Ruthie's Table 4: Olivia Colman

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

The films of Olivia Coleman have the power to move us to tears, make us laugh, and inspire us to try something new. They can also make us feel really, really hungry. In the Favorite playing Queen Anne, Olivia Coleman conveys her authority by insisting on a cup of over rich hot chocolate, and there are tables laden with roasted venison, lamb cakes, desserts, the symbols of wealth and privilege. None to the Queen. What what you cannot have hot chocolate?

Do not?

I'm sorry, I do not know what to do. Oh fine, give it her and you can get a bucket in a mop for the aftermath. I met Olivia over food one night in the River Cafe. She was with my friend Maggie gillinol and they just wrap filming for their movie The Lost Daughter in Greece. It is not an exaggeration to say they pretty much ordered everything on the menu.

Four hundred grams taglete, mold and salt and coarsely ground black pepper, three hundred miles double cream, one hundred and twenty grams unsalted butter, softened zest and juice of four juicy lemons. Six tablespoons roughly chopped flat leaf parsley, one hundred and fifty grams of grated parmitan.

This is the one you chose. Sure, yeah, I mean it it is absolutely lovely and classic and I think sort of as you start being this time of year, is you know, it's like start a bit more light in summary that still on its slightly miserable.

Well have I picked that too easy? You?

No, No, this is great, it's fantastic. What we want to do is we basically just get everything in in the path that we need. So we're going to have a bit of butter, of bit of cream.

In a large, thick bottomed saucepan. Gently heat the cream. When warm, add the butter, lemon juice, and zest, stir briefly together.

Then remove from the heat.

Cook the taglitarian a generous amount of boiling salted water until al dente, and then drain, stir into the warm cream and season. Add half the parsley and tossed together.

Do you want to like toss it?

Can? I? Yeah?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, because I feel like, sorry, that's a bit you know, we've still got a bit of you know, we just give it a good old.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Serve immediately on warm plates with the remainder of the parsley and the parmesan as it cools.

It will sort of thicken up a little bit and then a little bit of parmesan on top, and that's sort of what we're looking for.

Looks pretty Oh.

Thank you.

What did you observe? Yeah, just amazing. He said you cooked it? You actually did well. I think you definitely. It's not easy to go into it. Let me do that. I did the tossing. Yeah, did you catch it? Yeah? Well I did make a bit of a mess of your floor. Sorry, Oh dear, okay, wanted no, we didn't want to do. Do you see food and your ability to eat, well, it's a kind of measure of your success.

I remember, we've got a close group of active friends that we all were drama school together and we've all stayed very close. But when we first left drama school, sometimes we'd go to you know, a pub for someone's birthday to eat, and it was very much sort of how about should we share that all of us were? You know, really there wasn't much lots of money going around and renting terrible places and trying to share something

Did you eat after we had the ark? Was that celebrated with food? No?

I think that was entirely booze.

You could do another program called you know.

I think I was so out of it sort of I couldn't believe what had happened.

You did seem very sharp, yes, And why why were you so surprised? I didn't think i'd get it, you know, the first time I'd been nominated, and we were so proud of the film and everything, but I just thought that that's never gonna happen.

That's well, it makes you emotional. It was such a ridiculous thing to have happened.

In a way.

Yeah, I can't believe it. Still can't quite believe that happened. I did afterwards.

Yeah. Do you are you an emotional eater? Do you eat when you're happy or sad? Do you both? Yeah?

Yeah, I do love you know, the comfort foods or hot buttered toast butter place.

I love butter. Toast is basically just a vehicle for butter. Agree. My mother in law used to say that butter is the best cheese, you know. She treated it like cheese. You just have a piece of slab butter until she decided that it was would kill you, so that I was never allowed to cook with butter after that. But it is really Yeah, I like it. And when you make a film like, for instance, going to Greece, when you made The Lost Order, what.

With Maggie too, Yeah, all of the casts were in the same hotel. Maggie had a little house separately because she had to do grown up things think about the next day.

And we were all quite badly behaved.

Who you were so me Jesse Dakota, Dakacha Johnson, Jesse Buckley, to Coach Johnson, Paul Meskill, Ollie Jackson, Cohen, Dagmara demin chic who else?

I feel awful if I'm missing anyone else out.

But we were all together and quite badly behaved and eating. We knew exactly the menu because we'd all been the same hotel for I think six weeks, so we knew the menu back to front. And they were very sweet and would do very But I remember they had a deconstructed fetter, you know Greek salad, so it was a really different fetter, not a solid one, but quite a soft one, laid out sort of prettily rather than you

And so did your parents travel with you when you were a kid, did you know?

No, they weren't really travelers. But my dad's best friend moved to Naples when I was twelve. I don't think they'd ever been to Italy, and we decided to go and we stayed with them.

In the summer.

Yes, in the summer, we went to Ischia in the Bay of Naples and just had because they lived there and he married an Italian woman.

We had incredible food.

We went to amazing restaurants, and we didn't know what we were doing, so he would trust me and he would order something of everything and try these beautiful things. We went to little restaurants in people's houses in the hills. Oh yeah, is it when I was twelve? I was born in seventy four and I can't do maths.

Yeah, so that's eighty two, well done, No twelve, No maths, it's either seventy four eighty eighty six. How long did it take us to add twelve to seventy four eighty that's the year before we started here. And it's interesting that you know your first introduction to Italian cucoo was southern you know so regional. Isn't it that the different said you go on to Venice, you would have had completely different food. Yeah. And I love the food of southern Italy. I did that last year. I went sailing

Family of food. Food was always love. We'd always sit together and we had dinner. Yeah, I mean a lot of My mum was a nurse. Often she'd come in. It would be quick. We might sit on the sofa watch Telly with food on our laps and you know, doctor who. But when people came around, it was an excuse for my dad to open a bottle of wine and entertain.

And who did the cooking? Then? Would he ever cook? My mum did the cooking. She never really loved cooking.

And her mum, I remember my granny sort of dreaded people coming around, and we'd always have slightly overcooked salmon, new potatoes and green beans.

I think that was it.

Every time I went to my granny's house, and then my mum whenever anyone came for a dinner party.

I can just remember cold Morney that's with cheese and kind of crepes and spinach I think, yeah, yeah, and new potatoes, as simple as possible.

She really didn't want to spend much time after that trip to Italy. My dad decided he wanted to get involved and started to particularly pastors.

And things, and that's what did you do.

He was a surveyor, chilter surveyor, but he quite liked the glass of wine feeding everybody.

He wasn't great, but he was enthusiastic. I think it is hard for a woman who was a nurse, you know, to think about did she work nights?

By the time I came along, she wasn't doing nights because she wasn't working in the hospital. She was working on the district, so I can't even remember. She must have been on call if someone needed her at night time. But she worked Christmas Day, you know. She always took the shifts that she knew other people didn't really want to do.

I think.

And your grandmother lived near you, often i'd go and stay there. If Mum and Dad were very busy, I'd go and stay with my granny. And she always had orange club biscuits in her.

So, what are your memories of your grandmother?

My grand orange club biscuits, Rabina hilariously bed so that's sugar all night.

Probably they didn't think about that. No, no, not at all, and look pretty okay, So the memories. What about your father's mother. She was an amazing baker girl. We found someone in the what did she make?

Just there was always she had a little larder and she'd always go we have a little look in the cupboard. There go on and there was always been at a little bit of cake and made you a little bit something or shortbreads, fruitcake which I'd ever liked. So she'd always make me a little chocolate cake. And yeah, just we were always allowed to go in and help ourselves.

So growing up Norfrika's see only place incredible secret.

We used to also our holidays were also camping in Norfolk, just a few miles away from where we actually lived on the coast, and we'd camp in a campsite and picked Sanfa.

We in Norfolk we call it Sanfa.

And when I first it written down on our menu in London it said Samphire, I have no idea what that was, So I.

Thought it was pronounced.

I thought it was spelled as a kid s a n f e r sanfa. But I think that's just the Northern way of saying it. But the way we ate it as well was so shake off the mud in the seawater and it's sort of blanched, but it's still so you keep the rooting, yeah, and just dip it in butter and put it like that. You get the meat off the meat, you know. Yeah, Yeah, And we'd always just have it like that. You'd never have it with something else.

You eat it. That's how we ate it. We take that little twig off at the barroom and then we blanched, but we put it with a fishert and yeah, sea burst. It's great. It's a short season though, isn't it.

Yeah.

I think you're not allowed to pick it anymore.

We used to really go and pick it, just go to the beach, pick it off the marshes and fish and fish. Yes, we used to go cockling as well. And muscles. I have always loved muscles. Oh that creamy, garlicy dunk bread in it. Yeah. I did my first school play when I was sixteen, and suddenly i'd always been so rubbish at everything at school and then suddenly did a play and went a light went on.

I love this.

I wonder if I could do this, but I didn't know anyone who did it. I assumed you had to come from that place in order to do it, so sort of had a secret yearning that never said it. And then I went to Homerton, which I think still is a teacher training college in Cambridge, but I left after a term or so, so I never They call it matriculation when you become part of the university, but I never did that, so I was never part of the university. And I left because I just couldn't do it.

And I had a bicycle.

I had the same major, so everyone else nobody questioned me, and I went cycled around, went to lectures of people.

So I went to an.

Architecture lecture, went to an EU law lecture with when I was totally in desperate in love with Ed and just trying to you.

Were being an actor. Nigella Lars and a friend of mine, you know, she worked as a cleaner in hotels and Florence and she said it was the most revealing you could have, particularly in the hotel the way people left their rooms or so you did that for how long?

Yeah, a couple of years, and then did a secretarial course. That was my mum's suggestion that if you're going to be an actor, you need something for it. So you knew then that by then, Yeah, I had done in Cambridge. There's about thirty drama societies and I would just cycle around all that. I did my shift and auditioning for things. Don't play his learning lines, going back, cleaning all the loose and chasing head around.

Yeah, it was your husband to be was a student Cambridge. Yes he was.

He's proper clever and he was there doing it properly. What does he do He was doing law then, but he's a writer.

Yeah.

And then we went off to Bristol lol VIC Drama School together and then we sort of you know, the food is love thing. We went to Thai restaurants and discovered new food together and there's a Thai restaurant in Cambridge and it was so delicious we took it back with us. We asked, it's first of a time I've asked for a doggie bag, and I didn't want to leave any of it, and we left it on his window, still outside, putting arms out the window and.

Going, oh my god, it's amazing. The lemon grass and the coconut Milcolm so Cambridge. And then you started acting more and more and you went to Bristol. Yeah, and when you actually then started working in the theater, that must have solutely changed your way of eating. Did it give you a routine or did it give you restrictions some what you could have?

And well, once we left Bristol and we were working, you know, trying to earn our keep as actors. I did my first few plays and things. I think I ate quite late after the show because you was sort of on a high, certainly wanted to have a drink afterwards.

Oh, and that was a true and just drink. This would have been.

After Iron Lady Excep's when I first met Phoebe, which was Meryl Street playing Margaret Thatcher.

So a couple of you after that, three is after that. I don't know, I'm so bad with but you can remember what you ate, you can always yes, Yeah, loves food, she does. Yeah.

And it's really annoying that she's so tall and lean and she loves eating.

It's annoying. It's annoying. I will, I will. But sure you were eating out, so when you because it's you know, picnics. Would you eat before if you were in a martine would you We'd sometimes have a picnic on the floor of one of our dressing rooms, so go to you know, get sort of little little cheeses and meats and pretend you we're having a normal life and not going back

We'd sort of put we had some roll out mattresses that we could put on the floor and we'd have a snooze and eat nice food and then do the matinee.

Do you think that it binds you together? Food? When you when you go on a set and you know that you're medi you know. I don't know if the all the other actors were friends of yours before, but does it something that holds you all?

Before COVID happened, everyone would eat together on the dining bus and I loved that you're eating with the crew and what did you go for? What you go for, and having a lovely time together, so social, and then time to sort of all be equal and to let your head down. And then now the dining bus hasn't really come back, and so people sort of eat separately, and that's such a shame, and you sort of sit on your own in your little van. And I missed

How is weight and physical appearance with food? How does it affect your work? I was just talking to someone who's coming to London to be in a movie, and his assistant said to me that he has a nutritionist and a trainer because he's on a very special diet for the film, and I thought that'd be interesting. I'd like to know about that, because maybe I could go on that without the nutritionist. And it turned out that he was actually eating eight thousand calories a day because

But you know, and Rachel and and Emily Emma are very healthy, clean eaters anyway, they love food, but it's sort of clean food, so well, they had their healthy options. I would say, I have one of everything and all of the puddings, and if you don't want that, I'll have that.

Yah.

It started actually to be a little bit quite quite gloomy. I thought it, God, what fun being told to put on weight. But I can put all my quite quickly, and so it starts to feel, oh, yeah, I don't know, you want another pizza? Yeah, or another I'm going to have to take it all off at the end, you know, And.

How did you take it off?

Just see old fashioned eating a lot less and trying to move more. But it was boring and hard, and she loved to eat, wasn't Yeah she was?

I mean she did. Was it fifteen pregnancies she'd had seventeen? Or maybe when I watched the film against and she lost, she'd lost seventeen babies, that's right.

Yeah, her eldest one had lasted to had got to ten years old, so they had varying degrees of ages. But I think food for her was she was apparently clinically obese, and and yeah, comfort food.

And what about playing the Queen and the green? Was she very different now?

And she was tiny, so I did have to She had a tiny waist and I don't have a tiny waiste, so I did.

They were very sweet.

They got me a trainer before I started, and then thankfully by my second season she was a bit older and didn't have such tiny waste, so I was about it.

But did she go a little bit? Did you feel playing her and the research into the live post war so completely restrictive and different from what the voluptuous nurse and the time. Yes, So what was that, like, what was your sense of food in the palace and food in the monarchy and food for being queen.

Well, I think when they had I mean, this is you know, only stuff, but I remember from what we did. But whenever there was there were people coming to visit sort of big must entertain the heads of state things, it was all beautiful, lovely food. But because she'd remembered rations and everything. Yeah, she was never irresponsible about too

I mean, yeah, it's interesting that you know what you wonder what pleasure there was in Yeah, you know you can see the kings of France and the childs and wonder whether the British aristocracy had I could probably probably did you know those country houses? Then yeah, you just wonder about the palace, whether eating and food was fun I hope, So, yeah, I hope they enjoy it how

When I first left home, my mom gave me a Delia Smith sort of complete, which was amazing.

And I think she's good, really, I do. She was in the restaurant that long ago, really, and I thought she really taught a generation to cook.

All those lovely sort of staples. I learned that from from her recipe book. So your mom gave you this book? And yeah, and so I loved cooking for my two flatmates, Debbie and Olivia, and that was the only cookbook we had, and we would I loved. Also, I started to really enjoy going to the shop and going to buy because we want such a tight budget, we'd picture meals and buy for the meals, not just you know, anything off the shelf, fancy that.

And I really enjoyed that.

And I enjoyed and sometimes it was just a jacket potato with loads of butter and cheese. But I really enjoyed the us all eating together and you know, feeding each other.

So you have three children as you work, and sometimes you don't. Yeah, it can be home or you have do have to shop. So what is like? You told us what food was like in your parents and your grandparents. If I were to knock on the door, what is food like if you were to knock on the door that, Yeah, you should, because now we have.

I still struggle with saying because I feel a bit it's sort of embarrassed. But we have a really lovely nanny now I know because we certainly both started working much more.

She's an incredible cook. Okay, so definitely coming there. Yeah you should. And you all sit down to dinner. We always sit together and eat.

Yeah, when we sometimes the kids are doing late things at school and we have we do a Sunday roast every Sunday.

We're so boring. And do you take them on holidays and food holidays?

Yeah, we took the kids to sort of holiday of a lifetime to Sri Lanka just before lockdown and just ate the most incredible food three times a day.

Curry three times a day. Yeah, what was that?

Because we traveled around with the kids, and our two eldest are really adventurous.

They've always we've we've always.

Included them with all the food we have, and when we have curry, we always make one that's slightly less spicy, and they sort of they love it now and the boys love spice. And so when we were traveling around, our little one really wasn't wasn't thrilled, but she was

It does tell you about a country, doesn't It tells you what's growing.

And yeah, our middle boy, he's he became obsessed with Japan when he was very little and he did a sushi course and he makes beautiful sushi and ramen.

He does three day ramen.

It does take, yeah, days, it makes days yeah, And actually Ed is taking the two boys for a cookery course when they before our eldest goes to university. So they're doing a little week together, little boys week doing learning to cook.

Do you feel when you're away and you're working, do you feel that your work takes you away from some people you love? And well, you know, how does that work?

Ed and I've been together third years, and up until COVID, I'd only ever been away. The longest I've been away was two weeks because I just don't take jobs away from home.

Okay, let's stuck there. So then you think about accepting a movie or a player, something that will keep you away from home.

Yeah, I just I get terribly homesick. I never used to be able to sleep very well if ED wasn't there, And now I think we're probably you know, I'm at an age where sleep is harder anyway, so actually it's quite you go a night away, I'll I'll get a great night sleep. But I also I missed the kids, you know, I wanted to be there, and so I was very lucky that I had the option of great work in the UK and I didn't have to go away.

And then well, lost daughter. I was going to say it was that six weeks.

Six weeks, so Sunny went from the six sixth way, which is I think why we all behave so badly because we all adored each other, got on so well, got hey, we're here, We're in a beautiful place. Did the kids come out, No, because weren't allowed to because if they came, they'd have to quarantine before point.

So we'd all meet up.

We were each other's family, and I know dag Mara was really missing her family, and I really understood that feeling. So I said, you'll be back on the school run before you know it. And they don't know that you're miserable or happy, so just go for happy.

And men aren't who are in the same actors feel that way as well. Do you think they know that their wife is home with all the kids, and.

It's all I've always struggled with this male female thing. I think ideally, if you're all brought up the same, you are the same. It's only conditioning that makes sisting male female. So all the men I know and love struggle with being away from home when they miss you know, the ones I'm not that impressed by have a ball. But I think that's the same with some women as well, you know, love being away. It's I don't think it's

No, people ask me if women chefs cooked differently from male chefs, and I always try and avoid that. They really want you to say that women cook with more care or more sensitivity and men are a bit more and it's not true.

And it's not fair to the men that we all know love and I know plenty of really uncaring women and plenty of incredibly emotional, you know kind men.

And now you're doing a movie about chocolate. Is that right? Oh god, yeah, I had to talk about that will they won't get and the chocolate? So what was that like in terms of chocolate?

And they had a chocolate here, but when I went to have for fittings and things, they said, can't look at what this chocolate has made for us. And these chocolates were exquisite, and he said you can eat them all. I mean, often, if it's going to be a prop why bother maker, But that he was so such a master. He insisted that it had to taste beautiful, what sort of caramel?

Incredible?

And they were brightly colored and amazing shapes, and every one of them you could have eaten and it would have been incredible.

I wish the audience could see your smile, because every time you talk about food, your face lights up, and you know, you sort of remember things that you ate, places that you've eaten.

And the first time I had truffle, Yeah, a white truffle. Oh, just any truffle, any true? And now we have we have a little job with truffle, and every now and then, yeah, overscrumbled eagle, yeah, on a Russian pasta.

Yeah. You know, food is love, and food is alleviating hunger, and food is curiosity or traveling or discovering. Food is also comfort. And I was wondering if there's a food that you would turn to, something you'd either make or buy. Olivia Coleman, wonderful person that you are, and I hope you don't need comfort very often because you give such joy. I mean when you came in the restaurant today, We've had all sorts of people come in and they're great.

My comfort food is sort of a one spoon thing and it's tarcodile.

I could eat that all day, every day. Okay, tarcodile? Tell me? Can you just tell people who might not know what it is?

So it's a lentils which are soft, and there's garlic, and I think the tadca is the tempered thing on the top. I've never made it, ok but I am a connoisseur of eating it. Yeah, and it is my favorite thing I always order. If we have a takeaway or delivery, I order much more tacodile than we need, so I can have it cold for breakfast, I'll have it reheat it again for lunch next day.

I just love it. I could eat it. I'm going to try that you love it. I was surprised because I'm sure you're going to say toast and butter, I'm sorry, don't be sorry, but I will come and have that tacodile knock on your door. Yes, and thank you so God, thank you for having me. And now you're going to go and have food, have lunch and you can eat and need to eat. Oh, thanks, thank you so much.

The River Cafe Lookbook 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 cook of All Ages. Ruthie's Table four is a production of iHeartRadio and Adami Studios.