Tom Hollander

0:00This is an iHeart Podcast.

0:30Experience 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. If 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. You're listening to Ruthie's Table 4 in partnership with Montclair. Imagine going to a close friend's birthday months after the death of your son.

1:16Imagine realizing it was too soon and telling the man you're talking to, who you hardly know, why you need to leave. He takes your arm and he insists on seeing you to the lift. Then he goes down with you until you get to the street. This becomes a ten-minute walk to the car park, a climb up the stairs, him holding your hand tightly, until you find your car. Driving off, you see him in the rearview mirror, waving goodbye. I was this woman, and Tom Hollander was this man. And his act of tenderness and compassion has stayed with me for thirteen years. There are many stories about Tom Hollander. The best ones are told by him, not least his life in the day for the Sunday Times, the best in a great series ever written.

2:06He is a fantastic actor. White Lotus, Patriots, most recently captivating audiences as Truman Capote in Feud, Capote vs. the Swans. He sings beautiful songs to his six-month-old son. He's passionate about what he cooks and what he eats. Yesterday, he sent me a photograph with no caption of Fran Hickman with a large stainless steel saucepan, obscuring her face, drinking the contents. Imagine being me in the River Cafe with Tom Hollander on a Tuesday afternoon, talking about memories of food, memories of friendship, family, and all he is doing. Then imagine how special this feels. And it's true.

2:51I remember that. And it is something that stayed with me for years. but what is really staying with me is spaghetti with peas and prosciutto. So, ingredients. 100 grams of butter. One small red onion, chopped. 300 grams of peas. Sea salt and ground pepper. One loaf of garlic, thinly sliced. Two tablespoons of chopped flat-leaf parsley. Three tablespoons extra virgin olive oil. 150 grams prosciutto slices, torn into pieces. 300 grams of spaghetti. 30, 50 grams of freshly grated parmesan. Heat the butter in a heavy frying pan over a medium heat. Add the onion and fry until soft. Add the peas and salt and pepper.

3:34Reduce the heat to low and cook for five minutes. So that's the thing about peas. I'm never quite sure. Mostly we cook frozen peas, don't we? And you can pretty much just sort of put them in water for about a minute and then they're ready. But these peas, fresh so you cook for longer. That's why they take five minutes of cooking. Yeah. It depends really what part of the season you're in. When you have the very, very small peas, you hardly have to cook them at all. I see. And then, you know, the tougher they get and the larger they get, you might not use them in a pasta sauce because you want them to be cooked down and really part of the softness of the pasta.

4:14But so these were new season fresh peas. So you've added the peas and the salt and the pepper. You reduce the heat to low and you cook it for five minutes. And then you add the garlic, parsley, prosciutto and olive oil. You cover and cook over a low heat for 15 minutes. Meanwhile, bring a large saucepan of salted water to the boil. Add the spaghetti and cook until al dente. Add the spaghetti to the pea mixture. Stir well with a spoon. Stir in the pasta water and top with parmesan cheese. Serve immediately. So you've just made this in the River Cafe. What was that like? I watched Joseph. It was thrilling because I haven't ever seen somebody who knows really what they're doing that close up.

5:01It was also delicious and made me want to go and cook it. It's good to watch, isn't it? It's good to actually see something being made rather than always reading in a book. Yes, and to see his hands move. Someone who's done it for years so it becomes like a dance. Have you ever cooked on stage?

5:24I don't... Oh, I feel like I did. When I was a child actor, we did sausages. We had sausages. What was the play? It was called Captain Styric, and it was one of the greatest shows that the Children's Music Theatre, which is I think now called the National Youth Music Theatre, National Youth Music Theatre, created. It was a brilliant, dark ballad opera, it was called, and we were all ragged children, Dickensian beggar children in Bartholomew Fair. And Captain Styrick was the young kid who was our leader. It wasn't Fagin-like, it wasn't Oliver Twist, it was actually darker. And Captain Styrick went mad.

6:10Julian Sylvester, he was called. If you're out there, Julian Sylvester, you were unforgettable. Anyway. Maybe he's listening. Maybe he is, I hope he is somewhere. And we... How old were you, Tom? Oh, 13, 14. We did it on the stage of the National Theatre in what was then called the Cottesloe Theatre. And we had sausages, which we cooked on a... I mean, I don't think we really cooked them, but we were as if cooking them, and then we got to eat them. And, you know, it was quite fun to have something to eat halfway through the second half. I remember that. Yeah. And I sing the song from that. What was it?

6:50I sing that to Kit, our son. I sing it to him. Now many a man has left this land on a boat that's bound for botany. Why should he grieve? He could be leaving a life of mere monotony. He'll boast and brag of the deed he's done to avoid the nag of the hungry son. But he's been undone at the feast of fun and it's Botany Bay for him, sir. do you when you are on stage does your schedule for eating change i try to eat in the day before the biggest meals in the afternoon before the show because it's quite athletic so what time would that be if if the play starts at 7 30 then three or four yeah two or three or four and then go to sleep yeah and then do the show and then if there are people in then you and you you find out you're going out to dinner then you have to have fish and vegetables and try not to eat all the chips and all the rest of it and matinees matinees uh the last play i would have a falafel salad in the dressing room without leaving between shows because that that you just need carbohydrate and fuel and then go to sleep and you to try to eat a biggish breakfast on a matinee day but that that in between show day i would buy it before i take it in put it in my fridge eat it go to sleep that was a ritual that was very good yeah would you drink would you have alcohol if you are going on stage between shows yeah no never no though everyone no i tried to uh i tried all of those things in my 20s and they it's a mess it affects your timing and your memory and your speed and your reactivity i don't you can't uh it ruins it but in the olden days I remember Oliver Cotton telling me that he, I remember, it was very strange, in the mid-80s at the National, everyone stopped drinking during the show.

8:52And he said if you were on stage with Paul Schofield and you were at Downstage Center, you would expect to smell whiskey on his breath. Wow. So they were just, they were just used to it. I think it didn't, they drank so much more in those days that it just didn't affect them in the same way. But obviously, alcohol, a small amount of alcohol or a small amount of any intoxicant allows releases your imaginative stuff and makes you relax. When I played the violin at school, I would always find concerts very tense making. and I discovered that having half a glass of beer allowed me to play better in a concert situation just because I was so wracked with nerves otherwise.

9:42But the association between being artistically brilliant and being intoxicated has got an awful lot of people into terrible trouble over the years, not least of whom Truman Capote. We could talk about Capote and women in food. Because those women, there are a lot of so many scenes in restaurants, right? That's true. They went to lunch every day. You're right. But I wonder if they ever ate. How much they ate. Because being skinny was the goal, right? Yeah. They drank, I think. They drank and smoked. They did. They drank and smoked and sort of died young. Yeah. Perhaps they were celebrating being in the in crowd and being at the table, the best table in the best restaurant.

10:26And yes, they were restraining themselves. he couldn't stop he couldn't control his appetite and he loved cooking he loved he loved his own kitchen he's from the south was he from the south yes yes uh and the black and white ball they served his you know the black and white ball the sort of apotheosis moment the black and white ball was a ball that Truman Capote threw in I can't remember when the very early 60s uh on the back of in cold blood which had made him hugely famous and his obsession with sort of high society and his own celebrity came together in one glorious moment and he he created the guest list to beat all guest lists that have ever existed so much so that people knew about him were fighting to get on it and aristocrats flew from europe all the film stars you know frank sinatra mia farrow the the Agnelli's, probably Mick Jagger, we can ask him, they all turned up to the plaza and he gave them corned beef hash, which he remembered fondly from Monroeville, Alabama, where he'd grown up.

11:41But they all complained about the budget of the catering, that it was very small. For him, it was about getting them in. They were the decoration. They were the party. their dresses, their masks but there was nothing there there was some balloons and some rather stodgy food that none of them wanted and I think the party ended relatively early and a whole bunch of them went gambling What was it like filming that scene? Amazing Did you do it at the plaza? They recreated it in the plaza And they recreated the plaza And Zach Pozen had done the dresses for the ladies It was amazing That was and there was there's a sequence in it And if people, he did it emotionally for his mother, we think.

12:26We think those of us who made that show. Because his mother wanted to, Truman's mother, who'd abandoned him when he was four, then married a man called Joe Capote who gave him his name, Truman his name. But he was a sort of, he was dodgy, his finances were dodgy. And she nearly made it herself into Upper East Side Society. and then Joe Capote was revealed as being sort of bankrupt and hopeless. It all fell apart and she killed herself. And then Truman had this ball to kind of, to go, look, mum, I've done it. I've done it for us. Everyone wants to be here. They've all got to be here. And in our version of it, episode three of Feud, Capote and the Women, in our version of it, his mother comes to him as a ghost in the ball and what Lee Radswell sees is Truman dancing drunkenly on his own and Lee Radswell looks across the room, Callista Flockhart, looking at him sadly, going, look at the poor sod.

13:30He's just a drunk. And then the final scene of the episode is in colour and he's not dancing on his own, he's dancing with his mum. Did he eat? He did and he loved cooking. Yeah, he was addictive and compulsive. He goes up and down. You see, in our version, we pretty much do fat Truman because I couldn't, in a TV schedule, go up and down as much as I needed to. So we went with fat. Ryan Murphy said, you need to put on some weight. So I did, which was very enjoyable. How did you do it? Obviously, less enjoyable trying to lose it again. How do you gain weight? I've done this a couple of times. I did it and basically you have to just eat all the things, the obvious things like pizza and ice cream and Cornish pasties and chips.

14:25And then you get fat very quickly. How does it make you feel? And then it's marvelous in the moment. And then I started to find it hard to put my socks on and I got breathless doing sensible things. I thought of easy, usual, I mean, ordinary things. That was distressing. so and also I'm a bit old to be messing around with my weight like that and furthermore I've I have a little bit of a compulsion to overeat myself and have spent all of my most of my professional life slightly going slightly slightly up uh in between jobs and then having a diet before a job and going up and going down and going up and going down and trying to stay disciplined trying to be like my father who weighs himself every day and if he ever goes over 11 stone, he has a light breakfast.

15:20He says, I know whether I can have a heavy or light breakfast depending on what the scales are told me. Every day he does that, which sounds like one of the swans with its level of obsession, but he's 88 and still going strong. You were saying before that putting it on was one thing, but you haven't told us about how you take it off. So I went to a clinic. About half of it came off in an Austrian clinic. And then I really only lost. And then I went and did a play in which I was playing someone who needed to actually be a bit heavier than me. So it took me Patriots, yeah, playing Berezovsky, who was quite portly.

16:00So I kept it on for that, and that worked. And then I only got it off about three months ago with the fear of doing the American press junket. That motivated me enough to cut down on everything for a few weeks and it came off. And so I'm always trying to, you know, discipline myself. But I do have a tendency to, I love eating, but I also eat my feelings, you know, which people do. and if you do it too much, it's not good for you. So I try to do other things with my feelings. A friend of mine, I was at a dinner recently where they were talking about a Zempek. Oh, yes, yes. And they were saying that, and it was kind of interesting to her, she said, really what it's done for me, it's taken the noise of food away.

16:59It's taken all that noise, should I, shouldn't I, will I, won't I, how much, when. Yes. And actually, I understand that a lot. But I also think it's the kind of noise we do want in our life as well. We like the noise of food, don't we? We like the kind of thought of going to bed at night and thinking, what am I going to have tomorrow for lunch? And actually, it's the noise of being alive, isn't it? It's the desire, then the fulfillment of the desire, the creative process, the gathering of ingredients, it's the construction the destruction the kind of the clearing up afterwards everything from the preparation to the end of it it's all it's and it's a sort of i mean you could i could become pretentious if i'd say uh but you know it's a cycle of life isn't it but yes but but to be at war with food which you can be is not good and i have i do have a sense of that because being you know an actor where you become inevitably obsessed with your appearance uh you know it uh it has a tendency to make you think i must indeed i must indeed i must indeed so i'm beautiful beautiful beautiful um it's never really made any difference i i met a i met a an actor once in italy who'd long retired he'd been a famous 60s heartthrob quite famous um and I'm not going to name him, partly because it would be the wrong thing to do and also because I can't remember his name.

18:34But he said, I had to retire because I was sick of being thin and I wanted to eat. And he lived in the Italian hills near Cortona and he loved food and he ate it and he's probably no longer with us, but he was living the life of a bon viveur. and I did sometimes think I'll get to a certain age and then I'll give up trying to not be fat and then I'll just become a fat actor because fat actors, they never stop working. There's always room for a fat actor and everything. Anyway, I can't do that. Orson Welles, right? Well, exactly. Orson Welles or the dear Richard Griffiths. You sort of think they're loved, but I don't want to do that because I now need to live as long as I can.

19:26For sure, for sure, because you have a son. I do.

19:36Did you know the River Cafe has a shop? It's full of our favourite foods and designs. We have cookbooks, linen napkins, kitchenware, tote bags with our signatures, glasses from Venice, chocolates from Turin. You can find us right next door to The River Cafe in London or online at shoptherivercafe.co.uk.

20:28Thank you.

20:49to upgrade your living space today with no risk returns and a 30-day money-back guarantee. Get up to 60 % off plus free shipping and free returns. Shop now at washablesofas.com. Offers are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply. Discover Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, a perfect destination to unplug and enjoy the season. The rolling hills and quiet countryside offer a peaceful escape, while the vibrant city and rich culture provide so much to explore. Wonder through the boutique shops in Lancaster, enjoy a glass of local wine or a cozy cup of coffee, and catch a live show at the American Music Theater.

21:31You can also dive into the authentic Amish culture by visiting markets and sampling the homemade treats. How delightful. Lancaster County offers the perfect balance of cozy and adventurous, ensuring a memorable escape. If you're planning a fall getaway, start at discoverlancaster.com forward slash soul sessions. What were meals like in your house? Did you all sit down for dinner every night? Yes. You and your sister and your parents, your mom cooked. And mom would cook. Did your father cook as well? My dad didn't cook then, but he didn't cook when we were children, really. But he learned to cook once we'd left home, and he loves cooking now.

22:16That's one thing that's, maybe that's changed. I wonder whether this was true. I was thinking about it, just that when I grew up, it felt like, you know, mothers did the cooking, fathers did the eating. But that we've lived through a period where that's changed, right? As mothers are working. Mothers are working, so fathers are cooking. and then people like Jamie Oliver, scion of the River Cafe, have taught everyone how they can do it too, right? But I have an image of my father learning to cook and then I am sort of learning to cook actually the same sort of age, which is great. That's a great development, isn't it?

22:56Yes. When you were growing up in your parents' house, your grandparents were nearby? They were in Devon, no. We were in Oxford, but we used to go to them on the way to Cornwall every spring and every summer, and sometimes on the way back. And then towards the end of my grandparents' life, he was living with us in Oxford. Your grandfather, who came from Germany with your father? Tell me the background. Yeah, Czechoslovakia. Czechoslovakia. Yeah, in 1939, he came with my dad, yeah. How old was your father? Three. Oh, I see. So your father came very early. Yeah. So the grandmother, grandfather, and your father.

23:391939, yeah. They made this epic journey across Central Europe and landed at Harwich, I think. Yeah, and they had sort of 25 suitcases at the beginning of the journey, and they were thrown off one by one, reduced to about three by the time they got to the end. and the only money they had left was in my father's shoe, the toddler's shoe. But they knew some people. My grandfather ran a radio station in Czechoslovakia. The music was in charge of the music, the classical music part of it. And a BBC producer had sent him this letter inviting him to come to give a talk about Janáček, because my father knew Januszczyk and had written about Januszczyk and promoted Januszczyk and was a friend of his.

24:33And please bring us some expertise about Januszczyk. And that was what allowed them to get through because they had German accents. So people were suspicious of them. Did they speak English at all? My grandmother spoke quite good English and my grandfather had to learn English. He was 42 or something. 40. He was born in 1899. So, yeah, they... And this is your grandparents. Did they cook for you? They did a bit. I think my parents used to take over pretty much doing all the domestic things when they got there. We used to say it was bohemian, their life. It was technically Moravian. happy food situations were in in um in our home i have very happy memories of our family suppers in which the day would be downloaded and we'd all share our experience of school my parents would teach us so we would all be talking about us what had happened at school they would be as well uh and i did miss that that is that is my that's a one of the principal memories of growing up is that moment of the day for sure so let's look at this book this book so this is a book that my mother uh made me when i was a student and sent me off to be a student with and put in a few of the my favorite things that we'd eaten that she'd cooked us and it was just sort of start us off so this is when you went to cambridge yeah yeah so 1985 she would have made this so we're looking it a book so she's written bon appétit and then she sectioned it into soup fish meat miscellaneous um under miscellaneous is tomato chutney and your mother grew up in in britain yeah yeah uh well yeah she grew up in africa until she was six and then she then she was in england um but the there to roll across all that was that's the sort of thing that we used to eat as children so she Well, it's Central European.

26:38It's Tirolian, actually. It's Czech-Austrian because they were. So we did eat. And Dad, what's fascinating about, because Dad does not really, Dad is an Englishman now. But when we go, it's food. Food reveals about your origin. So he loves Wiener Schnitzel and he loves Apfelstrudel, which he now makes. He makes Apfelstrudel. That's intense. He makes very good afro-chivel. And so mum used to cook things. Oh, goulash we used to eat regularly, which I've recently learned how to make, which I'm thrilled about because it's... What meat do you use? Well, actually mushrooms the last time, no meat. A vegetarian goulash because Fran is vegetarian.

27:29And then I secretly sometimes make it, if Fran's not at home, I made it with... venison we live in a bit of the country which is infested with deer and people are always giving each other piles of venison out of the deep freeze so delicious but tirolo crozel is tirolo crozel is a sort of is a kind of peasant alpine dish simple or cooked potato it's potato and garlic sausage you have the cooked potatoes and then you're adding salami ham and sausage Those are sort of oars, but garlic sausage is the classic thing. And then you add the garlic, then the potatoes fry, add the meat to the ingredients and cook for another 10 minutes.

28:15That seems like a good recipe for a college student, doesn't it? Yes, and then it was a bad recipe for an out-of-work young actor who didn't have enough to do and would go, well, I can fill the second half of the day with lunch and the consequences of lunch. I can fill it with the buying of the ingredients, the cooking of lunch, the overeating and then the falling asleep and that'll get me to PM program. So what time would that be? That would get me to 5 o 'clock. No, but I remember making Tirola Crowslin Peckham in 1989. This is beautiful.

29:01If 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, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you.

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30:06That'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. Discover Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, a perfect destination to unplug and enjoy the season. The rolling hills and quiet countryside offer a peaceful escape while the vibrant city and rich culture provide so much to explore. Wonder through the boutique shops in Lancaster, enjoy a glass of local wine or a cozy cup of coffee, and catch a live show at the American Music Theater.

30:50You can also dive into the authentic Amish culture by visiting markets and sampling the homemade treats. How delightful. Lancaster County offers the perfect balance of cozy and adventurous, ensuring a memorable escape. If you're planning a fall getaway, Start at discoverlancaster.com forward slash soul sessions. You were doing theater ever since you were in the play in the National Youth Theater. And you auditioned for this from the Dragon School? No, no. It was at the next school. It was called Abingdon School. And yeah, this company used to go around schools and work in the school with the drama department for a term and create a show and then take it to the Edinburgh Festival.

31:38and we were all incredibly lucky. And from that, I got, they did one called, well, Captain Styric was the first one, which I think they'd started at Haberdasher's Asks. It all sounds very embarrassingly privileged, which it was because they were all, I think, independent schools. Tiffins it started at, which is, I think, a sort of grammar school at that point. But it was actually that National Youth Music Theatre thing that I got picked up for a TV film, a BBC Dickensian drama for children's theatre in 1981 called John Diamond, which was an adaptation of a Leon Garfield book. And that was so exciting to be picked up.

32:23I had a term off school. I was driven around in a car and I got given money and got to stay in a hotel on my own and eat. I remember eating duck a la ronge on my own age 14 in a hotel in Tetbury and thinking wow this is the life and that rather rewired my brain in a way that is either helpful or unhelpful because it meant sort of the end of ambition or at least it meant the end of imagination so I then thought well I must repeat this for the rest of my life and become an actor so that was when I was 14 and then I went back to school, went to university, and then, yes, was always waiting to start acting.