would sustain me through the play. Again, it was nourishing, it had some protein,
it also had carbs and something that filled me. And then I'm of course on stage, I'm always hungry afterward.
Yeah, afterwards going out to eat afterwards. When you decide to do a film, or when you decide to do play, or when you are wanting to work with another actor, actress or director, does going to a restaurant with them reveal something about them? Do you thinks?
Oh?
Yeah, I don't think of it as consciously as that. I'm not trying to pull something out of them. It's more I feel comfortable in that space, let me order beautiful things for us, and you know, yeah, I really like to share a meal with anybody who I'm who I'm interacting with. But certainly with work, yes, and I only want to go really good places. Thinking about this just occurs to me because I had like a couple of really good meals with David Simon when I was working on The Deuce at Via Kurota.
But when we were scouting.
Basically I shadowed a director on the Deuce, meaning I, you know, when I wasn't acting, there was one director who I just spent all the time with. I we did location scouting and costume fittings and you know, I sat with her at her at her chair, and I hated location scouting when it wasn't my film. When it was my film, I mean, I could have done it all day, but I was super bored on the Deuce. I was like, oh my god, when is this day gonna be over? And like that high school looks fine,
you know. But we were in I don't know where we were, like Long Island or something, and we ended up stopping at this pretty great Italian like like Italian American like Long Island like type of place like Red Sauce like you know, and it was really.
Pretty great and it just totally lifted me.
We're scouting in little Italy in this cafe that was known for its like almond cookies, almond cookies that are kind of chewy in the middle.
Like amaretta.
Yeah, no, pine nut, pine nut them, they're like pin yeah yeah, and and and they were so good and they just gave us an espresso and like a box of these cookies.
And again I was like okay, I like scouting again.
Good matters. And it's also a celebration. Were you married in Italy? Did you tell me once that you were married in Italy?
Yeah, in Pulia.
And the food was incredible and it's the same kind of food we're talking about, like not fussy, not a big deal, warm, plentiful.
Pullia is an incredible region of Italy. It's it is totally unique in that barren landscape with the time of year.
Was it It was May second, so it was in fact, we went back in August one year and we were like.
This is a completely different place. Hot and like totally packed.
But in May it was poppies everywhere and olive trees and really quiet.
It was great.
The one cush and I ask everyone is if food is love, Food is alleviating hunger, food is giving support. It is also a comfort is there a comfort food that you would go for?
Yeah, I mean for me, it's pasta. Yeah, it's not any pasta. It's not acidic pasta, Like it's not tomato pasta. Jake loves that, right, you know, he's always making it.
Yeah.
Yeah, for me, it's like a simple, basic.
Pasta. Yeah.
I can have variation, of course, but we have one that we make with like a little bit of anchovy that you can barely taste and you know, in my house and the cooking water and parmesan and you know.
Just really really simple. Yeah.
I love pasta. I think it's a good go too for comfort. It is. It is very comforting, and talking to you is comforting and seeing you and celebrating your movie and try and come for the Baftis.
Yeah, I'm going to try and come, and if not, I'm going to get to London and see all my friends and you and eat at your restaurant.
I'm dying to come back. I really am really miss it.
Just get on that plane and come bye bye man, nice Hi, I love you.
Thank you.
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River Cafe Table four is a production of iHeartRadio and Adamized Studios. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.