Sienna Miller

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1:00at washablesofas.com. Authors are subject to change, and certain restrictions may apply. You are listening to Ruthie's Table 4, in partnership with Montclair. Savannah Miller tells a story that when her sister, Sienna, was born, it was like the lights came on. Our guests on Ruthie's Table 4 are people we all know through the movies they make, the companies they run, the policies and the values they are defined by. Here we get to know them in a different way, how they lay a table, what they feed their children, a recipe they've kept from their grandmother. Everyone knows Sienna Miller as an actress, a fashion designer, and a brave combatant who stood up for her rights against a powerful media empire.

1:42All of us in the River Cafe know her as a fabulous eater, coming in on Sundays with her family, always a big table, always involving children, always sitting in the window. Most of all, it's about sharing. Most of it's about fun just like sienna we're here today in the river cafe and the lights have come on oh really so sienna would you like to read the recipe that you chose to make for this podcast which is pizza bianca with teleggio artichokes and time or as guillermo del toro said on his time which i loved from now on want to call it time um a pizza bianca is a pizza without tomato but if you want to add something salty, you can add artichokes.

2:29Ingredients. Pizza dough, double zero flour for dusting, olive oil for drizzling, two artichokes baked and sliced, 400 grams of teleggio sliced thyme. Preheat the oven to 230 degrees centigrade. Put a large baking sheet in the oven to heat up and roll your dough ball on a floured worktop as thinly as possible. Place the pizza on a piece of baking paper. Top with artichoke slices and tileggio. Season with salt, pepper and thyme. Drizzle with a little olive oil. Transfer the baking paper with pizza onto the hot baking sheet. Bake for six to eight minutes until the pizza is puffed and golden. Yeah, easy.

3:18Okay, so today the pizza on the menu is tileggio. these are straight out the fridge so if you just want to try and get them from underneath first move it get a feel for it yeah and then i put them on the top so i have them on my knuckles a little bit so you just widen it out and then once it's on your knuckles you can just very gently stretch with your thumbs and your knuckles but the most important thing is that the middle doesn't stretch too much yeah so rip and then the secret is a rolling pin which actually it's gone missing? Here we are. Just roll like around the middle part. That's looking great.

3:59Okay. And this is the fun bit because I feel like you feel like a proper pizza chef when you do this. Yeah, pizzola. So you grab the top, just do it like very delicately and you gotta flip it onto your knuckles. Okay. So just like that. Just go for it, you gotta go for it. Go on for it. And then if you use this piece of parchment, just lay it out there and pull your fingers up from underneath. There you are, that's great. Have I got a job? Yeah, I think they're looking better than mine. And then we've got raw artichokes, thinly sliced. Yeah. And they're just soapy in lemon water so they don't lose the colour.

4:34Then a nice little sprinkle of thyme, great. Some black pepper and then just a couple olives. Again, not too many. And I think you should put it in the oven. I agree. So the oven's on about 400 degrees. So just with this again, you just want to move the paddle forward and back and then you're done and the papers yeah you're going with it yeah nice perfect lovely to meet you I'll bring it through to you thanks Jake we were talking about making pizzas and what that involves but it's also involved with how you feed your kids and so I suppose we could talk about before feeding your kids how your parents fed you what was the food like in your household as a child do you have memories I have so many memories my mother is an amazing cook and and really a lot of her nurturing and her mothering comes through cooking and always did she was born in Yorkshire she then moved to South Africa when she was about four my grandmother was South African and she remarried a Jewish man converted to Judaism so So mom kind of grew up with a half Yorkshire, half Jewish, South African cuisine around her.

5:52And then when that husband died, my grandmother converted back to the church. So she was not a great Jew. No, she was quite flimsy with it. But as a result of that, mom's got a lot of different styles of cooking. And Sunday lunch was just a huge feature. I was born in New York to an American father. and my sister was born in Hong Kong because they lived in Hong Kong before and then we moved to London when I was about 18 months. A lot of movement, a lot of different places. Exactly. But for you, you were born in New York. I was born in New York, raised in London. I mean, I remember teething on biltong.

6:31Like she would give us sticks of biltong and I don't really remember teething but I kind of do remember running around like Bam Bam with just dried meat in every hand. How old were you when you came back from New York? People are grimacing, but I still love it. I was 18 months old. Oh, okay. So your childhood was British. My childhood was British. Yeah. But filled with different people from all over the world. So we'd have, you know, a braai, a South African barbecue in the summer on Sundays and buravos. What kind of braai? It's called a braai. It's basically the Afrikaans word for a barbecue, I believe.

7:07And we'd have buravos and druavos, which is different types of sausage. I understand the words you're talking about. I know. Well, I grew up with this. This is interesting. Yeah, and babuti, this South African dish, and biltong everywhere, which is the dried meat, which I still love. So there was your sister and yourself. My sister and myself and my mother. Did your mother work? She did. So she could cook and she could have a job and then come. Well, she was a yoga, sort of yoga Alexander technique exercise teacher. So I grew up in a house with women lying all over the floors. I mean, and my friends remember this, especially when I was a teenager.

7:42Her classes were so popular that they'd spill out of the allocated room, which was next to my bedroom, into the hallways, down the stairs, on another landing. It wasn't a big house, but... And this was your yoga lesson. I don't know if I signed up for the yoga lesson, found myself on the stairs. I know. Well, she was so good at it. She actually started the first exercise-based school in London in the 70s called Granny's Beautiful Bodies. and it was Alexander Technique, yoga, ballet kind of hybrid. And Ava Gardner went and Albert Finney. And she was this really talented. Where was it? It was in Knightsbridge.

8:16Because there was a woman called Lottie Burke. Do you remember her? Yes, she was her partner. And I went to her. That was mum's. It sounds just like it. Yes. I went to Lottie Burke. I can't remember who told me about it when I first came to London. Yeah. I think that was in probably 1970. Yes. And she looked totally out of cabaret, you know. Do you remember her? So your mother worked with her. Yes. they established it together I don't really have many memories of that but when she started doing it again after my parents got divorced these people would flock and they were just women with their legs in the air outside the bedroom and I'd be hung over with a hoodie on trying to get to the bathroom just like meh did she eat in a healthy way she was concerned about yolk and Alexander she's never been weight conscious, she's never been conscious about calories or everything had butter and cream and I think there is something that's so incredible about being nourished by a meal cooked with love, which is what you do here.

9:14Every single time you feel the love in the food and it's like going home. It's an ingredient. It is a really strong ingredient. You can taste it completely. You can taste it. It is about sharing and about tasting. So with your mother working, did you still sit down to a table every night and after school, your sister and you and your mother. I mean, I went to boarding school at eight. So then it was just weekends. Yeah, I did. They got divorced when I was six. And then two years later, I went to boarding school. And when you left the comfort of home and food and, as you say, the ingredient cooking with love, was going to boarding school, did you feel that ingredient was there in the food that you ate at boarding school?

9:55I mean, it was a really... My best friend is in the room and she's laughing at me with a pained expression. No, she didn't go to that school. No, not the first one. I mean, I was about as high as this table. I was tiny. And it was too young, you know, but apparently I really wanted to go. And it was this, it was on paper a really idyllic looking place. It was a manor house. There were only 52 girls. But, you know, that first night, you're in a room with 10 girls you've never met in kind of metal beds with tweed blankets over the top and it's lights out at seven. and it's traumatic. It's completely traumatic.

10:32Plus they used to feed us on Tuesdays spam, which, and you'd have to finish your plate. You'd have to eat everything. I remember sort of sticking it in my pockets and finding dried bits of spam in my pocket, which was lovely. What are your other food memories of that school? Well, sometimes it was great, like big pots of lasagna and every day at four o 'clock, the baker would deliver either ice buns or jam donuts so there'd be some kind of delivery which was the highlight of the entire thing then when you went home at weekends was it a big deal yeah and mum you know she'd make the most out of nothing and it was filled with flavor and filled with love and then on Sundays all of her eccentric friends would come around for a big boozy Sunday lunch and we'd be made to sit at the table however old or young we were and some of my most I think formative moments were around that table because There's, everyone's drinking, there's opera blasting, there's no one censoring the conversation.

11:33And you really learn how to kind of find your way in the world through listening to adult conversation and eating food. And it was very joyous and jubilant. Did you ever come back or did you stay? So it was every weekend. No, but I mean for the rest of your education. No, that was it. Were you a boarder? Yeah, so that was a weekly boarding. I was there for two years. Then there was a fire or it just closed down and I ended up going to senior school a year early. So I was 10 when I went to senior school and 17 when I left, even though I finished it. Where was that? That was in Berkshire. And what was that like?

12:07And that was, by that point, I was a seasoned boarder. I was, again, you know, about three feet tall, but really confident, really able. I'd completely detached from the notion of homesickness. I'd gone through it in a really intense way. So I was quite strong by that point and up for it. and my big sister was at the same school which I'm sure helped and it was school food but I loved I still dream about this chewy toast that they'd have in the mornings they'd had one of those things where you put the bread in and it's cheap bread and it rotates through and sort of half toast but obviously it's cooked a while ago and it becomes kind of bready and chewy and we used to I used to make a butter and marmite mix with the cold butter that was thick and spread it on and bend it over and i still everyone's laughing i'm a real pig no ted you like that don't you no it's just because you mix it with the butter first because i thought you can free yeah it goes i scramble my eggs with a dollop of it and they go kind of gray but it's delicious bovril i'm a huge bovril which is you know i say i've said it before on this because other people praise marmite that when i first came to london i went to a photography school and i we had to do a series and i thought what i'd like to do is get a bunch of americans and give them marmite and butter and take a photograph of their face yeah when they tasted it because for an american it was just like what are these people eating yeast spread and then um i never quite got over it because richard used to sometimes have marmite in bed and it was just like but the breath the Marmite Breath is specific.

13:44They actually did genius advertising. They did, you either love it or hate it. I remember this advert where it was like a girl and a boy and they were on a date and it was going really well and he comes back to hers and she says, you know, do you want some coffee? And there's an old piece of toast with Marmite on it in the kitchen. Making the coffee, she just takes a bite of the thing and goes back in and then they start kissing and he goes, blah, blah. And it said, Marmite, you either love it or you hate it, which you have to lean in. I think raw, I wouldn't want to eat it out of its jar. Bovril, I could.

14:16I know, this is going to really sound stupid. What's the difference? Bovril is beef spread. Okay. We're really barbaric. It's the Yorkshire meat. Ask me how many years I've lived here. How long have you lived here? Beef stock was yeast. Yeast and beef. They were designed as stock. So I put it in all sorts of cooking. I sneak it in. Well, that's even worse. You still use it. I do, yeah. I'll put it in gravy, a little bit of Marmite in a bolognese. You'll love it. You need to come over. You know that date we had for lunch? Yeah, you're cancelled. You've got to wash your hair that night. Something really good on TV I want to watch.

14:51Do you have a favorite meal? Oh, you're interviewing me. Well, I'm just curious. My favorite meal. Yeah, I think there is a kind of meal that I like very much, which is based on having pasta first. So it's always tomato pasta. And then having vegetables cooked in different ways. So I'll have artichokes that are slow roasted, and then I'll have spinaches that just blanch with olive oil, and the tomatoes will put them in the oven and get them that there's absolutely not one drop of liquid in them, and they've kind of almost stuck to the pan. I like eating that way. I'm much less, in my old age, less interested in the first course, second course, third course, that formality of it.

15:35So it kind of breaks some of the rules when you think, what are we having after the pasta? maybe nothing, you know, but we are, and then you bring out the beans. So it's a way that I quite like to eat. Did your parents take you to restaurants? Yeah, they did. They did, they took us, we had a local Italian called Di Cecco, we'd go there. I'd go to Johnny Rockets with my dad and have a foot-long hot dog and a Coke float. Is Johnny Rockets there anymore? I don't know, I don't know. Coke floats, I love the idea of, but I always found them kind of disgusting, but I'd get it just because it was, I was trying to connect to his American side and and then we go to fancier places as well and when you became a kind of more independent person on your own well you always say that you were in New York and you were you were taking care of your friends and you were the person that people went to for Sunday lunch or you still did that but when you're when you were acting and when you're working on a film what is it like when you when you're working and when you are either in theater or in film and you're trying to work and do you have a special routine for for eating no it all probably gets a bit goes a bit wrong in those moments i mean well i'm never i'm not someone who's going to cook for themselves i think so much of the joy of it is feeding other people so i will end up cooking for the car can you tell me can you remember a place we're just remote like shreveport louisiana we lived on the side of the road in in a holiday inn or something what were you're filming?

17:03I was filming a movie about Edie Sedgwick called Factory Girl and we were all in a Marriott residence in on the side of the freeway in Bossier City which is outside of Louisiana you know Shreveport. Jimmy Fallon was in that movie, Guy Pearce, all these Tara Summers was in it, Jack Houston who's just directed a movie that's apparently amazing and I would cook in this tiny like I would still cook, I would still find a way to cook.

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19:47And we could bring it back to the food. I could say, what do you eat when a newspaper empire goes for you and tries to destroy you and goes into your phone? did you feel hungry or did you give up eating? But it is part of our conversation about life and food and fairness. And I wondered if you could say how you felt when you woke up in the morning and knew, did you have breakfast? Or did you, did the trauma of it? In moments of real stress, I lose my appetite. You lose it. Yeah, it's interesting. And I'm such a, I love to eat more than anything. It's kind of, it's where I get a huge amount of pleasure.

20:23but I, yeah, I lose my appetite if I'm under immense stress. So what was it like? Well, the paparazzi attention at a very young age was probably the most traumatizing and surreal because it happened from one day to the next. How old were you? I was 21 and I'd fallen in love with my co-star of my first film and he was very famous and there were pictures of us. We'd gone to the National Portrait Gallery or something, the Tate Modern, I can't remember. and I remember leaving his house the following day and getting in a black taxi and the cabbie saying have you seen the News of the World today? and I was like what?

21:01you know 21 and he said have you seen the News of the World? and I said no and he said you're all over it and he threw a copy of the newspaper in the back of the cab and there we were on the front it was honestly like normal life to absolute surreal you know life after that and I got home to my flat and there were photographers all outside my flat and that was it that was it it was gloves off at that moment in culture where the tabloids had all the power and young women were really persecuted and men but it was really crazy and at first it was kind of funny I felt like Lara Croft during some virtual experience and my friends we'd like run away and try and hide and it was giggly but it became very quickly very insidious because it was threatening and aggressive and it really took over my entire identity.

21:54I felt like was being written and read by people, but I felt so out of control in a really formative moment. And this all happened before that film had come out or any film had come out. I was at the very beginning of my career and I do look back and wonder how different things would have been if I had been known as an actor first. It was a lot of a battle to kind of establish myself and to be taken seriously and not seen as someone who wore nice clothes or had a famous boyfriend. It was a battle, and I think I definitely ate through it, I'm sure, at that time. And then, of course, the phone hacking.

22:33I knew that was going on at the time. You did have to do that. Because it would be impossible for them to know half of what they knew without some form of eavesdropping. And I think there were bugs put in houses and in cars and trackers on cars and all sorts of... And you feel like you're going mad, but clicks on the line of my mother's landline. So it was relieving in a way to know that I hadn't gone mad when I found out. But to find out was really difficult. I had to take the Met Police to court to get the evidence that they had in order to take the news of the world to court. And they wanted 21 days to hand it over, the evidence that they had, and the judge said, hand it over today in these four huge boxes filled with emails and phone numbers and numbers of my friends.

23:24And anyway, in the end, I didn't settle out of court. I took them to court, which meant I got far less money than I would have done had I been quiet. But actually, it's one of the proudest things that I did. And now some of the friends whose numbers they also had have got some money too. So it kind of feels like that's a lovely ending to a saga. Yeah. Was there comfort you could find in those days? Did you cook or to...? The cooking was always a grounding. I mean, it was a decade really of harassment. But as much as possible, it's okay. I'm so sorry. Because it sucks in retrospect. respect but it also is a huge part of who I am and why I'm the way that I am and what matters to me is very clear and what doesn't matter and what's out of your control is also very clear and I think I tried to control it for a long time and then gave up and I now know my friends my family the people I love the restaurants I love the food I love the community around me is sacred and respected and the rest I don't care I feel like everyone in the world see my you know dirty underwear it's like there's nothing more I can everyone knows everything whatever it's but I know the truth yeah that's give you though you're saying it gives you I think I think you haven't been killed you know there are people who have been destroyed well you know I'm proud that I didn't go that far but I understand absolutely why you lose your mind it kind of perpetuates behavior that coping mechanisms that are toxic drinking too much or going out too much or just keeping moving because it's all so crazy and you can see why people unravel um and actually it suits them the more you unravel they're kind of encouraging you to do that because that sells more papers yeah yeah so it's it's wonderful in a way i i'm not a fan of social media but i respect that women now have an opportunity to that their voice is more powerful than anything anyone could write or they have a means to retaliate i just got incredibly litigious and then you'd get an apology that's that big, tiny, in a newspaper that no one sees.

25:30I mean, it's nice that it's come full circle and we look back on that behavior and can't believe that that was allowed. It feels like another person, another world, another life. Do you remember the people who helped you through this? Yeah, I've been fortunate. I've never had a friend tell a story in my life. I had a very strong core group of friends from a young age, from 10, from my senior school, one of whom is in this room right now, my best oldest friend do you remember going through this? yeah very much so running away from she's six foot tall and I'm not she was my security but also she was sometimes a decoy so we'd put like a jacket over her head and she'd run out of the theatre where I was doing a play even though I'd suddenly grown six you know however many inches they didn't really notice it's such chaos what play were you doing?

26:21my first play was As You Like It at the Wyndhams But I think, yeah, having that stability, my family, my mother, my sister, it kept me anchored in a way where I feel like if I didn't have that, I understand how people derail completely.

26:40If you like listening to Ruthie's Table 4, would you please make sure to rate and review the podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you.

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27:42That's why over 200 ,000 happy customers have made the switch. Upgrade your space today. Hey, 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. 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. What did you do during COVID for food? It was interesting. All I did in COVID was cook. Did you? Where were you?

28:22I was in upstate New York. Where? In North Salem. Yeah. I'm from, you know, I'm from there. Are you? Whereabouts? I'm from Woodstock, which is a bit further. Which is a bit further, yeah. Of course you are. Of course Ruth, you're from Woodstock. They say you can take the girl out of Woodstock. Yeah, you make, that makes so much sense. I wasn't really like that. Did you go to the festival? No. No, I had my tonsils out. But I know. Oh, my God. My parents would let me go. So I was having, they scheduled that tonsil. Well, nobody knew it was going to be there. I mean, it was going to be like that.

28:52Also, it wasn't in Woodstock because at the last minute, the town fathers or whatever, we had to do it on that guy's farm. Yeah. But I was kind of like slightly nerdy about studying. I was surrounded by people doing everything wild, and I was that girl who did her homework for a while. And we were, my friend Libby and I had a test, so we went to the local cafe, and we were sitting there studying, and Bob Dylan sent a note, we saw him, and it was just when he was kind of starting out, but he was already famous, and he sent us a note saying, would you like to come back to my house and watch the band rehearse?

29:27And we sent back a note saying, no, we have a test tomorrow. Oh, my God. So there you go. Wow. But maybe it's better, probably it failed, I don't know, but I wonder what would have happened if I'd gone back. I think he was probably well ahead. maybe gone to Bob Dylan. Don't you think? I would have definitely gone. You know that song Je Ne Regret Rien. Well there you go. Maybe that's one. I would have actually instigated the no passing I think. You're a better woman than I am. There's still time. We'll throw the invite out there. Maybe I should get that down. We'll make it really nice. Do you remember 50 years ago when you invited me to come?