Best of Season Four: Part 1

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1:09In October, I sat down at the River Cafe with director Guillermo del Toro for the first episode in a new season of Ruthie's Table 4. Forty guests later, Season 4 has come to an end and we thought it would be fun to look back at some of those conversations. Today, we'll be hearing from Elton John, David Furnish, Zoe Saldana, Josh Brolin, Bella Freud, Alice Walters, and we'll begin with Anthony Scaramucci, former White House Communication Director, famously for 10 days. If you're ever having a bad day and you're listening to this podcast, I want you to imagine my day on the 31st of July, 2017, when I got my ass fired from the White House, blown into Pennsylvania Avenue, skinned alive by the media, rolled in margarita salt.

1:59And I was on the Santa Monica promenade. I don't know if you've ever been out there at that open door promenade on 3rd and 4th Street. And my son at that time, he's 33 now, but he was 25 then. He put his arm around me and he said, Dad, are you going to be okay? It was the first time in my life where my son was parenting me as opposed to me parenting him. and I didn't really remember the feeling if I was going to be okay or not, but I remember what I said to him. I said, yeah, I'm going to be okay. Watch what I do with this. And I think it's very important for kids to see their parents get through things, whatever they may be, because then in their mind they have space for their own failures.

2:40They have space for whatever they come up short on in their lives where they can say, okay, well, it happened to my mom or it happened to my dad, and they were able to get through it. I can too. what you described as one of the worst imaginable situations of being fired. What was that? Tell me what that was like. First of all, before you went. First of all, I deserve to be fired. We can talk about that, too, so you have to be accountable. I should have never taken that job. I mean, this is a joke inside the family. I mean, my wife hates Trump. Tell us what the job was. Okay, so I was the White House communications director for 11 days.

3:14I mean, my wife hates Donald Trump like almost as much as Melania hates him. So, I mean, that's like way up here, right? And so, I mean, and she told me not to do it. And this is a real cautionary tale. I did it for ego-related reasons. I had grown up in a blue-collar family. I went to Tufts and Harvard Law School. I had started two successful businesses, sold one in my late 30s. And so I had some financial independence, and now I had a chance to work for the American president. And the funny thing about this is it's just a sign of my bad judgment or my immaturity. My mentor, who I totally respect, who's about 10 years older than me, was given a big job in the administration.

3:57And in December, he called me to say he wasn't taking it. And I said, what? And he said, no, I'm not going to take it. I spent enough time with Trump to know that we're like oil and water. And it's going to end badly for me if I take the job. and my ego's in the right place and I'm not going to take the job. But that wasn't me, Ruthie. I took the job because my ego and my pride were driving me to the notion that I was going to work in the White House and help solve some problems and work on policy and help people. I mean, there was a little bit of idealism in there, but what there really was, was a lot of egocenturism.

4:33It was filling the self-narrative of me and it was quite detrimental. I mean, Deirdre and I almost got divorced. I missed the birth of my fifth child. I was in, it still pains me to talk about it, but I'll share it here. James was born on July 24th, 2017. It was a Monday. I was with President Trump at the Boy Scouts event in West Virginia. Deirdre and I were fighting. She was due on August 8th or 9th, and she was delivering prematurely a couple of weeks early, and there's a 60-mile no-fly zone around Air Force One. So when Air Force One comes into an area, they have fighter planes, but they also have, you know, you can't go over Air Force One, you can't fly over that airspace.

5:22And so it was an impossibility to get back to New York. So I missed the birth of my son. So you have to imagine this week, I'm working for President Trump. It is not going well because there's a lot of internecine fighting in the White House. Trump is doing things that a lot of us are looking at saying, I don't really want to be involved with that. Fighting with him. Then I get fired, almost divorced, missed the birth of my son. So again, if you're having a bad weekend, everybody's having a bad week, give me a call. I can tell you about a really bad week, but we should take it back to food. But I'm just saying to you.

5:56No, I agree. I know. I think, okay, tell me who eats better, the Democrats or the Republicans? I had one meal with Trump in the White House in the Blue Room. Okay, tell us what it's like to eat. Was it lunch or dinner? It was on a Wednesday. And you know how I know it was a Wednesday? I was only there for one Wednesday, Ruth. So I know it was a Wednesday. So I had beef wellington. This son of a bitch is going to live to 500 years old. He eats well-done meat with ketchup. Okay, but the chef in the White House was making a beef wellington, and he loved it. I think he had it, you know, I probably had it like two out of five weekday nights.

6:31And so I had beef wellington with him in a salad. What else did you eat with him? You know, he likes, I mean, hamburgers on the campaign. Remember, I did nine months of campaigning with Trump, so there's a tremendous amount of fast food. This guy eats McDonald's french fries, quarter pounders with cheese, Jimmy John's cold cuts. Does he seem to enjoy it? Does he sit there savoring it, or is it just getting the food down? No, no, no. He is a fast food maniac. Yeah, that's depressing. By the way, I mean, he would come off the plane. We were campaigning. He'd be like asking the cops where the Burger King was.

7:04And he'd be like, what do you want from Burger King? I'm like, I don't want anything from Burger King. One of Zoe Saldana's mantras in life is feel the fear and do it anyway. And what hasn't she done? She dances, she acts, she sings, she speaks several languages, and I think she loves to cook. My family has been in New York since 1960s. and I lived there until I was 10. From 10 to 17, I was in Dominican Republic. And you went back to New York? When I was 17. My mom is working. My stepdad is working. My sisters and I were finding our afternoon sort of placements. I was working also on the weekends at Burger King.

7:50Wait, stop there. What were you doing? I worked at Burger King. And what did you do there? I did the drive-thru. you know I would hi welcome to Burger King might take your order there was a lady from Guyanese lady who was like my boss and I just loved her accent welcome to Burger King might take your order like and I would I would like I wasn't making fun of her I would just try to kind of acquire this this accent because it was also like I now that I'm back in New York I'm reconnecting with all these multi-cultures all over the place and a lot of a big part of them was connecting with other Caribbean people.

8:26You know, we're from Spanish Antillas. So the West Indies, English Antillas and the British Islands or whatever, like we didn't really have that in Dominican Republic. So now I'm connecting with Jamaicans. I'm connecting with people from Aruba, St. Lucia, Grand Cayman, Cuba. So, and Queens is definitely a very big West Indian. And so is Brooklyn, West Indian melting pot. So I was going bananas for the food. It was so good. And so I worked with a whole bunch of Caribbean people, but we were from different parts at Burger King, and it was fun. I feel like that's when my curiosity over human behavior and who we are as people began.

9:07I think a restaurant does teach you that. Absolutely. I always say that walk into a restaurant, look at a table, everybody having fun, and everybody has a story. That's why I really love walking in a restaurant. And one of my managers was this woman who must have been in her late 30s, but she drove to work in a motorcycle. You know, she was just, stop, can I get a muffin junior? Like she would just talk like, I'm a muffin junior. She just had a way of like talking. And I just remember I would like just doze off observing people and hearing their accents because now I'm in New York again. I'm getting to hear the world again.

9:43My life was very multicultural. It was from the beginning. I think growing up in New York, you're just around just the world at all times. Pick a block and you'll have like three continents and 10 different countries. And you can eat. And I feel like you do get to know people and communities through their food. And a lot happens when you break bread with individuals. You just, I don't know, there's an unspoken word that makes it permissible for you to connect with people that look obviously different, and speak differently, smell differently from you. And yet through the food that they're sharing with you, you get a piece of who they are and vice versa.

10:23So New York is that special still to this day for me. Did you have Chinese food? Did you have any food? Oh, my God. Every Sunday. Did you? Oh, my God. The American families, they go like every Sunday to like a diner and they'll have like pancakes. Oh, God. Why would I start the day eating cake? Like I don't, you know, but like I said, I have a savory tooth. So we would wake up and go either to Flushing in Queens, which is the second biggest sort of like Chinatown Asian community outside of Chinatown in downtown Manhattan. Or we would just go to Chinatown and we would have dim sum. You know, on Saturday nights you have Korean barbecue.

11:04Friday nights you have Korean barbecue. Or sometimes if my family that was visiting from Dominican Republic that are half Dominican, half Japanese, they were in town, we would go have shabu-shabu. Or you go to 7th Street in Roosevelt and you would have like Indian food. That was our community there for Indian food. That shows a real curiosity. I mean, that shows a passion that they really cared about. It was always through food. Mind you, there was still a simplicity. We didn't go any deeper than that. But by the time I would meet someone that comes from that part of the world, and if I've tried their dish before, I felt like I already knew half of them.

11:45Eating other world's foods feeds your curiosity, and you do remain open, going, okay, so I know your dishes, some of your dishes. It's like, I want to know more about you.

12:01We have good news. Ruthie's Table 4 is launching on YouTube. Throughout the summer, we'll be posting some of our favorite interviews across the series. To watch, go to youtube.com slash hat symbol Ruthie's Table 4 pod.

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13:39An open kitchen in the River Cafe gives me the chance to watch people having dinner with their children. David and Elton uniquely engage with theirs, focused, listening, laughing, all four in their own private world. Recently, sitting next to Elton at a dinner in the River Cafe, we had no small talk. We spoke immediately about Elton John AIDS Foundation, the polarized world we seem to be living in, and what we need to do as citizens. David and Elton are activists. They registered their civil partnership in 2005. On the first day, it was legal in the UK, leading the way for others to follow with confidence and with pride.

14:20I grew up after the war, so everything was on my own. Yeah, early life. Yeah, I was born in the council house. I lived with my mother, my grandmother, because my father was away in the Air Force abroad. Was it your mother's mother? Yes, my grandmother. She was fantastic. What was she like? She was wonderful. She could cook anything and make it taste incredible. I mean, basic ingredients were hard to get after all of them. We were rationed, and so bacon was partly a no-no. But she made, I never remember a bad meal or going hungry, and everything that was left over she made into something else the next day.

14:54And what I loved about her, because I had the biggest sweet tooth, are her bread puddings and her apple pies and her scones and her Victoria sponges. It was very simple. The kitchen was, again, the coal cellar was in the kitchen. Can you believe it? The laundry was done on the stove in a boiler and we had a mangle. It was a very basic upbringing. but I can never remember the smell of cooking was always wonderful and she could cook anything. I fell in love with very basic simple English food at that point. I think that simple English food, as you talk about bread pudding and apple pie, those are very, they're not easy to make, you know, and it's to do with the ingredients and the method and the way you cook.

15:41Yeah. And things like spotted-dicking custard. I always walk into a restaurant, say, in Yorkshire or something like that, and sometimes they have things like that on the menu, and you go, oh, my God, that's what it didn't go. Which for me is just a sheer delight. I always sometimes think that you go to St. John, for instance, they have Eccles cakes, and the Eccles cakes are incredible, and they serve it with the cheese, and it's just like, wow, manna from heaven. Nowadays, unfortunately, I can't eat it because I'm semi-diabetic. But I do like those English stalwarts a lot. I do, too. Well, so growing up, you had a mother and a grandmother in the house, and your father was where?

16:22He was away in the Air Force in Aden, and so I didn't really see much of him. So it was a woman's household. My mom's sister, my aunt was always there as well. So I grew up with a bunch of women who knew how to cook, which was great. And you all sat down to a meal every night together. Yes, and we toasted our toast by the fire. The thing about my grandmother was that because we had a garden, We grew all our own produce because it was so much cheaper. And my grandmother had green fingers, so we always had fresh vegetables. Hardly ever had processed peas. I mean, the great advantage in those days, that food wasn't really instant, no instant whips, no instant this, mashed potato.

17:01It was all genuinely from the garden, which was delicious. So, I mean, I remember shelling the peas every Sunday morning. That was, like David, Sunday roast was very important for the family gathering. So shelling the peas was one thing, peeling the potatoes was another, broad beans was another. So we always had good produce because we couldn't afford to buy them because, you know, times were hard after the war. And the Russian, we had a tiny bottle of orange juice which you diluted and poured the water into. But I never felt as if we were missing anything. You didn't feel denied. No, no. But neither of your mothers worked.

17:38They didn't have to combine a career with cooking. Your mother worked. My mother worked all the time. and worked really, really hard as well. And she worked in a shop. She worked in a dairy. She worked at the Air Force. She's always, but she'd always come home and make dinner. Yeah, she was a very hard-working woman, but still cooked. She raised Elton as a single mom. And so, you know, his ability to, you know, study and take lessons and learn and everything, his mom worked very, very hard providing for the family to allow him to do that. That's what got him on his path to be who he is today. Did you ever go to restaurants as a child?

18:12No, the only time I remember going to a restaurant is when I went to a Chinese restaurant in Haro. We lived in Pina. And Chinese restaurants suddenly became the rage. Coffee bars were the rage before that. But we went for a Chinese meal. It was the first restaurant I can ever remember going to. And it was just, wow, we had bean sprouts. And it was just so delicious. And it was so exotic. And I remember I was so excited to go to this Chinese restaurant. There weren't many in the area. There was one in Haro. There wasn't certainly one in Pina, but it was just an incredible occasion. And that's the first exotic food I ever really had.

18:47How old were you? I don't know, eight or nine maybe. Yeah. And did you go to restaurants? It was a very, very special treat. Special occasion. Yeah, because, again, it was expensive and it was a big treat. What we never had was fast food. My mother was very anti-fast food. She just didn't think it was good for us. I think she was ahead of her time with that. There wasn't any fast food when I grew up. I'm that old. Fast food was boiling the cabbage for 10 minutes instead of 15. When I went to school, there was a wimpy bowl when I was about 15. That's the first fast food place I can ever remember.

19:26My dad was more of a subservient type, and my mother was not. My mother just made things happen. She was always making things happen, whether it was food, whether it was whatever she was involved with had a high-octane gasoline involved. My friend, Josh Brolin. So you described Josh living on a ranch from an early age, your mother taking you out of an urban existence and into the wild, and that includes animals and her passion for animals, her protection of animals. Can you tell me a bit about what that was like as a child? She moved out of L.A. to a place called Paso Robles, California, which is about 200 miles north of Los Angeles.

20:13I think I was five at the time. And she always had animals before that. She had cages. So she ran a wildlife way station. She would take animals who had illegally been taken out of the wild, and she would have those people jailed, and she would nurse those animals back to health. If they'd been defanged or declawed, she would find the most habitable zoo. So, you know, she would find those Lion Country safari type places. But, you know, there were a lot of, there were wolves. My brother got 60 stitches in his leg from a wolf. We cleaned the cages. There were mountain lions. I have a picture right here.

20:49I mean, you want me to show you the picture? I have a picture of an adolescent mountain lion in my crib. In my crib. Oh, my gosh. Is that you? Is that you? That's me. That's a mountain lion. God. I mean, that's me. If you look at every single picture of me as a kid, if you swipe, my face looks like the attempt to eat it off has been had. It makes me kind of crazy to think of that. No, I, yeah. I'm sorry. This makes me crazy. Oh, it's insane. Yeah. It's insane. That's nothing. And there was no protection for you. There was never anybody around who said this can't happen. And I don't victimize my book.

21:37No, you don't. When you read my book, I don't victimize myself, and I don't feel victimized. No. But there is an indictment. I was talking to Howard Stern about it, and he said, you don't indict your parents. I said, I do. The reality is they're incredibly irresponsible because that was the least of it. We had to clean those cages. You go in there at eight years old, and you have a rake, and you're looking at a wolf in the eye. But if you look down too much, it's going to see you as prey and weak. But if you confront too much, it's going to see it as a confrontation and attack. Do you remember domestic life?

22:14Would you sit down to meals? Would there be food on the table? Always. That was the one thing. It's the one through line that I remember in my childhood because, you know, I'd wake up sometimes. my brother and I would wake up 3 o 'clock in the morning with my mother shaking us and saying I want a Whataburger and then would drive 1500 miles with us in the car even though we had school 1500 miles oh yeah 1500 miles, my mother didn't fly she had been a stewardess what is a Whataburger? Whataburger, Texan burger that started in Corpus Christi it's like our In-N-Out burger in America so it's the name of a brand And she had a craving for it.

22:57That was it. You'd get in the car and you'd be in the car for four or five days. What would that feel like? It was good. There was something that was great about the adventure of it, which I think is still in me. My brother, it's interesting because my brother didn't have, as my dad describes, the fight in him that I had. So she would, with waking you up at 3 in the morning or having the animals that you describe so vividly in your book or the ranch, there was a kind of structure that we would always sit down to a meal? Always. Yeah, that's why I say it's the only kind of domestic reality within our family.

23:38My dad was constantly traveling because he was working. My mom was always looking for something to do and something to kind of mix up, and then there would be her cooking. So describe her kitchen and the house. The house was just put up for sale, so I was able to see an actual picture because the ranch is three miles from the ranch that we're on now. So where I grew up is three miles away from where our ranch is now. And where is that? Paso Robles, California. Where is that? Central Coast, California. How far from? Four hours north of L.A., three and a half hours south of San Francisco. Salinas Valley, close to Steinbeck country and all that.

24:20So I could see what my memory was. But it's a very Spanish type, you know, Spanish tiles, all handpicked by her. Yeah. And the stove was always, I always remember the flames, high flames in the stove. And then I would get up. I don't know why I started doing this. I'm thinking about it now. I would get up on Saturdays usually and I would cook breakfast for my whole family. And by yourself, you let the flame. You let the flame. I had the flame, the eggs, over medium, over easy. I had the toast. I had the bacon. I had biscuits sometimes. But I don't know why. I don't know what it was about. There was some meditation.

25:02Obviously, I wanted to please them. I loved the, maybe that was just me trying to extend that thing. Like, you stay in bed. I'm going to take care of you. Together. Yeah. I'm going to take care of you. It's funny. I haven't thought of that in so long. Do you think you used recipes or did you just instinctively know? No, it was instinctive. It was always instinctive. And my kids, my older kids who are 36 and 31 now will tell you that I made either the greatest food or the worst food that I would eat. Because if we were out at the ranch and it was like, look, this is what we have. Like I didn't go to the grocery store today.