December 16, 2024 • 38 mins
The other week, the director Greta Gerwig sat at my table, describing the unique experience of working with Saoirse Ronan — ‘Ruthie, you have to meet her.’
In a way, I feel like I’ve already met Saoirse through the intimacy of her award-winning performances in 'Atonement', 'Lady Bird' and 'Brooklyn', and her forthright interviews. Now, the three of us are here together at The River Cafe in person — Saoirse, Greta and I. We’re talking about food and cooking, Ireland, Saoirse’s garden, learning to eat spaghetti and much, much more.
Ruthie's Table 4 is made in partnership with Me+Em.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
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(00:43):
How often have people said to me, there is a
certain person I must meet, Ruthie. I know you'll love
her for a while. This has been said to me
over and over about Sir shar Nan. In a way
I feel I have met her through the intimacy of
her performances, the movie she's shown to make and her
fourthright interviews Greta Gerwick, who directed her in Ladybird and
(01:05):
Little Women sat at the table with me in our house,
talking about Sirsha and how unique the experience of working
with her is. It's like we have one brain, she said.
Now the three of us are here together, sitting around
a table at the River Cafe. We're going to talk
about food and cooking, Sirsha's garden, learning to eat spaghetti,
(01:27):
and much much more. And now when people ask me,
I will say, yes, I've met her, and yes I
love her.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
Not so not I know is beautiful.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
It was so beautiful, so beautiful.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Spaghetti with crab. Okay, so today we have five hundred
grams of fresh crab meat. Is it white and dark
white white?
Speaker 4 (01:54):
Three fresh red chilies, seated and finely chopped, Four tablespoons
of flat leaf parsley, me chopped, the juice of four lemons,
three garlic cloves, peeled and ground paste, two hundred and
fifty mils of olive oil, five hundred grams of spaghetti.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
And extra virgin olive oil.
Speaker 4 (02:11):
Simple, simple, Put the crab in a bowl, add the chili's,
most of the chopped parsley, the lemon, juice of garlic, the.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
Season well, stir in the olive oil.
Speaker 4 (02:24):
I feel like something's happening behind my head while I'm
saying is cook the spaghetti and a generous amount of
boiling water and drain thoroughly, stir into the crab sauce, but.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
Do not reheat.
Speaker 4 (02:35):
Serve sprinkled with the remaining chop parsley and a generous
amount of olive oil.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
In Brooklyn, Yeah, you were taught how to eat spaghetti cetti,
So you're going to teach us. You're going to teach
Greta and I how to how to eat doing this right?
Speaker 4 (02:57):
Yeah, because well the girls in the film did it.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
The girls in the movie do it with a spoon.
I never use a spoon. I would use I would
never use.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
Well, they do that like they put the go for
your tech.
Speaker 4 (03:17):
I don't like using a spoon, do you You just
use the plate?
Speaker 2 (03:21):
Yeah, the Italian way. You just stab it and spin it,
stab and star.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
You were born in New York, Yeah, did your parents
still feel a sense of identity with Ireland in New
York and food wise?
Speaker 2 (03:38):
Do you think they did? They did? I think my
mom did. Especially. Everything was just always homemade for us.
It was always it was always the main event of
the day.
Speaker 4 (03:50):
She would cook more traditional Irish stuff, so she used to.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
She still like she cooks like coddle. Have you heard
of Irish coddle, which is like a stew. I don't know.
She also when I was working, she didn't do it.
Speaker 4 (04:03):
On a Ladybird because she wasn't around for long enough.
But Mom used to like batch cook and just like
bring food in for the crew, even though.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
Nobody asked for it.
Speaker 4 (04:13):
But she was like, I'll just make this and I'll
bring it in and whoever wants it can have it.
And she would heat it up in my trailer when
we were doing night shoots on like Hannah and stuff,
when we were in the middle of like I don't know,
Munich or something, and she'd make these like home cooked meals.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
And that's just kind of what I was used to.
Speaker 4 (04:30):
And coddle is sort of like an Irish stew that
you can kind of put anything into. Its peasant food,
like Ireland doesn't really have a cuisine in the way
that like Italy, France, like Southern America does, Like there's
no kind of specific diet except for potatoes and whatever
meat you can get your hand on. So the soup
(04:50):
would be she'd use like a vegetable broth. She puts
barley in. It's celery, carrots, onions, sausages, rashers as we
call them. But bacon, just lots and lots of goodness.
And we used to have that a lot grown up,
but we had that in the Bronx, Like that was
the kind of food that she used to make.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
Did she work when I was a kid, She was
a nanny, so she would come home from work and
then cook.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
Yeah, she did it all lot. She brought me to
work with her. Then she would cook.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
She took care of other people's children.
Speaker 4 (05:21):
She took care of other people's children. She would not
only cook for Dad and I. But we always had
Ireland stay with us. So because Dad became an actor
while he was over there, and that was absolutely not
part of the plan. Like Dad had not finished school,
(05:42):
he hadn't even been to the theater before he auditioned
for his first play. And when he got into that world,
it became everything, really and they became such a part
of that Irish American off off Broadway community. And so
we had actors staying with us all the time in
the Bronx, in the Bronx, in this tiny little like
(06:03):
one bedroom flat, and we had this pull out sofa
and you'd have like people like Brona Gallaher, who's this
incredible Irish actor, Like they would live with us and
man would cook for all of them.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
Did your parents go to New York out of a
desire to work?
Speaker 3 (06:18):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (06:18):
Yeah, they left school when they were like fifteen sixteen
and that was the place to go back then.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
So I think they had friends who had moved over
ahead of them.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
And then they went back to Ireland. And so you
probably don't remember New York if you left when you three.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
I remember what I ate?
Speaker 1 (06:36):
You don't before three? Can you remember what you ate
before three?
Speaker 2 (06:39):
Don't what she does?
Speaker 1 (06:40):
Yeah? Interesting?
Speaker 4 (06:42):
There was this diner that I went back to for
like a sixty second sixty secondary sixty minutes.
Speaker 3 (06:49):
That sixty minutes, sixty minutes, it's only sixty seconds.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
Your generation sounds.
Speaker 4 (06:55):
Like before you came in your generation.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
Version, Yeah, segments.
Speaker 4 (07:05):
And they brought me back to this diner that I
used to go to when I was a kid, when
I was like three or four, and I always had
a grilled cheese sandwich and a pickle.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
Yeah, and you can remember that from being Yeah, and
so was it? Did they react when they went back
to Ireland, did they go back with joy and pleasure
or did they just find New York was too tough?
Speaker 2 (07:30):
New York was tough.
Speaker 4 (07:31):
They didn't have enough money to stay there. But also
Dad had become an actor that was doing relatively well
and there was a surge of Irish work at that
time because of Jim Sheard and Neil Jordan people like that,
So the work was just taking him back home. And
I think when ma'm had me, she was adamant that
(07:53):
she was going to have me in the States so
that I had citizenship, so that I was free to
sort of roam in a way that they never were,
which has been such a blessing in hindsight, because I
you know, I've lived and worked in the States and
I can come and go as I play, as I
can vote in the election.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
Which is great.
Speaker 4 (08:12):
But I think she realized that this wasn't the kind
of environment she wanted me to grow up. And because
they didn't have enough money to like get a beautiful
apartment or have a garden, or to a four day care, like.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
They just didn't have that.
Speaker 4 (08:32):
And also I think to have that support system for anyone,
no matter where you live is so important when you
have a kid. And also the work was taken dad
back there, so they moved back.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
But the really.
Speaker 4 (08:42):
Interesting thing that my mom has kind of very honestly
talked about me over the years is that there is
still this notion of like the American dream and you
sort of becoming like the next Kennedy. And when you
come back from America and that hasn't happened, you sort
of feel like your tail is between your legs a
(09:03):
little bit. That you came back and it wasn't the
success story that you thought it would be. It really
made them who they are and they made some incredible
friends over there, and I don't know if I would
be doing what I am doing if they hadn't made
that move, because that's where he was sort of discovered.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
As an actor. But it was it was hard, you know.
Speaker 4 (09:25):
And they were also coming back to Ireland during the
Celtic Tiger where everything had become so expensive in that booth.
That was the night that was like, yeah, the nineties,
two thousands, and that was to Dublin. They moved back
to Dublin for a spell and then we that's what
took us to the countryside because Dublin was just too.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
Expect You remember the garden. Was there a garden in
the country side, Yes, your mother, because you have a
garden in London, don't you.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
I have a little garden in London.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
And what was a garden like in your house when
you're growing up?
Speaker 2 (09:54):
It was the best we had.
Speaker 4 (09:56):
That's where I used to do all my audition tapes
and and that was always the thing.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
That like directors and producers.
Speaker 4 (10:03):
Commented on when I sent over my audition for Atonement.
I remember Gina j the cast an agent, and Joe
the director, and everyone was like, we just couldn't believe
it when you came out of that orp English accent
and you showed us around this beautiful garden.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
That you grow around the garden.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
It was a big garden. It was probably like half
an acre. It had. I remember when we moved in,
there was two rose beds.
Speaker 4 (10:30):
That my mom hated. My mom never liked roses for
some reason. I think they were sort of hard to tame.
And she did the whole garden by herself. She used
to use like a.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
Manual lawnmower and she would do the whole thing.
Speaker 4 (10:43):
It was like backbreaking work and it would take her
like two days to cut all of the grass. It
was quite manicured when we moved in, and she kept
it up for years.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
Was it vegebles of flowers?
Speaker 4 (10:54):
It was flowers, and we had The people who owned
it before us were an older couple and the woman
was really into vegetables and she had a grapevine in
a glasshouse. So I remember that was in the middle
of the garden. And then over on the other side
there was a sort of big stone wall with a
tree grown out of it. And my dad did tree
(11:16):
surgery for a while and there was a guy that
he worked with who one day just decided to tie
sort of this thick blue rope to the tree and
he added a little log to the end of it
and that was their swing. We just called it the rope,
and myself and any of my friends that were over
would just spend.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
Like the whole day out there.
Speaker 4 (11:37):
Yeah, we have a really beautiful garden in Scotland. My
husband Scottish and.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
We have vegetables that we grew this year. And so I.
Speaker 4 (11:47):
Keep thinking about like hopefully when we have kids one
day being able to.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
Be like, should we go out to the shops.
Speaker 4 (11:54):
Just wandering outside digging up a load of potatoes.
Speaker 2 (11:57):
And onions and shalots, and.
Speaker 4 (11:59):
I'm getting so much enjoyment out of that, and I
find it. It might sound silly to say, but I
find it really inspirational. It like it feeds my soul
in a way that the city just doesn't.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
When I interviewed Michael Caine, two things he liked with
gardening and cooking because being an actor on a set,
you have hundreds of people. It's collaborative. You've got people
around you. And it was something that he could do
by himself alone, but he could make something.
Speaker 4 (12:29):
You know, whether there was and it's something that's taken
out of your hands when you are an actor a
lot of the time, Like I've gone on to jobs
where I vowed to cook for myself and then bring
everything in during the week, and you just don't.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
You just don't follow through with it.
Speaker 4 (12:44):
But I I really miss it, and it makes me
feel quite empty when I can't cook for myself.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
Like yesterday was Sunday, I cooked.
Speaker 4 (12:55):
A massive roast for just myself and my husband with
all the trimmings, and it was delicious and full of love.
And I took a few hours to put it together
the proue. So I was telling your chef, I think
it's from this cookbook that I found called Bitter Honey.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
Have you come across that coup book?
Speaker 4 (13:14):
And it's this english woman who moved over to Sardinia and.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
She has this beautiful recipe for.
Speaker 4 (13:21):
Like this anchovy garlic rosemary butter with lemon zest that
she puts into a micrea that she puts into the chicken.
And so I made a big stock of it ages
ago and froze it and then just used a little
bit of it yesterday.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
And I did that with like lots of gorgeous roasted
veg with.
Speaker 4 (13:41):
With a honey that I got in Broadway Market yesterday actually,
which is honey from the Venetian Lagoon.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
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Speaker 4 (14:37):
Food has always been so important to me. It's it's
so emotional for everyone. But like my dinner in particular
is something that I cannot skip. It's kind of how
I like anchor myself.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
I build my whole day. I'm not joking. I build
my whole day.
Speaker 4 (14:55):
Around my dinner and what I'm going to cook and
when I'm gonna have it and who I'm gonna have
it with.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
Your mother brought up with that notion of food that
was your grandmother. Do you think your grandmother brought your
mother up to have a meal every night and that
food was that you had.
Speaker 4 (15:10):
I don't think Mam will mind me saying mom has
quite a complex relationship with food.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
But she I think.
Speaker 4 (15:18):
She's always believed that by making and my dad is
an incredible cook as well. She believed by injecting love
into the food, you will taste that.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
And she every.
Speaker 4 (15:33):
Single Sunday, no matter where we were, would make a
Sunday roast, and that was our tradition.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
You started so young, acting so do your mother brought
domestic life wherever you were working. Yeah, so when did
that stop?
Speaker 2 (15:48):
I was about eighteen or nineteen when I did.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
Why did it stop? But you just thought it.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
Was just time, you know. But it was an adjustment
because she had been with me constantly for this whole time,
through this incredibly formative, intense stage in my life, for
every single moment of it.
Speaker 4 (16:10):
She was the one who I ran lines with. She
was the one who when I would come home at
the end of the day, I'd go, do you think
this director likes me? Or like, I don't know, did
this go well today? Or I don't think I did
that as well as I could have done.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
And she was the thing that.
Speaker 4 (16:25):
Really kind of kept me in reality, and it was
an adjustment for both of it.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
Did she I share this with you?
Speaker 2 (16:34):
She did.
Speaker 4 (16:35):
My dad is an excellent cook, so I think I
learned a lot from my dad. And then also just
when I left home when I was about ninety and
I moved to London. I was in Highgate, which wasn't
the right place for a teenager to go, but anyway,
I went to Highgate and it was lovely, but I
was very much I had my own flat because I'm
(16:56):
not into like living with anyone.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
But I do regret that now, and I was very
very lonely, and I don't know, I didn't make a
conscious decision to.
Speaker 4 (17:07):
Do it, but I just it seemed to be very
very important to me that I picked a recipe every
single day and decided what I was going to cook
for dinner just for myself that night. And I hadn't
figured out like portion control yet, so I cooked for
like four people for myself and ate most of it.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
And I did that every single entertained.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
Did you think of having people over?
Speaker 2 (17:32):
You know what? I didn't know as many people as
I thought it did.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
What were your filming?
Speaker 4 (17:36):
So when I moved over, I just moved over for myself.
I just wanted to leave Ireland and I needed to
be somewhere else. But soon after I did Brooklyn, which
of course heavily focuses on leaving home and homesickness and
how shocking it is actually when you go through that experience,
because nothing can really prepare you for it, And so
(17:58):
I was going through that exact.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
Feeling and didn't have enough distance from it in order
to see it clearly, I think.
Speaker 4 (18:10):
So that was I would say that, and Ladybird, and
I've been saying this recently. Both of those characters were
highlighting something that I was feeling very very vividly in
my own life. And sometimes I found it really difficult
playing those roles because it was so close to home,
and it was very hard to have any separation from it,
(18:32):
I suppose, but Brooklyn in particular was very difficult.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
It was very overwhelming at times.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
Was it completely filmed in London?
Speaker 2 (18:39):
No, anything in London.
Speaker 4 (18:42):
We filmed three weeks in Ennescorthy, which is where it's
set in Wexford and that's where Contobain's from.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
And then we went to Montreal.
Speaker 4 (18:51):
Which doubled for Brooklyn because Brooklyn nowadays doesn't look like
it did in the fifties.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
Did you go to restaurants? Was a kind of experienced food?
Did your parents ever take you to restaurants? Or did
you when you were living alone in London? Did you
go to Greek or Chinese or eat food that was
other than Irish?
Speaker 4 (19:09):
I ate a lot, I mean we ate a lot
of different types of food in New York. Chinese was
my favorite. And actually, when I did Jamie Oliver's cooking show,
a few years ago, I asked, could we make general
sous chicken, which is something that you don't get here,
and I.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
Don't think he'd heard of it before.
Speaker 4 (19:28):
Some people say so, some people say show it's like tangy, yeah,
but spicy as well.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
It's not quite sweet and sour. It's kind of more.
Speaker 4 (19:38):
Like an orange dish. But yeah, we made it together.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
Which was really nice.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
Jack he loves does he love food?
Speaker 4 (19:47):
He loves food, but he loves how much I love food,
and I think he I remember when we were sort
of coursing.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
I ate.
Speaker 4 (19:56):
I think I was eating like a burger or something,
and I looked at him and I was like, what
are you looking at?
Speaker 2 (20:01):
We were watching something on the TV, and he was like,
I'm watching.
Speaker 4 (20:04):
You while you eat the burger because you're getting so
much out of the burger.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
And that was when I knew. I was like, you're
my guy, and thank you. So yeah, so we yeah,
we love it.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
And we were talking about Little Women and we're talking
about the food that can you talk about both of you?
Tell me about the food scene and little Women.
Speaker 3 (20:26):
The food and Little Women was period correct and there
were always like cakes and buns and things, and you know, I.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
Was just watching you eat all that ice cream.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
We ate those florins that ate all the ice cream.
I feel like you got it. Maybe it was me
as well.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
I ate.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
I ate a lot of popcorn that day.
Speaker 4 (20:48):
It was just really interesting that we would have these
scenes where either there was such a lack of food
and that's all we could talk about, or there was
too much food, or then we had a Christmas sequence
in Little Women where the food was repurposed for Christmas decorations,
which I've been very inspired by every Christmas since. So
(21:11):
I'll like dry oranges and use bits of popcorn and
put them on the string and.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
Things like that.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
They got very creative on Little Women.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
When you talk about film sets, and you've talked about
the dinner, the importance of the dinner at night, do
you have breakfast and do have lunch when you're working?
Speaker 4 (21:33):
Yeah, I definitely have lunch breakfast. I'll have something small
sometimes I'm not that hungry during breakfast. But each movie
has had a different type of breakfast. So like I
did a film in Australia a couple of years ago,
and they love veggiemite and they love their smashed avocado,
(21:55):
So I would have smashed avocado on toast with veggiemite
for breakfast every day, for breakfast every day the whole shoot. Yeah,
on a job I did at the start of the year,
I was just having smoothies.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
It depends breakfast isn't as important for me.
Speaker 4 (22:10):
But then when I'm away, you know, on holiday in
places like Italy and France, it will become very continental
and very much about the cheese and the meat and
the fruit. And I think when I'm in Italy or France,
that's the only time that I really enjoy breakfast.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
I look forward to breakfast because of how they do it.
I prefer how they do it, and when you're.
Speaker 1 (22:32):
Working to other foods that make you feel more like
working and some that make you feel more tired, is it.
Speaker 4 (22:40):
Yeah, I mean that's the problem actually on a lot
of movie sets is that less caterers are doing it now.
But for a really long time, caterers.
Speaker 2 (22:49):
Would make like really stodgy, heavy food when.
Speaker 4 (22:53):
We were doing Little Women and you were braggers, but
nobody knew. I knew something was off off because on
Ladybird all she ate ri Cheetos, like six packets of
Cheetos a day.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
You went back to the food of your kind of
teenage cheers.
Speaker 4 (23:11):
And then we went on to little women and I'd
come over to the monitor and she'd have a wooden
I specifically remember a wooden bowl, a big wooden bowl
with an entire roast chicken in the bowl, like.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
On a bed of salad.
Speaker 4 (23:25):
And she'd lead that every day and I was like,
what happened to you? Like, why are you so health conscious?
Speaker 1 (23:30):
Now?
Speaker 2 (23:31):
This isn't the credit. I knew it from a few
years ago.
Speaker 3 (23:35):
A good day, I had like a full leg of
lamb and you were like, you, Queen, I know.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
My young prince.
Speaker 5 (23:45):
Needs only the best.
Speaker 4 (23:47):
Even then at the end, when someone was like, she's pregnant,
that's what it is, I was like, that's a fox.
Speaker 3 (23:56):
Yeah, is it a fox or a cat?
Speaker 2 (23:59):
That's a dog, it's a terrier, it's not a fox.
But there's so many foxes around London now.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
When we have a flat in the basement and somebody
my son was down there and Bow had the door
open and the fox wondered, I like, London has foxes
kind of wild.
Speaker 3 (24:18):
It makes me feel like it is like not totally controlled.
Speaker 4 (24:23):
No, And I feel like the number of Foxes has
gone up in the last few years. We have a
street around the corner from us and it's like the
Fox Street, like there's a whole family that lived there.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
If you like listening to Ruthie's Table for would you
please make sure to rate and review the podcast on
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, O, wherever you get your podcasts.
Thank you. I thought we could talk about Blitz for
(25:00):
a minute. I haven't seen it. It's about a mother
and separation and a child in separation. Is that right?
Speaker 2 (25:06):
I guess yeah, I guess.
Speaker 4 (25:08):
What Steve mcquaan has done really brilliantly is that he's
paired the romanticism that I think people who grew up
during the Blitz and during the Second World War do
have about that period. And I think that's born out
of the human spirit that just will always endure no
matter what it's faced with. So that is absolutely something
to be celebrated. And we have moments of people coming
(25:31):
together and working.
Speaker 2 (25:32):
Together in Blitz, but in true Steve.
Speaker 4 (25:35):
Mcquaan fashion, it's an incredibly honest take on.
Speaker 2 (25:40):
The cruelty of life.
Speaker 4 (25:41):
And war and how hard people can be on one another,
and it kind of feels like the Blitz itself is
more of a backdrop for this very domestic story actually
between a child and his mother and that incredibly tense relationship,
especially between a single parents and their child, and how
(26:06):
when they are separated from one another there is this
invisible tie, as I'm sure you guys feel with your kids.
My best friend just had her first baby and she
said that, you know, even when I'm not with him,
i am there.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
There's one half of my brain that is just always
with him.
Speaker 4 (26:22):
And so I think that's what we're really connecting to
in Blitz, is that you.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
Are and grem Nord. Let's talk about grem Norton.
Speaker 4 (26:29):
I was on, Yes, I was on Graham and I
had such a great time, and I was there with Paul, Who's.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
There was love that. I really liked them all. I
did a podcast with Eddie and Paul's great.
Speaker 4 (26:44):
Yeah. And I think Paul and I knew over the
last few months that with him having Gladiator out, me
having these two movies out, that we would hopefully be
doing a lot of our press together, which is a
relief for us because I think when you're in you know,
a crowded and you're able to look across and see
someone that you genuinely love, like when Greta and I
(27:04):
will do stuff together as well, it just sort of
it grounds you. But yeah, there was this comment that
I was Eddie was being sort of coached on how
he could use anything as a weapon for his show,
that you could use any it could be a tea
cup or whatever, and the lads were saying, how you know,
(27:26):
in the heat of the moment, if you're being attached
by someone, you would never think to use anything as
a weapon. And I was listening to it, and it
really wasn't sort of me trying to put anyone in
their place, but I was just being honest about like
a girl's experience in this life is that you sort
of need to you need to look in your bag
(27:49):
before you go out, before you even leave the house,
and go, Okay, what can I use in case I
get attacked?
Speaker 2 (27:54):
And we can laugh about it, but it's true.
Speaker 4 (27:57):
And so I think that's why I made that comment
that actually, for girls, you do have to think about
this sort of stuff and you would be fully aware
that you can use something like an iPhone as a weapon.
But I am very conscious of that, like I don't
have kids yet, But the older I'm getting and the
more aware I am at the effect that that's had
(28:19):
on me as a person, and it does every single woman.
Speaker 2 (28:22):
I know.
Speaker 4 (28:23):
The idea of my little girl having to think about
that and this being on her shoulders as it inevitably will.
Speaker 1 (28:30):
Be, yeah and yours and hers, and yeah, it.
Speaker 2 (28:33):
Makes me so angry. Actually, it makes me really angry.
Speaker 4 (28:37):
And I guess the only way I've been able to
sort of take some control back over that particular narrative
that's just been sort of setting stone for women since
the beginning of time is to at least express it
to men so that they can have an awareness of
it as well.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
My daughter in law is a city planner and she's
working on women's safety. Thinking about safety, thinking about violence
is something we do all the time. And you have
a second movie.
Speaker 4 (29:04):
Yes, So my other film is The Outrun, which Greta
has say. I was very nervous about her saying it,
but it's a movie that.
Speaker 2 (29:13):
Nervous because there's no one I wonder more than Grata.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
Did she.
Speaker 5 (29:19):
Produced this movie?
Speaker 3 (29:20):
Yeah, so it was part of your grosses and artists
as a producer as well.
Speaker 4 (29:27):
So the Outrun is based on a memoir of the
same title by this woman called Amy Liptrop, and it's
about her recovery from alcoholism. Her relationship with alcohol became
sort of chaotic and out of control when she moved
from the Orkney Islands up in Scotland down to London,
(29:50):
and over the course of a few years she lost
kind of everything and everyone that was good in her
life and nothing left and eventually goes into rehab, gets
clean and unwillingly moves back to the Orkney Islands. And
(30:12):
it's about that sort of complicated relationship that we all
have with home and our parents, but also the healing
that can only come from actually facing your past.
Speaker 2 (30:24):
And it really is this.
Speaker 4 (30:26):
Kind of very intimate but also very epic story of
just someone healing themselves.
Speaker 2 (30:33):
It's been really special.
Speaker 3 (30:34):
It's very intimate and it's very.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
Watching a film of.
Speaker 2 (30:44):
Addiction and a film of recovery.
Speaker 3 (30:46):
It didn't feel like I was watching an actor act
a thing. I felt like I was watching how a
full body and need of you know, whatever the drug is,
but also the need of the recovery, Like it felt
embodied in every way. But this scene where you're like
(31:09):
asking the guy for a light outside of the cafe,
and you just need a friend, you need anyone, and
you're so lonely you could almost touch it, and it
was like a force field outside of her, and you're like,
and you also understand, of course you want to use
(31:31):
if you're that lonely. It was just really came through
the specificness of this very beautiful, very stark place.
Speaker 1 (31:41):
Yeah. Have either of you had to experience and experience
of people you love had with addiction, Yeah, it was.
Speaker 4 (31:48):
I think the reason why I wanted to make it
is because I've watched people very close to me go
through that. Some of them have seen the light and
some of them have not, and you feel you can't
help but resent them and the substance. And I think
I'd carried so much anger around with me my whole life,
(32:11):
and I really needed to let go of that. And
I knew that the only way that I could really
do that, and I still haven't fully done it, but
the only way that I could begin to understand it
as if I played someone with that particular addiction alcoholism.
Speaker 2 (32:26):
For me, especially coming.
Speaker 4 (32:28):
From Ireland where it is an issue, it's the same
in Britain as well.
Speaker 2 (32:33):
It's it's so accessible, it's so a power.
Speaker 1 (32:39):
In a house. I was taught that within a minute
of somebody entering your house, and it's actually rather nice
is to say, whether it's somebody coming to fix your dishwasher,
somebody coming to visit your child, or whatever it is,
you say, can I get your drink? And it could
be coffee or tea or something, but it means you're
stopping what you're doing to look at the person say
(32:59):
what can I get you? And so it's the kind
of little thing in the back of my mind. But
you also realize that a drink is also walking into
a house and being offered a glass of wine or
a gever it is, or.
Speaker 2 (33:11):
It's people on their own at the end of a hard.
Speaker 1 (33:13):
Day and they're like, oh, I'll just just have a
bottle to myself.
Speaker 2 (33:17):
And then suddenly that turns into two or three. And
it's so it can be so easily.
Speaker 4 (33:22):
Concealed alcoholism, I think in particular, and I find that
incredibly dangerous. And I've gone through stages in my life
where I've set I've been like, I'm not religious, but
I soundly religious. When I say this, I'm like, it's
the devil. It's like the devil incarnet. It just it
infects everything that it touches. And I hated it. And
(33:45):
I wouldn't say I've got total closure after experiencing bringing
someone to life with that particular addiction, but it certainly
helped me to understand, like the science behind it, the
effect that it has on the brain, so that at
least I have something that I can hold on to
when you feel like it's your fault, but that person
won't quit that it's a reflection on you, and of
(34:08):
course it isn't, and I think that's You're right. That's
why it would be so soul destroying if you're a kid,
or a partner or a family member has that issue
because you can't. There is no reason it has to
come from them. It doesn't matter what you do.
Speaker 3 (34:25):
It's I remember a line that Noah and I wrote
at one point, which is apropos at this moment in
this movie Mistress America, when one of them, the character
I play, wants to open a restaurant.
Speaker 1 (34:37):
But she she won't.
Speaker 3 (34:38):
Like you just sort of know she won't.
Speaker 1 (34:40):
She's not.
Speaker 3 (34:42):
Trustworthy anyway. She's asking for money from a guy she
used to date. And he said, having a restaurant.
Speaker 2 (34:48):
It's it's like having a kid with a drug problem.
It's really straining. Yeah, do you find he.
Speaker 5 (35:04):
Says, it's so callously in this moment, But just I
also my friends who luckily, thank god, been through recovery
and are like healthy. I've told them to see the outrun.
Speaker 3 (35:17):
You know, you don't want to say the wrong thing,
but anyway, really connected.
Speaker 1 (35:22):
We always end this with comfort. We go to eat
because of your mother sharing her love for you every night,
about feeding your husband, about going in the garden. But
food is also something for we reach for when we
need comfort. Is there a food that you would go
to for comfort?
Speaker 4 (35:42):
It's so obvious if I do, say mash potatoes, So
don't say no.
Speaker 1 (35:49):
Say it it so comfort for you would be okay,
mashed potatoes. Does it remind you of home?
Speaker 4 (35:54):
There's a few things, okay, okay, so there's there's mash potatoes. Also,
when when I was a kid, Mommy used to I
want to do this more. Actually she used to put
broccoli in with the mashed potatoes and some butter and
mix it together, and that was like, honestly the most
delicious thing ever. But also penny Ala vodka for me,
which I think originated at Alkie Batola.
Speaker 2 (36:16):
Right, so I've gone there.
Speaker 1 (36:18):
Isn't it great? And Florence just outside.
Speaker 2 (36:22):
Yes, I love it so much.
Speaker 4 (36:24):
I actually don't want to tell people about it because
then everyone will no, no, you talk about the best
restaurant ever.
Speaker 2 (36:32):
So Pennae Ala vodka for me.
Speaker 4 (36:35):
That would probably be my final meal, I would say,
with a bowl of mashed potatoes on the side.
Speaker 1 (36:42):
Do you make it yourself?
Speaker 2 (36:43):
Yeah, I've started to make do you make you know what?
Speaker 4 (36:47):
I don't make mashed potatoes as much as I should,
but I'm going to make more of it. And I
want to put some parmesan in with it as well,
so it's kind of chewiness.
Speaker 2 (36:55):
And but I'm starting to use butter.
Speaker 1 (36:58):
More and more. We've had lots of those conversations about
butter with lovely.
Speaker 4 (37:02):
Salty yellow butter. That's what makes me sad about America.
All the butter is quite white.
Speaker 3 (37:10):
I always buy the I always buy the salt and
carry gold, which is nice and yellow, which is Irish.
Speaker 2 (37:16):
That's the best butter, and they have it at Cinderella.
Someone said that to me recently.
Speaker 4 (37:22):
She was like, if you want to eat the best food,
Eat what your granny ate eat.
Speaker 2 (37:28):
Proper whole foods, proper butter, whole milk.
Speaker 4 (37:31):
I've gone back to Holts, unhomogenized on pasteurized milk.
Speaker 1 (37:36):
So it would be it would be mashed potatoes. And
how do you make your penny?
Speaker 4 (37:43):
Following a recipe with that one? So I've only done
it a couple of times. It's got a tiny bit
of chili in it, I think.
Speaker 1 (37:51):
And tomato tomato with cream.
Speaker 4 (37:55):
Yeah, very simple. I was telling your chef as well
about that. Marchella has anne simple tomato sauce.
Speaker 1 (38:01):
Y do that.
Speaker 2 (38:02):
I do that all the time, and when I'm away, Jack.
Speaker 4 (38:06):
Is useless when it comes to cooking for himself. So
I'm like the tin of tomato in the pot, put
the butter in, chop the onion in half, sprinkle salt,
simmare it for forty.
Speaker 2 (38:17):
You're good to go.
Speaker 1 (38:18):
Well, that was a great talk. We're going to do
more together. You're going to come and cook in the
River Cafe next time you bring your mom, bring my mom,
bring your mom.
Speaker 4 (38:26):
Yeah, thank you, I'd be a pleasure you
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How often have people said to me, there is a
certain person I must meet, Ruthie. I know you'll love
her for a while. This has been said to me
over and over about Sir shar Nan. In a way
I feel I have met her through the intimacy of
her performances, the movie she's shown to make and her
fourthright interviews Greta Gerwick, who directed her in Ladybird and
(01:05):
Little Women sat at the table with me in our house,
talking about Sirsha and how unique the experience of working
with her is. It's like we have one brain, she said.
Now the three of us are here together, sitting around
a table at the River Cafe. We're going to talk
about food and cooking, Sirsha's garden, learning to eat spaghetti,
(01:27):
and much much more. And now when people ask me,
I will say, yes, I've met her, and yes I
love her.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
Not so not I know is beautiful.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
It was so beautiful, so beautiful.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Spaghetti with crab. Okay, so today we have five hundred
grams of fresh crab meat. Is it white and dark
white white?
Speaker 4 (01:54):
Three fresh red chilies, seated and finely chopped, Four tablespoons
of flat leaf parsley, me chopped, the juice of four lemons,
three garlic cloves, peeled and ground paste, two hundred and
fifty mils of olive oil, five hundred grams of spaghetti.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
And extra virgin olive oil.
Speaker 4 (02:11):
Simple, simple, Put the crab in a bowl, add the chili's,
most of the chopped parsley, the lemon, juice of garlic, the.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
Season well, stir in the olive oil.
Speaker 4 (02:24):
I feel like something's happening behind my head while I'm
saying is cook the spaghetti and a generous amount of
boiling water and drain thoroughly, stir into the crab sauce, but.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
Do not reheat.
Speaker 4 (02:35):
Serve sprinkled with the remaining chop parsley and a generous
amount of olive oil.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
In Brooklyn, Yeah, you were taught how to eat spaghetti cetti,
So you're going to teach us. You're going to teach
Greta and I how to how to eat doing this right?
Speaker 4 (02:57):
Yeah, because well the girls in the film did it.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
The girls in the movie do it with a spoon.
I never use a spoon. I would use I would
never use.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
Well, they do that like they put the go for
your tech.
Speaker 4 (03:17):
I don't like using a spoon, do you You just
use the plate?
Speaker 2 (03:21):
Yeah, the Italian way. You just stab it and spin it,
stab and star.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
You were born in New York, Yeah, did your parents
still feel a sense of identity with Ireland in New
York and food wise?
Speaker 2 (03:38):
Do you think they did? They did? I think my
mom did. Especially. Everything was just always homemade for us.
It was always it was always the main event of
the day.
Speaker 4 (03:50):
She would cook more traditional Irish stuff, so she used to.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
She still like she cooks like coddle. Have you heard
of Irish coddle, which is like a stew. I don't know.
She also when I was working, she didn't do it.
Speaker 4 (04:03):
On a Ladybird because she wasn't around for long enough.
But Mom used to like batch cook and just like
bring food in for the crew, even though.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
Nobody asked for it.
Speaker 4 (04:13):
But she was like, I'll just make this and I'll
bring it in and whoever wants it can have it.
And she would heat it up in my trailer when
we were doing night shoots on like Hannah and stuff,
when we were in the middle of like I don't know,
Munich or something, and she'd make these like home cooked meals.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
And that's just kind of what I was used to.
Speaker 4 (04:30):
And coddle is sort of like an Irish stew that
you can kind of put anything into. Its peasant food,
like Ireland doesn't really have a cuisine in the way
that like Italy, France, like Southern America does, Like there's
no kind of specific diet except for potatoes and whatever
meat you can get your hand on. So the soup
(04:50):
would be she'd use like a vegetable broth. She puts
barley in. It's celery, carrots, onions, sausages, rashers as we
call them. But bacon, just lots and lots of goodness.
And we used to have that a lot grown up,
but we had that in the Bronx, Like that was
the kind of food that she used to make.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
Did she work when I was a kid, She was
a nanny, so she would come home from work and
then cook.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
Yeah, she did it all lot. She brought me to
work with her. Then she would cook.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
She took care of other people's children.
Speaker 4 (05:21):
She took care of other people's children. She would not
only cook for Dad and I. But we always had
Ireland stay with us. So because Dad became an actor
while he was over there, and that was absolutely not
part of the plan. Like Dad had not finished school,
(05:42):
he hadn't even been to the theater before he auditioned
for his first play. And when he got into that world,
it became everything, really and they became such a part
of that Irish American off off Broadway community. And so
we had actors staying with us all the time in
the Bronx, in the Bronx, in this tiny little like
(06:03):
one bedroom flat, and we had this pull out sofa
and you'd have like people like Brona Gallaher, who's this
incredible Irish actor, Like they would live with us and
man would cook for all of them.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
Did your parents go to New York out of a
desire to work?
Speaker 3 (06:18):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (06:18):
Yeah, they left school when they were like fifteen sixteen
and that was the place to go back then.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
So I think they had friends who had moved over
ahead of them.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
And then they went back to Ireland. And so you
probably don't remember New York if you left when you three.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
I remember what I ate?
Speaker 1 (06:36):
You don't before three? Can you remember what you ate
before three?
Speaker 2 (06:39):
Don't what she does?
Speaker 1 (06:40):
Yeah? Interesting?
Speaker 4 (06:42):
There was this diner that I went back to for
like a sixty second sixty secondary sixty minutes.
Speaker 3 (06:49):
That sixty minutes, sixty minutes, it's only sixty seconds.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
Your generation sounds.
Speaker 4 (06:55):
Like before you came in your generation.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
Version, Yeah, segments.
Speaker 4 (07:05):
And they brought me back to this diner that I
used to go to when I was a kid, when
I was like three or four, and I always had
a grilled cheese sandwich and a pickle.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
Yeah, and you can remember that from being Yeah, and
so was it? Did they react when they went back
to Ireland, did they go back with joy and pleasure
or did they just find New York was too tough?
Speaker 2 (07:30):
New York was tough.
Speaker 4 (07:31):
They didn't have enough money to stay there. But also
Dad had become an actor that was doing relatively well
and there was a surge of Irish work at that
time because of Jim Sheard and Neil Jordan people like that,
So the work was just taking him back home. And
I think when ma'm had me, she was adamant that
(07:53):
she was going to have me in the States so
that I had citizenship, so that I was free to
sort of roam in a way that they never were,
which has been such a blessing in hindsight, because I
you know, I've lived and worked in the States and
I can come and go as I play, as I
can vote in the election.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
Which is great.
Speaker 4 (08:12):
But I think she realized that this wasn't the kind
of environment she wanted me to grow up. And because
they didn't have enough money to like get a beautiful
apartment or have a garden, or to a four day care, like.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
They just didn't have that.
Speaker 4 (08:32):
And also I think to have that support system for anyone,
no matter where you live is so important when you
have a kid. And also the work was taken dad
back there, so they moved back.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
But the really.
Speaker 4 (08:42):
Interesting thing that my mom has kind of very honestly
talked about me over the years is that there is
still this notion of like the American dream and you
sort of becoming like the next Kennedy. And when you
come back from America and that hasn't happened, you sort
of feel like your tail is between your legs a
(09:03):
little bit. That you came back and it wasn't the
success story that you thought it would be. It really
made them who they are and they made some incredible
friends over there, and I don't know if I would
be doing what I am doing if they hadn't made
that move, because that's where he was sort of discovered.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
As an actor. But it was it was hard, you know.
Speaker 4 (09:25):
And they were also coming back to Ireland during the
Celtic Tiger where everything had become so expensive in that booth.
That was the night that was like, yeah, the nineties,
two thousands, and that was to Dublin. They moved back
to Dublin for a spell and then we that's what
took us to the countryside because Dublin was just too.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
Expect You remember the garden. Was there a garden in
the country side, Yes, your mother, because you have a
garden in London, don't you.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
I have a little garden in London.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
And what was a garden like in your house when
you're growing up?
Speaker 2 (09:54):
It was the best we had.
Speaker 4 (09:56):
That's where I used to do all my audition tapes
and and that was always the thing.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
That like directors and producers.
Speaker 4 (10:03):
Commented on when I sent over my audition for Atonement.
I remember Gina j the cast an agent, and Joe
the director, and everyone was like, we just couldn't believe
it when you came out of that orp English accent
and you showed us around this beautiful garden.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
That you grow around the garden.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
It was a big garden. It was probably like half
an acre. It had. I remember when we moved in,
there was two rose beds.
Speaker 4 (10:30):
That my mom hated. My mom never liked roses for
some reason. I think they were sort of hard to tame.
And she did the whole garden by herself. She used
to use like a.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
Manual lawnmower and she would do the whole thing.
Speaker 4 (10:43):
It was like backbreaking work and it would take her
like two days to cut all of the grass. It
was quite manicured when we moved in, and she kept
it up for years.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
Was it vegebles of flowers?
Speaker 4 (10:54):
It was flowers, and we had The people who owned
it before us were an older couple and the woman
was really into vegetables and she had a grapevine in
a glasshouse. So I remember that was in the middle
of the garden. And then over on the other side
there was a sort of big stone wall with a
tree grown out of it. And my dad did tree
(11:16):
surgery for a while and there was a guy that
he worked with who one day just decided to tie
sort of this thick blue rope to the tree and
he added a little log to the end of it
and that was their swing. We just called it the rope,
and myself and any of my friends that were over
would just spend.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
Like the whole day out there.
Speaker 4 (11:37):
Yeah, we have a really beautiful garden in Scotland. My
husband Scottish and.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
We have vegetables that we grew this year. And so I.
Speaker 4 (11:47):
Keep thinking about like hopefully when we have kids one
day being able to.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
Be like, should we go out to the shops.
Speaker 4 (11:54):
Just wandering outside digging up a load of potatoes.
Speaker 2 (11:57):
And onions and shalots, and.
Speaker 4 (11:59):
I'm getting so much enjoyment out of that, and I
find it. It might sound silly to say, but I
find it really inspirational. It like it feeds my soul
in a way that the city just doesn't.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
When I interviewed Michael Caine, two things he liked with
gardening and cooking because being an actor on a set,
you have hundreds of people. It's collaborative. You've got people
around you. And it was something that he could do
by himself alone, but he could make something.
Speaker 4 (12:29):
You know, whether there was and it's something that's taken
out of your hands when you are an actor a
lot of the time, Like I've gone on to jobs
where I vowed to cook for myself and then bring
everything in during the week, and you just don't.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
You just don't follow through with it.
Speaker 4 (12:44):
But I I really miss it, and it makes me
feel quite empty when I can't cook for myself.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
Like yesterday was Sunday, I cooked.
Speaker 4 (12:55):
A massive roast for just myself and my husband with
all the trimmings, and it was delicious and full of love.
And I took a few hours to put it together
the proue. So I was telling your chef, I think
it's from this cookbook that I found called Bitter Honey.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
Have you come across that coup book?
Speaker 4 (13:14):
And it's this english woman who moved over to Sardinia and.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
She has this beautiful recipe for.
Speaker 4 (13:21):
Like this anchovy garlic rosemary butter with lemon zest that
she puts into a micrea that she puts into the chicken.
And so I made a big stock of it ages
ago and froze it and then just used a little
bit of it yesterday.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
And I did that with like lots of gorgeous roasted
veg with.
Speaker 4 (13:41):
With a honey that I got in Broadway Market yesterday actually,
which is honey from the Venetian Lagoon.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
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Speaker 4 (14:37):
Food has always been so important to me. It's it's
so emotional for everyone. But like my dinner in particular
is something that I cannot skip. It's kind of how
I like anchor myself.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
I build my whole day. I'm not joking. I build
my whole day.
Speaker 4 (14:55):
Around my dinner and what I'm going to cook and
when I'm gonna have it and who I'm gonna have
it with.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
Your mother brought up with that notion of food that
was your grandmother. Do you think your grandmother brought your
mother up to have a meal every night and that
food was that you had.
Speaker 4 (15:10):
I don't think Mam will mind me saying mom has
quite a complex relationship with food.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
But she I think.
Speaker 4 (15:18):
She's always believed that by making and my dad is
an incredible cook as well. She believed by injecting love
into the food, you will taste that.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
And she every.
Speaker 4 (15:33):
Single Sunday, no matter where we were, would make a
Sunday roast, and that was our tradition.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
You started so young, acting so do your mother brought
domestic life wherever you were working. Yeah, so when did
that stop?
Speaker 2 (15:48):
I was about eighteen or nineteen when I did.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
Why did it stop? But you just thought it.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
Was just time, you know. But it was an adjustment
because she had been with me constantly for this whole time,
through this incredibly formative, intense stage in my life, for
every single moment of it.
Speaker 4 (16:10):
She was the one who I ran lines with. She
was the one who when I would come home at
the end of the day, I'd go, do you think
this director likes me? Or like, I don't know, did
this go well today? Or I don't think I did
that as well as I could have done.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
And she was the thing that.
Speaker 4 (16:25):
Really kind of kept me in reality, and it was
an adjustment for both of it.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
Did she I share this with you?
Speaker 2 (16:34):
She did.
Speaker 4 (16:35):
My dad is an excellent cook, so I think I
learned a lot from my dad. And then also just
when I left home when I was about ninety and
I moved to London. I was in Highgate, which wasn't
the right place for a teenager to go, but anyway,
I went to Highgate and it was lovely, but I
was very much I had my own flat because I'm
(16:56):
not into like living with anyone.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
But I do regret that now, and I was very
very lonely, and I don't know, I didn't make a
conscious decision to.
Speaker 4 (17:07):
Do it, but I just it seemed to be very
very important to me that I picked a recipe every
single day and decided what I was going to cook
for dinner just for myself that night. And I hadn't
figured out like portion control yet, so I cooked for
like four people for myself and ate most of it.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
And I did that every single entertained.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
Did you think of having people over?
Speaker 2 (17:32):
You know what? I didn't know as many people as
I thought it did.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
What were your filming?
Speaker 4 (17:36):
So when I moved over, I just moved over for myself.
I just wanted to leave Ireland and I needed to
be somewhere else. But soon after I did Brooklyn, which
of course heavily focuses on leaving home and homesickness and
how shocking it is actually when you go through that experience,
because nothing can really prepare you for it, And so
(17:58):
I was going through that exact.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
Feeling and didn't have enough distance from it in order
to see it clearly, I think.
Speaker 4 (18:10):
So that was I would say that, and Ladybird, and
I've been saying this recently. Both of those characters were
highlighting something that I was feeling very very vividly in
my own life. And sometimes I found it really difficult
playing those roles because it was so close to home,
and it was very hard to have any separation from it,
(18:32):
I suppose, but Brooklyn in particular was very difficult.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
It was very overwhelming at times.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
Was it completely filmed in London?
Speaker 2 (18:39):
No, anything in London.
Speaker 4 (18:42):
We filmed three weeks in Ennescorthy, which is where it's
set in Wexford and that's where Contobain's from.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
And then we went to Montreal.
Speaker 4 (18:51):
Which doubled for Brooklyn because Brooklyn nowadays doesn't look like
it did in the fifties.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
Did you go to restaurants? Was a kind of experienced food?
Did your parents ever take you to restaurants? Or did
you when you were living alone in London? Did you
go to Greek or Chinese or eat food that was
other than Irish?
Speaker 4 (19:09):
I ate a lot, I mean we ate a lot
of different types of food in New York. Chinese was
my favorite. And actually, when I did Jamie Oliver's cooking show,
a few years ago, I asked, could we make general
sous chicken, which is something that you don't get here,
and I.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
Don't think he'd heard of it before.
Speaker 4 (19:28):
Some people say so, some people say show it's like tangy, yeah,
but spicy as well.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
It's not quite sweet and sour. It's kind of more.
Speaker 4 (19:38):
Like an orange dish. But yeah, we made it together.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
Which was really nice.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
Jack he loves does he love food?
Speaker 4 (19:47):
He loves food, but he loves how much I love food,
and I think he I remember when we were sort
of coursing.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
I ate.
Speaker 4 (19:56):
I think I was eating like a burger or something,
and I looked at him and I was like, what
are you looking at?
Speaker 2 (20:01):
We were watching something on the TV, and he was like,
I'm watching.
Speaker 4 (20:04):
You while you eat the burger because you're getting so
much out of the burger.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
And that was when I knew. I was like, you're
my guy, and thank you. So yeah, so we yeah,
we love it.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
And we were talking about Little Women and we're talking
about the food that can you talk about both of you?
Tell me about the food scene and little Women.
Speaker 3 (20:26):
The food and Little Women was period correct and there
were always like cakes and buns and things, and you know, I.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
Was just watching you eat all that ice cream.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
We ate those florins that ate all the ice cream.
I feel like you got it. Maybe it was me
as well.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
I ate.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
I ate a lot of popcorn that day.
Speaker 4 (20:48):
It was just really interesting that we would have these
scenes where either there was such a lack of food
and that's all we could talk about, or there was
too much food, or then we had a Christmas sequence
in Little Women where the food was repurposed for Christmas decorations,
which I've been very inspired by every Christmas since. So
(21:11):
I'll like dry oranges and use bits of popcorn and
put them on the string and.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
Things like that.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
They got very creative on Little Women.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
When you talk about film sets, and you've talked about
the dinner, the importance of the dinner at night, do
you have breakfast and do have lunch when you're working?
Speaker 4 (21:33):
Yeah, I definitely have lunch breakfast. I'll have something small
sometimes I'm not that hungry during breakfast. But each movie
has had a different type of breakfast. So like I
did a film in Australia a couple of years ago,
and they love veggiemite and they love their smashed avocado,
(21:55):
So I would have smashed avocado on toast with veggiemite
for breakfast every day, for breakfast every day the whole shoot. Yeah,
on a job I did at the start of the year,
I was just having smoothies.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
It depends breakfast isn't as important for me.
Speaker 4 (22:10):
But then when I'm away, you know, on holiday in
places like Italy and France, it will become very continental
and very much about the cheese and the meat and
the fruit. And I think when I'm in Italy or France,
that's the only time that I really enjoy breakfast.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
I look forward to breakfast because of how they do it.
I prefer how they do it, and when you're.
Speaker 1 (22:32):
Working to other foods that make you feel more like
working and some that make you feel more tired, is it.
Speaker 4 (22:40):
Yeah, I mean that's the problem actually on a lot
of movie sets is that less caterers are doing it now.
But for a really long time, caterers.
Speaker 2 (22:49):
Would make like really stodgy, heavy food when.
Speaker 4 (22:53):
We were doing Little Women and you were braggers, but
nobody knew. I knew something was off off because on
Ladybird all she ate ri Cheetos, like six packets of
Cheetos a day.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
You went back to the food of your kind of
teenage cheers.
Speaker 4 (23:11):
And then we went on to little women and I'd
come over to the monitor and she'd have a wooden
I specifically remember a wooden bowl, a big wooden bowl
with an entire roast chicken in the bowl, like.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
On a bed of salad.
Speaker 4 (23:25):
And she'd lead that every day and I was like,
what happened to you? Like, why are you so health conscious?
Speaker 1 (23:30):
Now?
Speaker 2 (23:31):
This isn't the credit. I knew it from a few
years ago.
Speaker 3 (23:35):
A good day, I had like a full leg of
lamb and you were like, you, Queen, I know.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
My young prince.
Speaker 5 (23:45):
Needs only the best.
Speaker 4 (23:47):
Even then at the end, when someone was like, she's pregnant,
that's what it is, I was like, that's a fox.
Speaker 3 (23:56):
Yeah, is it a fox or a cat?
Speaker 2 (23:59):
That's a dog, it's a terrier, it's not a fox.
But there's so many foxes around London now.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
When we have a flat in the basement and somebody
my son was down there and Bow had the door
open and the fox wondered, I like, London has foxes
kind of wild.
Speaker 3 (24:18):
It makes me feel like it is like not totally controlled.
Speaker 4 (24:23):
No, And I feel like the number of Foxes has
gone up in the last few years. We have a
street around the corner from us and it's like the
Fox Street, like there's a whole family that lived there.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
If you like listening to Ruthie's Table for would you
please make sure to rate and review the podcast on
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, O, wherever you get your podcasts.
Thank you. I thought we could talk about Blitz for
(25:00):
a minute. I haven't seen it. It's about a mother
and separation and a child in separation. Is that right?
Speaker 2 (25:06):
I guess yeah, I guess.
Speaker 4 (25:08):
What Steve mcquaan has done really brilliantly is that he's
paired the romanticism that I think people who grew up
during the Blitz and during the Second World War do
have about that period. And I think that's born out
of the human spirit that just will always endure no
matter what it's faced with. So that is absolutely something
to be celebrated. And we have moments of people coming
(25:31):
together and working.
Speaker 2 (25:32):
Together in Blitz, but in true Steve.
Speaker 4 (25:35):
Mcquaan fashion, it's an incredibly honest take on.
Speaker 2 (25:40):
The cruelty of life.
Speaker 4 (25:41):
And war and how hard people can be on one another,
and it kind of feels like the Blitz itself is
more of a backdrop for this very domestic story actually
between a child and his mother and that incredibly tense relationship,
especially between a single parents and their child, and how
(26:06):
when they are separated from one another there is this
invisible tie, as I'm sure you guys feel with your kids.
My best friend just had her first baby and she
said that, you know, even when I'm not with him,
i am there.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
There's one half of my brain that is just always
with him.
Speaker 4 (26:22):
And so I think that's what we're really connecting to
in Blitz, is that you.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
Are and grem Nord. Let's talk about grem Norton.
Speaker 4 (26:29):
I was on, Yes, I was on Graham and I
had such a great time, and I was there with Paul, Who's.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
There was love that. I really liked them all. I
did a podcast with Eddie and Paul's great.
Speaker 4 (26:44):
Yeah. And I think Paul and I knew over the
last few months that with him having Gladiator out, me
having these two movies out, that we would hopefully be
doing a lot of our press together, which is a
relief for us because I think when you're in you know,
a crowded and you're able to look across and see
someone that you genuinely love, like when Greta and I
(27:04):
will do stuff together as well, it just sort of
it grounds you. But yeah, there was this comment that
I was Eddie was being sort of coached on how
he could use anything as a weapon for his show,
that you could use any it could be a tea
cup or whatever, and the lads were saying, how you know,
(27:26):
in the heat of the moment, if you're being attached
by someone, you would never think to use anything as
a weapon. And I was listening to it, and it
really wasn't sort of me trying to put anyone in
their place, but I was just being honest about like
a girl's experience in this life is that you sort
of need to you need to look in your bag
(27:49):
before you go out, before you even leave the house,
and go, Okay, what can I use in case I
get attacked?
Speaker 2 (27:54):
And we can laugh about it, but it's true.
Speaker 4 (27:57):
And so I think that's why I made that comment
that actually, for girls, you do have to think about
this sort of stuff and you would be fully aware
that you can use something like an iPhone as a weapon.
But I am very conscious of that, like I don't
have kids yet, But the older I'm getting and the
more aware I am at the effect that that's had
(28:19):
on me as a person, and it does every single woman.
Speaker 2 (28:22):
I know.
Speaker 4 (28:23):
The idea of my little girl having to think about
that and this being on her shoulders as it inevitably will.
Speaker 1 (28:30):
Be, yeah and yours and hers, and yeah, it.
Speaker 2 (28:33):
Makes me so angry. Actually, it makes me really angry.
Speaker 4 (28:37):
And I guess the only way I've been able to
sort of take some control back over that particular narrative
that's just been sort of setting stone for women since
the beginning of time is to at least express it
to men so that they can have an awareness of
it as well.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
My daughter in law is a city planner and she's
working on women's safety. Thinking about safety, thinking about violence
is something we do all the time. And you have
a second movie.
Speaker 4 (29:04):
Yes, So my other film is The Outrun, which Greta
has say. I was very nervous about her saying it,
but it's a movie that.
Speaker 2 (29:13):
Nervous because there's no one I wonder more than Grata.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
Did she.
Speaker 5 (29:19):
Produced this movie?
Speaker 3 (29:20):
Yeah, so it was part of your grosses and artists
as a producer as well.
Speaker 4 (29:27):
So the Outrun is based on a memoir of the
same title by this woman called Amy Liptrop, and it's
about her recovery from alcoholism. Her relationship with alcohol became
sort of chaotic and out of control when she moved
from the Orkney Islands up in Scotland down to London,
(29:50):
and over the course of a few years she lost
kind of everything and everyone that was good in her
life and nothing left and eventually goes into rehab, gets
clean and unwillingly moves back to the Orkney Islands. And
(30:12):
it's about that sort of complicated relationship that we all
have with home and our parents, but also the healing
that can only come from actually facing your past.
Speaker 2 (30:24):
And it really is this.
Speaker 4 (30:26):
Kind of very intimate but also very epic story of
just someone healing themselves.
Speaker 2 (30:33):
It's been really special.
Speaker 3 (30:34):
It's very intimate and it's very.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
Watching a film of.
Speaker 2 (30:44):
Addiction and a film of recovery.
Speaker 3 (30:46):
It didn't feel like I was watching an actor act
a thing. I felt like I was watching how a
full body and need of you know, whatever the drug is,
but also the need of the recovery, Like it felt
embodied in every way. But this scene where you're like
(31:09):
asking the guy for a light outside of the cafe,
and you just need a friend, you need anyone, and
you're so lonely you could almost touch it, and it
was like a force field outside of her, and you're like,
and you also understand, of course you want to use
(31:31):
if you're that lonely. It was just really came through
the specificness of this very beautiful, very stark place.
Speaker 1 (31:41):
Yeah. Have either of you had to experience and experience
of people you love had with addiction, Yeah, it was.
Speaker 4 (31:48):
I think the reason why I wanted to make it
is because I've watched people very close to me go
through that. Some of them have seen the light and
some of them have not, and you feel you can't
help but resent them and the substance. And I think
I'd carried so much anger around with me my whole life,
(32:11):
and I really needed to let go of that. And
I knew that the only way that I could really
do that, and I still haven't fully done it, but
the only way that I could begin to understand it
as if I played someone with that particular addiction alcoholism.
Speaker 2 (32:26):
For me, especially coming.
Speaker 4 (32:28):
From Ireland where it is an issue, it's the same
in Britain as well.
Speaker 2 (32:33):
It's it's so accessible, it's so a power.
Speaker 1 (32:39):
In a house. I was taught that within a minute
of somebody entering your house, and it's actually rather nice
is to say, whether it's somebody coming to fix your dishwasher,
somebody coming to visit your child, or whatever it is,
you say, can I get your drink? And it could
be coffee or tea or something, but it means you're
stopping what you're doing to look at the person say
(32:59):
what can I get you? And so it's the kind
of little thing in the back of my mind. But
you also realize that a drink is also walking into
a house and being offered a glass of wine or
a gever it is, or.
Speaker 2 (33:11):
It's people on their own at the end of a hard.
Speaker 1 (33:13):
Day and they're like, oh, I'll just just have a
bottle to myself.
Speaker 2 (33:17):
And then suddenly that turns into two or three. And
it's so it can be so easily.
Speaker 4 (33:22):
Concealed alcoholism, I think in particular, and I find that
incredibly dangerous. And I've gone through stages in my life
where I've set I've been like, I'm not religious, but
I soundly religious. When I say this, I'm like, it's
the devil. It's like the devil incarnet. It just it
infects everything that it touches. And I hated it. And
(33:45):
I wouldn't say I've got total closure after experiencing bringing
someone to life with that particular addiction, but it certainly
helped me to understand, like the science behind it, the
effect that it has on the brain, so that at
least I have something that I can hold on to
when you feel like it's your fault, but that person
won't quit that it's a reflection on you, and of
(34:08):
course it isn't, and I think that's You're right. That's
why it would be so soul destroying if you're a kid,
or a partner or a family member has that issue
because you can't. There is no reason it has to
come from them. It doesn't matter what you do.
Speaker 3 (34:25):
It's I remember a line that Noah and I wrote
at one point, which is apropos at this moment in
this movie Mistress America, when one of them, the character
I play, wants to open a restaurant.
Speaker 1 (34:37):
But she she won't.
Speaker 3 (34:38):
Like you just sort of know she won't.
Speaker 1 (34:40):
She's not.
Speaker 3 (34:42):
Trustworthy anyway. She's asking for money from a guy she
used to date. And he said, having a restaurant.
Speaker 2 (34:48):
It's it's like having a kid with a drug problem.
It's really straining. Yeah, do you find he.
Speaker 5 (35:04):
Says, it's so callously in this moment, But just I
also my friends who luckily, thank god, been through recovery
and are like healthy. I've told them to see the outrun.
Speaker 3 (35:17):
You know, you don't want to say the wrong thing,
but anyway, really connected.
Speaker 1 (35:22):
We always end this with comfort. We go to eat
because of your mother sharing her love for you every night,
about feeding your husband, about going in the garden. But
food is also something for we reach for when we
need comfort. Is there a food that you would go
to for comfort?
Speaker 4 (35:42):
It's so obvious if I do, say mash potatoes, So
don't say no.
Speaker 1 (35:49):
Say it it so comfort for you would be okay,
mashed potatoes. Does it remind you of home?
Speaker 4 (35:54):
There's a few things, okay, okay, so there's there's mash potatoes. Also,
when when I was a kid, Mommy used to I
want to do this more. Actually she used to put
broccoli in with the mashed potatoes and some butter and
mix it together, and that was like, honestly the most
delicious thing ever. But also penny Ala vodka for me,
which I think originated at Alkie Batola.
Speaker 2 (36:16):
Right, so I've gone there.
Speaker 1 (36:18):
Isn't it great? And Florence just outside.
Speaker 2 (36:22):
Yes, I love it so much.
Speaker 4 (36:24):
I actually don't want to tell people about it because
then everyone will no, no, you talk about the best
restaurant ever.
Speaker 2 (36:32):
So Pennae Ala vodka for me.
Speaker 4 (36:35):
That would probably be my final meal, I would say,
with a bowl of mashed potatoes on the side.
Speaker 1 (36:42):
Do you make it yourself?
Speaker 2 (36:43):
Yeah, I've started to make do you make you know what?
Speaker 4 (36:47):
I don't make mashed potatoes as much as I should,
but I'm going to make more of it. And I
want to put some parmesan in with it as well,
so it's kind of chewiness.
Speaker 2 (36:55):
And but I'm starting to use butter.
Speaker 1 (36:58):
More and more. We've had lots of those conversations about
butter with lovely.
Speaker 4 (37:02):
Salty yellow butter. That's what makes me sad about America.
All the butter is quite white.
Speaker 3 (37:10):
I always buy the I always buy the salt and
carry gold, which is nice and yellow, which is Irish.
Speaker 2 (37:16):
That's the best butter, and they have it at Cinderella.
Someone said that to me recently.
Speaker 4 (37:22):
She was like, if you want to eat the best food,
Eat what your granny ate eat.
Speaker 2 (37:28):
Proper whole foods, proper butter, whole milk.
Speaker 4 (37:31):
I've gone back to Holts, unhomogenized on pasteurized milk.
Speaker 1 (37:36):
So it would be it would be mashed potatoes. And
how do you make your penny?
Speaker 4 (37:43):
Following a recipe with that one? So I've only done
it a couple of times. It's got a tiny bit
of chili in it, I think.
Speaker 1 (37:51):
And tomato tomato with cream.
Speaker 4 (37:55):
Yeah, very simple. I was telling your chef as well
about that. Marchella has anne simple tomato sauce.
Speaker 1 (38:01):
Y do that.
Speaker 2 (38:02):
I do that all the time, and when I'm away, Jack.
Speaker 4 (38:06):
Is useless when it comes to cooking for himself. So
I'm like the tin of tomato in the pot, put
the butter in, chop the onion in half, sprinkle salt,
simmare it for forty.
Speaker 2 (38:17):
You're good to go.
Speaker 1 (38:18):
Well, that was a great talk. We're going to do
more together. You're going to come and cook in the
River Cafe next time you bring your mom, bring my mom,
bring your mom.
Speaker 4 (38:26):
Yeah, thank you, I'd be a pleasure you
Host
Ruth Rogers
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