Best of Season Four: Part 2

0:00This is an iHeart Podcast.

0:05Life's messy. We're talking spills, stains, pets, and kids. But with Anabay, you never have to stress about messes again. At washablesofas.com, discover Anabay sofas. The only fully machine washable sofas inside and out. Starting at just$699. Made with liquid and stain resistant fabrics. That means fewer stains and more peace of mind. Designed for real life, our sofas feature changeable fabric covers, allowing you to refresh your style anytime. Need flexibility? Our modular design lets you rearrange your sofa effortlessly. Perfect for cozy apartments or spacious homes. Plus, they're earth-friendly and built to last.

0:48That's why over 200 ,000 happy customers have made the switch. Upgrade your space today. Visit washablesofas.com now and bring home a sofa made for life. That's washablesofas.com. Offers are subject to change, and certain restrictions may apply. You are listening to Ruthie's Table 4 in partnership with Montclair. Over this season, 40 guests have joined me here at the River Cafe, and today we're looking back at some of those conversations. Richard E. Grant, Francis Ford Coppola, Kate Blanchett, Tony Blair, Bono, Sienna Miller, and Erling Kaga.

1:33When I think of Richard E. Grant, of course I think of his brilliant films and him as a great actor. But what I really think of is Richard and his wife, Joan, in the early days of the River Cafe. They were married a year before the restaurant opened and lived right across the river. Coming in for lunch, always sitting at the same table, they were warm and lovely and absorbed in each other. Joan used to make your chocolate nemesis every single Christmas party we had, and she'd make two of them, and I think the combination of that is, must be 36 eggs? Yeah. Let's compare a recipe to a script. So when you're memorising your lines, Tell me about the difference between a kind of script and a recipe.

2:22Well, the exact same way. You have the recipe in front of you, but then something inspires you to add something or you go off on a tangent or you ask if the director or the writer are open to an adjunct to something or an addition or an improvisation around sections. So it means that it evolves. It's not, unless it's Shakespeare. You can't improve on a genius, really, I don't think. and because of the rhythm and the metre of it you'd be doing a disservice I think if you tried to extemporise on it. What is an encore like at the end of a performance? I've only done one musical, My Fair Lady and because a musical, there's music for people to re-perform you can do a sort of final verse of something but in the theatre you can't, all you can do is bow You can't say, oh, well, I'll do to be or not to be again.

3:19Do you know what I mean? It's an amazing sensation. But that's what I really love is sometimes when at the end of a musical, then it's all over, and then they come, like guys and dolls, they'll come out and do, you know, Luck Be a Lady, or When You See a Guy, or My Fair Lady, you could come out. You obviously played Henry Higgins, didn't you? I played Henry Higgins, yeah. What a great part to do. Yeah, absolutely amazing role. What's your favourite song from My Fair Lady? I think... I wonder if it's the same as mine. Go on. What is yours? I've grown accustomed to her face. Yeah, I agree. Is there a better song?

3:52No. I've grown accustomed to her face Like breathing out and breathing I've grown accustomed to the tune She's whispered by the moon Her smiles, her frowns, her ups, her downs Are second nature to me now Here's to you. That should be the ending of this. I'm sorry. Not the beginning. Oh, I know. Richard sang it for my 17th birthday to me. I said, that's all I want you to do is to sing me I've Grown Accustomed to a Fair. I do think it's a beautiful, beautiful song. It is amazing. Was that the last theatre that you did? Yeah, that's the last time I did theatre. I did it in Chicago 10 years ago, and then I did it at the Sydney Opera 15 years ago.

4:38We should bring it to London. I would love to see it again. You can't do it now. Because of misogyny? Because of the misogyny. Yeah, tell me about that. Melissa McCarthy's daughters came to see it in Chicago, and they were 10 and 13, and they were appalled by the misogyny of it. They said, how can any woman put up with that? When you were performing it, did you feel a sense of that? Well, my steer on it was that Higgins is on the spectrum and that he is, he doesn't mean to be as cruel as he is. He just, he, you know, he says there's no filter whatsoever, so it just comes out, you know. You should be thrown out like a cabbage leaf or whatever.

5:23And he is so joy-filled when Eliza gets all the words phonetically correct that he embraces her. Yeah. And it's no accident to me that straight after that she sings I Could Have Danced All Night. And it is the way that I interpreted it was that that was as close as he could ever get to saying he's in love with somebody. Interesting. So it was very physical and we grabbed each other. I think it's the first musical I ever saw. I went to see it. I was telling him the other day that my dad used to take me because we lived in upstate New York and every sort of big treat, maybe once every couple of months.

6:02He would take me down to New York in the car and we'd have lunch and then he'd take me to a musical. And then we would buy the record. And then we would take it home to the country and there was nothing else to do except just listen to it all the time. This is really generational that we share on this because in the 60s, every musical that came out, my parents had the LP of it and played it incessantly. So our whole family knew the lyrics of every single musical that came out. If you say that to people now, they think you're, you know, it's insane. But the other thing about the musicals, without naming any, is that they don't have those tunes so much anymore.

6:42They're not as kind of hummable, are they? That you come out and you can remember on the street where you live. Oh, I think the people who watch Wicked would argue with us. They would probably, yeah. But I find it slightly challenging. But I haven't seen My Fair Lady ever, probably even since I was a kid. Wow. A long time ago. So you saw it on Broadway? Yeah. Do you remember who was in it? I think it was Julie Andrews and Rex Harrison. I think it was. Wow. But I was really young, I have to say. But it was my very first musical. And then I saw West Side Story, saw My Fair Lady. I saw a really one that, and he used to come in here, Stop the World, I Want to Get Off by Leslie.

7:25Tony Newley and Leslie Bricas. Yeah, and Leslie and Evie came here all the time. And I used to come up to him. I remember the first time I met him, he was with Michael Caine. And I said, I bet I'm the only person in this room that knows, you know, say, My Mishki Mishko for whatever those songs were. What kind of fool am I? You know, what kind of fool am I? And he loved it. He would sing it with me because you could see I have any chance to sing. But those, yeah, they kind of grew up with those, you know. Do you know what your first one was? The first one was The Sound of Music and then Mary Poppins.

7:59But I'd heard My Fair Lady before I saw those, before I saw the movie, and my parents had all the Rodgers and Hammerstein carousel. King and I had all of those, record collection. So I knew all of those before I ever saw the movies. Since Francis Ford Coppola agreed to do a podcast with me, I've been slightly overwhelmed, but good friends who know us both, Wes Anderson, Fisher Stevens, Greta Gerwig, assured me, actually, Ruthie, the two of you are rather alike. Francis and I are here together after a long lunch in the River Cafe to talk about food and wine, movies and families, menus and friends, and much, much more.

8:42I'm convinced that The Godfather was successful because it was the first gangster film that had a lot of kids running around on the seats. Yeah, of course. You never would gangster pictures. It was as though they didn't have kids. But, of course, an Italian wedding was all the kids sliding around. So you grew up in a family that cooked Italian food in New York. In New York. Speaking Italian, that's how we started. No, no, no. Did you actually speak Italian at home? No, no, no, no. I only heard some cursive, but my mother didn't want us to be... Like, Italians couldn't live in certain neighborhoods.

9:16Yeah, it was very... And the Italians, you know, each immigrant group in America was bullied by the one that came before. And the one who came before the Italians were the Irish. And the Irish used to beat up on the Italians. The policeman and the godfather, right? The police were all Irish and they used to pick. That's the way it works. So you were restricted to this neighborhood. And did you experience food other than Italian food? Or was eating always eating? If you see The Godfather, you realize that. I knew that Italians used to take out Chinese food. Yeah. Every street corner in New York had a German delicatessen, a candy store, what we called a candy store, which was a soda fountain where they sold Coke, which was five cents, and they would make it to put the syrup, and it wouldn't be in a bottle, and model airplanes, and a German delicatessen where you would buy cheesecake.

10:16So there would be a mix. There would be a German. And always a Chinese restaurant. In those neighborhoods, there were a lot of Polish people and Italians because they were both Catholic, and there were a lot of Italian-Polish weddings because they were both Catholic. And I went to a lot of Polish weddings, and I knew what Polish food was like. They had kielbasa, whereas we had saziche. America was a wonderful mixture of cultures. And we want to keep that. We want to keep that. We want to keep that. And then, should we talk about polio? We'll talk about anything you want. You ask me a question.

10:54Why are you interested in the fact that as a child you had polio and spent how long in bed? I spent the whole sixth grade, so a whole year, a year and a little more than a year. And in those days, polio, you know, of course, it had also affected adults. President Franklin Roosevelt had polio. But there was an epidemic for children in 1949. And I was a Cub Scout, and I went on a Cub Scout camp out, and it was raining. And the next morning, I had the symptoms. And, you know, polio only affects you one night. In other words, the night of the fever is the night you have it. and then you get over it, but the damage is to your spinal cord.

11:38And Napolio destroys the nerves selectively within the spinal cord so that, I mean, literally when I woke up, I woke up in a ward with like 800 kids piled up everywhere crying on a whole row of iron lungs because the kids whose lungs were affected couldn't breathe. So they had to be in a machine that breathed. and they were crying for their parents. It was a nightmare.

12:10We 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.

12:32Tired of spills and stains on your sofa? Washablesofas.com has your back. Featuring the Anabay Collection, the only designer sofa that's machine washable inside and out. Where designer quality meets budget-friendly prices. That's right, sofas start at just$699. Enjoy a no-risk experience with pet-friendly, stain-resistant, and changeable slipcovers made with performance fabrics. Experience cloud-like comfort with high-resilience foam that's hypoallergenic and never needs fluffing. The sturdy steel frame ensures longevity, and the modular pieces can be rearranged anytime. Check out washablesofas.com and get up to 60 % off your Anabay sofa, backed by a 30-day satisfaction guarantee.

13:17If you're not absolutely in love, send it back for a full refund. No return shipping or restocking fees. Every penny back. Upgrade now at washablesofas.com. Offers are subject to change, and certain restrictions may apply. Parking shouldn't slow you down. ParkWiz gives every driver a shortcut. Book ahead, save up to 50%, and skip the hassle of circling the block. Park smarter, park faster. ParkWiz. Download the ParkWiz app today and save every time you park. People always ask me who my dream guest would be on Ruthie's Table 4. Kate Blanchett has always been top of that list, an actor, director, and a vocal activist for values and ideas close to my heart.

14:03Kate and I are going to talk about our shared love of food and, as always, family. I mean, brand Australia when I was growing up was multiculturalism. And so once we really embraced the wave of Vietnamese and Lebanese and Greek and Italian immigrants and refugees, our cuisine became extraordinary. And now it's been exported to the world as Pan Pacific or Asia Pacific. But at the time when I was growing up, my mother was an excellent cook. So tell me about it. So your mother was left with three children. She was what, in her 30s? She was, yeah, 39. and my brother was 11, I was 10. Was she working?

14:44My sister was 8. Did she have a job? Well, she had to go back to work as a teacher. As a teacher. So she taught home economics. So our kitchen was fantastic. Describe it. Yeah. What was it like? A lot of Italian cooking and a lot of fresh seafood and salads and that was not what people were eating at the time. But I think the thing when there was a lot of grief in my house So the meals were delicious, but they were silent. And that's been one of the great joys, I think, for my side of the family, but also for me, is my husband came from this enormous Catholic family. So the food may not have been...

15:26Is he British? Yeah. I know he's Australian. But they had massively noisy, loud, raucous meals. And my husband's an excellent cook. And actually the first time I met my brother-in-law was at Christmas. And I came towards the house and people were screaming with laughter. And I don't know what the meal is, but it's a medieval recipe where you stuff a goose with a pheasant, with a pigeon, with a quail. That's right. And what had happened was he'd opened the oven and the thing shot out and it telescoped out onto the wall. so there goes Christmas lunch. Yeah, so they were madly trying to stuff it back in.

16:09I know that recipe. I mean, I've never done it myself, but I know that. It's dangerous. Have you ever done that? Do you know that? It's really dangerous. That's so funny. Because probably as they're cooking, they sort of expand. And then therefore, that's hilarious. Yeah, so they're wildly adventurous with their cooking. How old were you when you met him? My husband and I got to, we've been married, God. We got married very quickly, actually, in 97. It wasn't a shotgun wedding. We didn't have children for quite some time, but I think we were 28. Yeah, so you were embraced by this family. But going back to yours, you grew up with your father in the beginning cooking, and I assume your mother both cooked and you had meals and barbecues and people.

16:53And then it became a kind of sadness. And then there was a joy. It was just very silent. And did that change? Did you? Well, yeah, I was thinking about it, maybe because I was coming to speak to you. But then I've always loved the dinner party. And so what I would do is I wouldn't go to a lot of parties as a teenager. I would have dinner parties. Yeah. So I would wear everyone would dress up. My girlfriends would all dress up and we'd all cook something. And we'd, you know, I don't know who we were trying to ape or what we were trying to ape. There was a lot of sorbet inside orange cups and I don't know.

17:29And I grew up with this Salvador Dali cookbook. You know, the one that he'd done and he'd done the illustrations. Yes, yes, yes, yes. And I cooked recipes from that. Did you know what they were like? Crazy. I have to admit that I didn't ever make anything from it. That was where I cooked my first snails. A surrealist cookbook, a surrealist recipe. But it was hard in Melbourne at the time to find a pheasant. But brave of you to do that. Yeah, I tried. I tried. So, yeah, I cooked and tried to decorate the dishes from the Salvador Dali cookbook. What age was this? Probably about 13. So that's, yeah, because I often talk to people who when I say, okay, so you grew up in this nurturing home with a grandmother and a mother and cooking.

18:09And then what happened when you left home? And very often people say then when I had my own flat and I started buying local ingredients and I started cooking. But 13 is an early age that to do that and to entertain. I think it's because it was my father's book. Yeah. He worked in advertising and it must have been a gift that he was given one year. and, yeah, so it was sort of trying to... Oh, the Salvador Dali? Yeah, not that I can remember him ever cooking from it, but it was just something of his that maybe I gravitated towards that. And also the surrealism seemed to make sense to me. I had very vivid nightmares and dreams as a child and so his work and the surrealism movement as a whole kind of really unlocked something for me.

19:03The world knows Tony Blair as a visionary leader, prime minister. I know him as a close and loyal friend. And the first dinner we had for him in our home in 1996, he went straight into the kitchen to talk to a young, inexperienced chef, Jamie Oliver, asking how he was making the rotolo di spinaci. Tony Blair has been interviewed countless times. We're going to look at his life and his career through memories of food, food and politics, food and family. And tonight, the curiosity is all mine. So Downing Street is an office. It's a public space. It's a governmental space, but it's also a home. And you were there with young children, and you presumably, they came home from school and you sat down to meals.

19:53or did you not? Did you have a certain way that this was work and then you would have family time at the weekends? Was there a routine or structure for being a family or...? Before going into Downey Street, I mean, we did have a much more structured life, but then once you become Prime Minister, frankly, your schedule's just packed. And so at the weekends, usually when we were through in Chequers, we would eat all together and that would be great, but otherwise it was pretty hand-to-mouth. And when my kids knew I was coming on this podcast, they said to me, are you going to tell them that you used to cook for us and that your cooking was terrible?

20:34And I said, well, no, what I might just do is just say that the meals I cooked for my children were memorable. Memorable is a good word. Believe it or not. So, yeah, I mean, no, Downing Street was just too busy. There wasn't, or maybe there still isn't a Downing Street chef that cooks breakfast, lunch and dinner? No, there wasn't. I know at the White House they have the residents, and I know that the State Department is very careful with ambassadors about what they can spend on parties and food. But to have the office of the Prime Minister, you would think that there was a... Yeah, and by the way, in our embassies you can eat very well.

21:13In British embassies abroad, in the Elysee, you get, I think it's a high quality food, actually. and very traditional French cooking. You didn't give very many steak dinners at Downing Street that you would be at the palace. I almost took the view with dinners. I mean, occasionally I would do it and if someone really wanted to have a dinner, but with other political leaders, I mean, I just know what I feel like. You know, when you're engaged with a political leader, I mean, you know, maybe you have a drink together and so on and maybe you do have a meal together occasionally, but you want to do business.

21:47You want to sort out the business of the day. And then if you're a foreign leader and you're visiting and you're in London, and, you know, maybe you frankly would like to go out and spend some time with your friends or colleagues rather than be within the formality of these dinners, which on the whole I never felt yielded a great deal. Was there any in your memory that was in China or in Russia or in Germany or France? Was there a steak dinner that really rings in your memory? There wasn't a state dinner where the head of state, so the only state dinner in the UK would be the Queen, obviously, giving the dinner.

22:24And again, the food is pretty good, actually. But I do remember one really memorable meal. So France and the UK and Germany, we were all together in this consortium to build the Airbus 380. and we visited Toulouse which is where part of the plane was being built and so the leaders all went there and Jacques Chirac was the president at the time and I remember after we visited the plant and saw the plane and so on we sat down and we had a, I think they called it a cassoulet Cassoulet, yeah I mean it was unbelievable What was it like? What was it like? Just with the beans and the meat and the sausage and it was unbelievably good.

23:14And the funny thing was, so Jacques Chirac, who's, you know, a big, big figure and someone I actually, despite our disagreements politically, from time to time, I liked greatly. But the strange thing about Jacques was he didn't drink wine. He's a French president, didn't drink wine. He didn't drink wine. And I don't think he was very interested in food. Yeah, that's strange. I mean, and so I was saying to him this, he was talking to me about the Airbus 380 And I was saying to him, Jack, you've got to understand, this food is absolutely unbelievable. And I think he thought it was a bit eccentric after a time because I was calling the chef over and talking to him and saying, OK, that is a memorable meal.

23:55I do remember having to eat humble pie with George Bush because I'd slagged them all. Is that a dish? Is humble pie a dish? Did you have that for dessert? Was that like apple pie or raspberry pie? You had humble pie. It's a dish Irish people don't like to eat. Fifteen years ago, staying in the home of Bono's best friend, Patty McKillen, I injured my back, and for a week, the only people I met were Irish. The warmth, the laughter, the music, the kindness was so overwhelming. Even with the pain, I wanted it to last forever, too. Today, Bono and I are going to talk about family, food, music, memories, and more.

24:41You too. His fight for social justice with his one campaign and read. His philanthropy, his strong values, his vision. I'd gone in and I'd had a meeting with him. I was just very sort of cross because he had said that we were going to get these AIDS drugs to people on bicycles and motorcycles, whatever it takes to the furthest reaches, whatever. And I said, if you can get Guinness to the rural poor, if you can get Coca-Cola, we can get these life saving drugs. And I said, Mr. President, paint them red, white and blue if you want. These will be the best advertisements for America ever. so eventually after extraordinary campaign with a lot of people involved from different sides of the fence he'd agreed announced it and then i'd gone in and said it's not happening it's not happening and eventually it did it's 26 million people actually since then because brack obama followed through and i went in and i've been banging i remember i was banging on the table of the president of the United States.

25:49And he goes, hey, hey, I am the president, okay? I am the president. I'll remind you. I'll just remind you of that. A little respect here. He was funny too, George Bush. He had a great, great sense of humor. Yeah, so I remember that. Anyway, I remember he said, sit down, have some lunch. Let's talk about whatever. Do you remember what you ate? Chicken. Chicken. And then. Did you meet with Barack Obama? Yeah, yeah. A few times, a few times. But again, I would just say, and Obama was an extraordinary man for so many reasons. But one of the more extraordinary reasons is that even though George Bush had started this PEPFAR, which is the president's emergency plan for AIDS relief, Barack Obama carried it on.

26:45In fact, put more American taxpayers' money into it, even than President Bush had, and never asked for recognition. It was kind of amazing. But I do remember once, maybe this is okay to tell the story because everyone knows now, I remember sitting with Alicia Keys, myself, and Barack Obama having lunch. and I brought him a guitar and I ended up, I played, I don't know, something like something simple on the guitar. And he, Barack Obama, began to sing. Yeah, he loves to sing. But he'd never sung in public at that point. Yeah. And I was slagging him off saying, oh, so it's not enough to be the president of the United States, you know, you're coming after our jobs.

27:35You're coming after our jobs. And then a week later, he sang. And then, I don't know if you recall, after the school shooting, when he sang Amazing Grace. He sang Amazing Grace. Can you imagine the leader of the free world singing Amazing Grace? Can you sing Amazing Grace? It's a song that means a lot to me. It's a song about a slaver. Yeah, it is. John Newton, whose ship sank in Donegal in Northern Ireland. So people at Donegal feel close to this song. But I will sing it if you like. Okay, let's sing it.