Da'vine Joy Randolph

0:03Hello and welcome to Table Manners. I'm Jessie Ware and I'm here at Mum's Kitchen. Yes, darling. Looking fab. Am I? Yeah. I like this talk. I do like it. Yeah. It's been a while since we've bought leopard print back out. It's back in for me. Oh, really? Yeah. What, that three-month rejection you had? Hiatus, yeah. It was an interregnum. It smells delicious. Yeah. How are you? I'm all right. I'm recovering. Are you sure about that? Yeah, I'm recovering. I slept last night for more than four hours. Oh, well done. Do you want to explain why? Because my little baby grandson's returned back to the States.

0:41So I absolutely, I was up every hour with him the night before. Oof. Yeah. Yeah. Hot and sweaty and clinging on. Oh, little thing. Yeah. Well, what have I been up to? I've just been deep in album stuff and listening to mixes and just very much in that. Rehearsing. But this smells amazing. What are you cooking today? It's a Molly Bass recipe or Bazz. Bazz, I think. Molly Bass recipe. She's an American chef that lives in Los Angeles. It's called One Pot Chicken Mujadara. I don't know what Mujadara is, but it's chicken on a bed of lentils and rice, onions, shallots, with turmeric, cinnamon, cumin.

1:24Yum. Yeah, and it looks great. And I'm going to serve it with some ginger and garlic sesame beans. Yum. then I've made oh wow because I thought because I didn't do I'll go fancy pants this time I've done individual trifles oh Lenny that's so come down with me I thought individual I thought why individual because I went to a charity lunch a Marie Curie charity lunch yeah and on the they don't come with a big pot of trifle and then and it all caves in I just thought I'll do individual ones it won't cave in it look lovely decorated with rose petals and almonds wow yeah gone full hog because this woman's a bit of a cook so you can introduce who we've got as a guest oh i love this woman she was in a fabulous film called the holdovers yes she is a great singer she's just in a new film that I watched the other night which is great called Eternity and her name I love how her name came about because her parents have wanted a child for so long and when they saw her they called her Divine Joy it's actually Dayvine I think yeah yeah well it's based on Divine Joy and they call her Dayvine Joy Randolph Randolph I'm so excited to meet her she just looks like a gorgeous woman.

2:49She loves cooking. Yeah. She's very funny from the interviews that I've seen of her. I loved the A24 film Eternity which I think she's coming to chat about. But also she was just brilliant and won all the awards as being the cook in Holdovers. Also Murders in the Building. Oh yeah she's in Only Murders in the Building. I think she plays the policewoman. I think she's going to have a very good sense of humour. I just think we're going to have a good time. I think she's going to appreciate the amount of effort that's gone into today. Yeah. As do I. It does smell aromatic. It smells fat. And we're really excited to have a Divine Joy Randolph coming up on Table Manners.

3:38Divine Joy. It is a pleasure to have you. It's an absolute joy. You are, I think you're up there and I'd say number one of the most glamorous guests we've ever had. Oh, yeah, definitely. Thank you for making an effort. We're just really happy to have you. You've just fallen asleep in the car. Yes. But you still look fab for it. Thank you very much. How has London treated you? It's the best. Really? I always love being here. So kind. My first job was here on the West End. Yeah, you did Ghost, didn't you? Mm-hmm. So Whoopi Goldberg's part in the movie. And that was my first job out of school. You're the nicest.

4:20So kind. And I was here during the holidays. It was my first job, like, away from home. I was homesick. They put me up at the Ritz-Carlton. Wow. I felt like Julia Roberts. Yeah. It was the best. But wasn't it, you were doing, you were going to be doing Ghost on Broadway. Yes. And then somebody fell sick here. Sharon. Oh, hang on. Is she the amazing one? Sharon C. Clarke. Yes. Okay, Sharon C. Clarke. She's a big actress. She's a big, big, big deal. And so I think she had to like, had some medical thing, like had to get surgery, which is wild because you guys have like three to five. You can have up to five understudies on the West End, where in the States we might have two.

5:03And so even with all those understudies, they were like, you know what? Get on over here. And so literally, it was around this time. But yeah, it was the week of Thanksgiving. And I was like, can I please just have Thanksgiving? And they were like, okay. So I flew on Sunday. I saw the show that night. Wednesday was my first dress rehearsal on stage for paying customers. And Friday, we were off to the races. Had you started rehearsals on Broadway? No. Oh. Nothing. So I knew I had booked the role like that August. We weren't supposed to start until like the winter on Broadway. And so I'm just like, oh, I have this job that I'll do sometime in the new year.

5:53And then literally the week of Thanksgiving literally would be this week. That was two days, three days of rehearsal, two days of rehearsal. Yeah. Was Wednesday a matinee as well? No, they didn't do that to me. Thank God. That would have been brutal. Yeah. That's crazy. Yeah, but I'm so grateful. And the West End was like the best place to have my training ground. And you guys love theater so much that it was like, I feel like I had gotten treated better or the same now as a film actress as I did as a theater actor on my first job ever. The way that you guys just so love and support theater is just beyond.

6:33But New York, I mean, we were in New York and we went to a theater there and the audiences are so enthusiastic. They are. Standing up, they're cheering midway through. Yeah. But you guys get to drink. Oh. Mm-hmm. Oh, you mean during the interval? Well, at least on October. You can have them in there. Yeah, you can have them in there. Yeah, that's true. So in New York, you know, drink in between, but you can have it in there. Yeah. You guys are a wild fun bunch. Oh, right. So the second half was always a bit more amped up maybe? For you guys, all of it. Oh. Yeah, for all of it. But in the States, yeah, maybe.

7:13But yeah, you guys have a good time. I think if someone came to see Ghost, they'd make a real night of it because they know the film. Yes. They love the whole thing about it. Yeah, it's a great night out. It was so much fun. Yeah, it's a good night out. And then there was a lot of special effects. and so we got to work with like David Copperfield and I got to like work with magicians because there were special effects but there was limits in how we could do certain things and so it'd be certain like magic tricks and stuff like that it was so much fun. Can we talk about your childhood and your family and who was around the dinner table and what were you eating?

7:53So my mom at that time when I was younger was the breadwinner. So I grew up seeing my mom, she's a kindergarten teacher, but I grew up seeing her working and very early on, like I had to make breakfast for me and my sister because my dad was already at work. And so in the morning, my mom would get like half ready and then wake me up to get me ready and then my job was to come downstairs and get breakfast together while she was getting my sister together and it was like oatmeal or like uh I don't know if you guys have it's called like instant grits we don't have grits really but I know what grits are like what are grits are they semolina like almost or like uh I've had it my sister-in-law served me grits and fish she's from In the Bahamas.

8:49Yes. And her family cook. Yes. For Sunday particularly was fish and grits. Yes. And it was delicious. Yes. And like in the South, like New Orleans, you would have shrimp and grits. Okay. Or sometimes you can just have grits and like scrambled eggs. But it's a starch. Almost like, do you have cream of wheat? No. No. You have something very close and I don't know what it's called. Is it like wheat germ or? We have polyps. Wheat-a-bix. mix maybe but like it's yummy sorry no but like it's like you can make it sweet with like butter and sugar oh yeah but like so when i was younger to be fair a lot of it was like pop it in the oven i mean the microwave how old are we talking like how old are you me and my sister are six years apart so are you the oldest yeah so i was like maybe like seven or eight of like putting breakfast in the microwave and then as I got older they then let me like do it on the stove top.

9:48Sounds like instant porridge. Ready brick. Yeah it's it's really close. You remember ready brick which is smoother than porridge. Yeah but that's like kind of like oatmeal isn't it but like yeah it's just not doing on the whole. Exactly exactly so yeah I would do that was like kind of my beginning introduction to like cooking. I love cooking. I've heard. Yeah I love it love it love it love it and And so though we were very much so like, you know, blue collar, middle class family, working family, my mom made sure we always sat down to have dinner. What was one of your favorite meals that your mom made?

10:22And was she as good a cook as you? Yeah. Another thing that was really cool is they split duties equally. Like both of my parents can cook, but they knew each other's strengths. Like certain dishes my dad would do or like even now my dad kind of does like the weekend brunch or like the breakfast, the more elaborate breakfast. And my mom will do like most of the holiday stuff, but he'll be like kind of her sous chef for that sort of thing. Are you going to have Thanksgiving? I'm hosting this year. Okay. I'm excited. Yeah, I've been traveling so much. Give us the menu. so I'm working on it but I've been on Instagram in the in the middle of press like literally between things I'm looking because now everyone's posting like their recipes it's my favorite thing to see people's recipes and I like to switch it up I think I'm leaning towards some kind of for like a potato some kind of like I either want to do which is so delicious and I made it by a steak and it was amazing instead of potato on gratin turnip on gratin oh wow good thinking but i want to i've done it before where i ran out of potatoes i was like oh turnips and so having it together feels nice if you want it healthier i mean there's still lots of cheese in it but you could just do all turnips but i'm really into leeks lovely lately right like a nice charred like a You could do a confit leek or something.

11:55So I want some kind of like leek, caramelized onion, potato-y dish. Do you do turkey and ham? Yeah. And because I like hosting, I get really, I'm very clued into people's wants and needs. That's really important to me. The food has to be good, but it's more important of like what people like. And people can be kind of finicky, you know? So I want to do turkey, but I also want to do smothered turkey legs. What do you mean smothered? What, like more butter or something? No, it's almost like it makes its own gravy. So you could do like smothered chicken, smothered pork chops. So is it like slow cooked?

12:33Yeah, okay. Almost like you would do a roast. What would you put on it? Turkey wings. So you have turkey wings, so it's like the broth, your roasted veggies. It basically creates like a gravy. So what you could do is a lot of times if I made it non-during, like not during Thanksgiving, You can have like rice or something like that as the base. Like a casserole? Kind of, yeah. But you bake it like a roast. Like you said, a slow roast. So it falls off the bone. It's super, super tender. I think I've done something similar today because I've cooked the rice in with the chicken. Yeah, okay. Excellent.

13:09Do you ever shop at Irwan? Listen, I try. It's so expensive. I know. But I get my water from there. What? Yeah. Can we talk about the seltzer love that you have? Yeah, we can talk about it. Do you feel comfortable to talk about it? Yeah. What is it? Yeah. Tell Lenny what's happened. I am a seltzer water addict. Oh. Yeah. I don't know what seltzer is really. Sparkeling water. Okay, sparkling water. I had to take it off the table. Because she was looking at it. She was eyeing it up. I'm addicted to it. Do you want some Pellegrino? No, mum, she can't have it. No. Why? Because my doctor, I was like, I would always feel like a little bloated or like have like.

13:52It's because you were having all this water. I had to do a CT scan. And they were like. Is it the salts in it? That's what they're saying. Like it can cause, like it kind of like, and it's not alkaline. And it's not good for your vocal cords either. No. So you're off it. So they were taking baby steps. I'm doing it from now until the end of the year. I'm going to see if it works. If it doesn't, I'm back on it Never heard of an addiction to water Which I don't like regular water Oh So that was my own Even when I was a kid, I've been on seltzer water for a very long time It's soda water the same as seltzer water Exactly the same It's just, all those words It's just not tonic water I can't stand tonic water That's a very strong reaction Do you drink alcohol ever?

14:41Alcohol ever? What do you like? What do you drink? Champagne. Yeah. Of course. Yeah. And if I had to get a cocktail, I really enjoy an espresso martini done well. When it's like kind of creamy and like chocolatey, like faint chocolatey. Where do you get your best espresso martini? Like where's good in LA? Usually a good steakhouse has a good espresso martini or like a really good Italian restaurant will have a good martini. But I always ask if it's on there. That doesn't mean I'm going to get it. I ask and say, is it good here? But they're not going to say no, it's shit. No. Have you ever noticed that sometimes, I don't know, maybe they don't do it here.

15:22I so appreciate a waiter that's honest because I'm such a foodie. If you are like, mm-hmm, and I order it and I look at you like, you know that's not good. You know that's not good. But I don't know. I would tip you so well if you just are like, if I'm like, oh, and I want to get the Brussels sprouts. Do you want me to serve some food? Is everyone starving? Are you hungry? Yeah, sure. Okay, great. Good. Thank you, Mom. I just want to say, before I go off for a minute, do you ever do stand-up comedy? Because your one-liners are so fabulous. No. Yeah. I just feel that you should be doing that. Thanks.

15:56She's worked and busy. She didn't need to do stand-up at the moment. No, but I appreciate that. I really, really do. You're funny. But, yeah. Okay, my thing that all my friends get really annoyed about with me when I go to a restaurant, I ask the waiter what the best things on the menu are. Absolutely. Why not? Why is that annoying? They're like. Let's have the best culinary experience possible. Make it count. You'll get all my money. Yeah. I'll come up more and more and more, bring people if I have an amazing spot. But then sometimes their recommendation is not good enough. And then my friends are like, you ask them, you either don't do what they say or you get it and it's not good enough.

16:36Are you someone, though, that when, do you do research ahead of time for restaurants? Oh, baby, I'm looking at that menu. See, so then, yeah. So I feel like, you know, certain establishes that we go to that there's like, oh, this is where foodies go. Yeah. The waiters know. Yeah. Yes, there'll be ones that come. But I have no problem being like, mm-mm, didn't taste right. But I'm not. I will literally taste it. You'll be polite. I'm sure you'll be polite. I taste it. And then I'm like, mm-mm. I don't like when people eat half of it. And they're like, mm-mm. It's like, no, no, no. You ate it. Fine.

17:07Yeah. No, I'm very particular. And I'm a little controlling when it comes to that, even with like friends. And I'm like, wait, wait, where are we going? I know. Or like, what's the genre of food? Yeah. Italian? Can I just do a little? Because there's nothing worse for me. There's nothing. It puts me in a bad mood. If you don't feed me or if we go to a restaurant and it is subpar, don't talk to me for the rest of the day. I'm so with you. I'm a lovely person, but not then. No. I wonder how it would be with me and you on the ordering. I think we would have a fabulous time. We'd order a lot of it.

17:46And the best stuff. Because I want to have an opinion on most of the stuff. This is the thing too. To know. Yeah. That people would be like, why are you ordering so much? Are you done? To have an opinion. Taste all of it. I do love that about like, do you find when you're like in Italy, but more so like France and in Spain with the tapas, like that's my jam. Ever since I was little, I, like you were saying, I like to taste a little bit of a lot of stuff. Stop. Love it. Yeah, it's so fun to me. I think people have the fear when I'm like, they have to scope out whether they're, should we get a few plates for the table?

18:21And some people want just theirs on their own. Do you know there are some people that go to the same place and order the same meal their entire life? I have broken up with men. No, no, no, no, no, I'm not even kidding. I have broken up because I'm like, what is wrong with you? I eat from a different country a day. Like my lunch can be like a Vietnamese pho or something like that. And dinner, I'm going to have something else, like Indian food or something. I can't, I'm a Gemini. And it really kicks in where I'm like, I need variety. I need to taste many different things. What did this said person that you broke up with, what was their order that they had every time?

19:05He just got steak. Games. Protein. Was it that? Yeah, I think. Boring. It was like steak and then he would have like an arugula salad and then get like bland spinach. No, this is not fun. That wasn't even sauteed in butter. And I was like, what? You already have the rocket salad. Why are you also eating spinach? Get the cream spinach. What's wrong? Yeah. Yeah. Mm-mm. Fair enough. It was the smallest I ever was in my life because we kept going to that restaurant. But yeah, no. So when you did The Holdovers, which is such a beautiful film. And you were wonderful. Thank you. And congratulations on all the kind of awards.

19:48And you cooked in that film a lot. That was a real big deal to me. Now, if we were going to come to yours. Yes. and it wasn't Thanksgiving and you were going to kind of bring out the spesh, what would you be cooking for Lenny and I? You know what? Honestly, that smells amazing. It does, mom. It smells great. It smells so good. What I genuinely, because people ask me this a lot, what I genuinely enjoy most is if when I know that people are coming, like how we are about restaurants, I ask them ahead of time of like, what is something that you've had before that you absolutely love or something that you've never had before and you've been dying to try and what I enjoy more than anything where I really geek out is the research I like trying things that I've never made before and then I take great pride and when then like I normally need like two three times making it and I'm like okay I got it yeah Because normally what I do is I will look up at least five different recipes of the said dish.

20:55And when I like, I have recipe books and I love reading recipes. And there's certain things that I'm like, I don't know about that one ingredient. And then I'll find that the next one has that ingredient, not in it, and substitutes it for something else. So out of those five recipes, I kind of come up with my own. And it's just so much fun. like if I'm honest it's it's less of like oh this is my go-to I just have so much fun in trying has it ever gone terribly wrong no and I'm not you're a great but I but but I you're a great time and I really research that's the thing which and I think it's all about the ingredients which apps do you use like for your research or are you just looking online or like do you have the New times cooking app love it yeah do you feel like you go to certain chefs more than others um i think that new york times cooking is a beautiful well-rounded site i have an app so it's helpful to just pull it up i used to go on epicurious a lot okay that's like a nice another nice well-rounded one there is this american chef who she's actually a brilliant recipe maker who is it Her website is called Butter Be Ready.

22:13Okay. Oh, lovely. Thank you. Thanks, Mom. Do you know what I mean? It's an art to make. And I say that to say every single recipe of hers. I always put people, I turn people on to her because every single recipe that she makes. It works. It works and it's consistent. So she has a smothered turkey wing. She has a braised red wine short ribs. She's a really good recipe maker. So, yeah, that's what I enjoy most. My friend who does a lot of baking, she always goes to this Sally's baking. She's called Sally's Baking Addiction. I've said it wrong. Are you bakers? The only thing I do is sour dough. Here, darling.

22:56Do you want to help yourself? Oh, that's perfect. Is that rice? Go on, have a little bit. No, is it rice and lentils? Help yourself, Jess. Okay, thanks. there's beans with garlic and ginger do you know i've been into asian food recently and there there's this really nice trick with with like the chinese like in chinese restaurants the asian beans what they do is they put them in a wok raw okay and then well first you season your pot with like butter and the garlic powder and the white powder and salt and then like actual knob of butter and you let it kind of flash fry and like you know how sometimes it has like blisters yes which is so delicious and then the very end like tiny tiny bit amount maybe that much of water that you put in and cover it and it cooks it the rest of the way and so it has that nice bite to it yet it's still oh so good so this is a molly baz recipe have you ever done a molly baz no she's an She's an American chef.

24:00I think she's based in Los Angeles. I think she was on Bon Appetit quite a lot. Okay. And I'm sure she's on New York Times as well, maybe. This is delicious. It's lovely. Wow. Do you like it? Really nice. It's lovely. It's ground lentils and rice. You know, when I first smelled it, I thought it was going to be, like, strong. You know what I mean? Yeah, it's quite mild. But then when you eat it, it's so mild. It's quite gentle, yeah.

24:31Oh, wow. It's delicious. It's really good. This is a really great one-pot meal. Yeah, it is. Like, see, I love things that are easy. I don't know how easy it was, so you tell me. It was easy. Easy, but yet it gives quite a show. Yeah. So people are like, wow, you really went all out for me. I'm surprised you didn't do the New York Times, didn't you? Oh, I did. Oh, you did. You did. Sorry. No, I did. No, I'm saying because I'm excited. Come and tell me about the New York Times cooking thing that you did. We made a pizza. Well, you love Italy, don't you? You love the food. You love traveling there.

25:04I love the people. I love that it's run by women, let's be honest. The women run that country. It's so satisfying. And again, in their power, they can do everything. They can be domestic. They can cook. They can be a working woman. I wish we figured that out over in the States. I feel like it has to be one or the other. And I love that about Italy specifically, of how they can be all women, every woman, and check off all the boxes and not subtracting one from the other. But yeah, we made a pizza. Did it go well? It went really well. I was really surprised they all could cook. Miles Teller. He could cook?

25:41He could cook, yeah. Okay, this brings us on to the film. Eternity. Yes. I loved it. Thank you. I loved it. Thank you. Such a good part. It was, it was fun. Yeah. Yeah. It was exciting to do something different and have a different kind of energy, you know, because Holdovers was so amazing. But it was like, we filmed it in the winter. And it's, you know, a heavy subject matter. And so when I had read the script, it was presented to me right before Holdovers. And then it came back around because it was an early development. okay but i always knew just from like the elevator pitch of it all that i was like oh this is going to be a good idea like there's there's something here for people that don't know what it's about can you give yes let me try to do this well and not give spoilers yeah i know it's hard right so basically an older woman in her life has been married to a man for many years had a beautiful life but when she was younger her first love was a gorgeous man who you know went off to war and unfortunately had died so they had like this quick fast big beautiful love yeah that's her first love so when she passes away she goes to this kind of like purgatory kind of place that they call the junction and there is where you choose where you want to spend your eternity but she is plagued with a very interesting dilemma because when she realizes where she's at and when the war hero approaches her she's stuck with whom she wants to spend eternity with you You play an afterlife coordinator.

27:39Which is like a social worker. Yeah, a social worker of purgatory. And so my job normally is to help when people pass to help them figure out. They have like a week to figure out where they're going to spend, what world, if you will. But had you had a week? What I couldn't work out? I know. So it's interesting. As the script is written, my character, there's one other character played by John Early. We have the same. Who's so brilliant. He's so talented. Oh my gosh, he's so talented. Who we choose for our eternity to be there at this junction to help people. Oh, that's what you've chosen. We've chosen not to pick a world and to stay at this junction to help people.

28:25Helping other people. Mm-hmm. But I guess you're always allowed to choose an eternity. I don't know. I guess so. Yeah, I guess we could. I think that's what they were going for. That like essentially if I ever was like, okay, now I want to go to blah, blah, blah world. Did you think about all the different versions of eternity that there was Paris land, there was beach world. Like there was, you know, and there was all these different ones. Did it make you think about which eternity you would have liked to have chosen? Yeah, I want to go on a yacht. Oh, God. I want to do that. You don't get seasick then.

28:59Well, see, that's the, I want to, I need to say all the rules and the bylaws, but I want to go on like Rich Carlton luxury headliner cruise. I've never been on a cruise in my life. Maybe you should go on one before you decide to spend time. Yeah, because I don't want the seasick part, but you know, it's a yacht. So what I do know is I've been on a yacht before, not on a cruise ship. Yeah, I was filming a movie in the Dominican Republic. It's called Lost City with Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum. And we were filming in the peak of the pandemic. We were filming in the Dominican Republic. And like almost 50 % of our scenes is like on water or near water.

29:41So our green room was a yacht. Isn't that amazing? Did you get seasick? Uh-uh. I get seasick. Here's kind of like private planes. You know what I mean? like it's a yacht so that i think they can work things out you you're rocking less do you that make sense do you watch housewives any housewives i can't do the reality okay well housewives of salt lake city did a collab with below deck which is another reality tv show yeah and one of the poor girls angie she was vomiting and they were on the most fabulous oh that's interesting they They do say everyone's different. They say you have to get your sea legs.

30:19Now, I will say that. That's a trip. So we would be filming during the day. I wouldn't feel anything. And then I would get back on land. And I would literally be like, you know, taking off my makeup, getting ready for bed. And I would be tripping. And you'd be like this. Or in the bathroom. Because you'd be like, yeah. As if the boat's still moving and I'm on solid ground. That is a trip. So, I mean, you went from a green room in Dominican Republic on a yacht to like, Basically, this whole film is set in one location, really. Yeah, we shot in Vancouver. Okay. Vancouver. Yeah, so all that stuff.

30:52Is everything being shot in Vancouver? A lot is. Yeah, or just overseas. But why isn't LA? No one's shooting anything there anymore. No, I think it's the tax incentives and everyone. It's so expensive. It's so expensive. Yeah, they even shoot more in New York than they shoot in LA right now. It's so weird. It's so weird. It's weird because it's the whole point of LA. studios and films. I know. It's so odd. Do you think you'd move? I came to LA because when I'm from Philadelphia, so I was like, oh yeah, New York for sure. But honestly, what was interesting is that I was getting more work when I spent time in LA.

31:33I think it's like just being there and to be able to have those meetings. And it's a little bit different now with the pandemic and like zoom and blah, blah, blah. Like you can reach people. Have you finished her? Yes, I have. It's so delicious. Thank you so much. Such a pleasure. So, I mean, Eternity, like, how long were you filming it for? And was... Just a month. So the stuff where there was, like, Mountain World, where she goes off of Callum for, like, that... Well, I think she thinks Eternity, but that's Vancouver. That's gorgeous. That's no CGI or special effects. That looks very beautiful.

32:05Yeah, it's gorgeous there. Did you cook for your cast on this one? I didn't because we shot this very quickly. Lizzie and Callum started filming first And Callum then had to leave Because he had to go do another project Miles and I came in later Coming off of another project So all together we only did For like less than 30 days So it was rather quick And they were so efficient And we got so much done in a little bit of time But no I didn't But there's some pretty nice restaurants In Vancouver really? Yeah it was delicious They're known for their steaks I didn't know that Oh God, you should have been with the bloke, the axe.

32:42He would have liked it, wouldn't he? He would have had a blast. Now, we ask everybody what their last supper would be. That would be a starter, an appetizer, a main, a dessert and a drink of choice. I think I know your drink of choice, but I'm not sure. You're going to a desert island. You're not coming back for a very long time. What would be on that menu? I love seafood. but uh when i think it was like 2019 yeah i developed an allergy to shellfish oh my god out of nowhere and i love it was it a bad oyster did you have no i had i have a french bulldog i'm allergic but i love her and i you're allergic to your dog and so what i distinctly remember is it was Christmas.

33:32Yeah. And my mom had made like a batch of Alaskan crab legs. And I remember I had ate that. And then I went to go give my dog a bath. Yeah. Diabolical. I looked a mess for a week. Wow. So now, and I tested it out years later to see like, oh, am I still allergic? Very much so. And it lasts a week. I can take the Benadryl. I went to the emergency room to get the steroid shot. Is it hives? Hives. So no vomiting? No vomiting. Just like horrendous. Itchiness, like swelling, bloat. My face looks crazy. My eye swells up. I'll get like from the neck down, I'll get highs all over. And my face and my neck, just like.

34:23I look like Quasimodo. Mary you went out with a bang though with a you know crab I know It sounded really good So I would say if I could and if I didn't have that allergy I used to make Oh so cute I used to make I still make but I just can't eat it A spinach artichoke dip with crab Oh with crab Thanks mum As an appetizer Mum makes a spinach artichoke dip but mum She makes it with crab as well This is trifle Thank you Trifle is that popular in the States? No. And we would probably call it like parfait. Oh, parfait. Yeah, because it's layered like that. Not a pudding. No. Okay. Okay, so you're doing your own made spinach artichoke crab dip.

35:10Yeah. That sounds delicious. With lots of crab, throw lobster in it, like all the seafood, right? Because it's my last one. What do you dip with? I really like pumpernickel bread. Oh, I love pumpernickel bread. Right? Yeah, yum. And then there's a bread, and I don't know if they have it anywhere else. There's a place called Cheesecake Factory in the States. I love Cheesecake Factory. That brown bread? Oh, I've never had the brown bread. What? I don't know. I used to just have the cheesecake. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Oh. The brown bread. Okay. I don't think it's pumper. I don't know what it is.

35:43It is so delicious. But I would have that as an appetizer. Okay. This is delicious, mom. But you like trifle. I love tranquil. Love it. It's so bright. It's mixed berries at the bottom. Oh, gosh. What's the little crunch thing that you've got on top? They're hearts. I thought they were rose petals.

36:06They're quite nice. Is it like a cookie or something? Is it sponge? It's sponge at the bottom. It's sponge cake. Oh. Wow, that's really nice. Okay, main. At first I was thinking like the ultimate like soul food meal. But then I think about like pasta. Because there's been really dreamy simple plates of pasta that I'm almost cried over. That is just so... Like which one? Cacio e pepe? No, I love when they do... So I can't have clams. But... Vongole. I just love... I know. It is just olive oil, garlic, crushed red pepper. Gosh, they baffle me. It is so simple. The producers. Have you been to the River Cafe whilst you've been here?

37:04No. I feel like that's, you've got to go. You've got to get someone to take you because it's Benny. I went to, what is it? Novikov? Novikov? I don't know. Novikov? N-O-V-I-K-O-V? I don't know that. Half the restaurant is like Asian food and the other half is Italian. Never heard of it. Was it good? Yeah. It was good. But you've got to go to River Cafe. Where are you staying here? At the Rosewood. Oh, nice. Oh, yeah, nice. Oh, it's nice. They have a nice dining room. I've been using that dining room. There's a little local place really near you called Chau Bella, which is very sweet. You can give me chunks of like parmesan.

37:45However, like you can walk there. It's a good little street. but I do feel like maybe you should get someone to take you to River Cafe. When you were acting with Paul, is it Giacometti? Oh, Giamatti. Giamatti. And his eyes were sort of, how did you look? I would have had another break done. Because he had a special Google eye put in. Yeah, to do, because you had definitely one eye up the chimney and one eye up the door. Yeah. But I would have thought acting with him and you're looking at him and it's going that way and that way. You wouldn't know where to look. Do you just look at the one steady one?

38:19Or I would just look at the bridge of his nose? You have to. And has the guy who played the young guy. Yes. Is he acting? Has he done a job? For sure he is. What's he doing now? I got off that plane at Heathrow. Huge billboards plastered everywhere of Now You See Me. It was a movie before with like Morgan Freeman and Woody Harrelson and James Franco's brother. Dave Franco. Yeah. He's in that new movie. Oh, great. So he's doing really well. He deserves it. Yeah. Sweet kid. We haven't actually finished your last supper. Okay. We need to get... I would say... You're going bungalow. Yeah. Without the clamps.

39:03I can't stand this. You can't stand there. But you know what's weird? I can have muscles. Oh. I know. But the little... How did you find this out? Trial and error. Oh, you're just like seeing what goes... I love it so much. Gives you highs. I was telling her it's a new allergy as of like not even 10 years ago. Like 2018, 2019. Can you desensitize yourself by having the odd little exposure? So this is what's interesting. I can if I'm abroad. Like if I'm along the Mediterranean in a small dose. Like I tasted it and it's done. then I'm okay. And the States know, unless randomly New Orleans is known for its shrimp in particular, of fresh water, but it's called sweet water.

39:48Those I could have maybe five. Oh, you've really done your research. But I could do crawfish, which is interesting. I don't want to push that because I don't want that to be, I think it's because my body's not used to crawfish. I love seafood, but I hadn't had that. So, because technically that is crustacean. It's just crustacean. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's just crustacean. So shrimp, lobster, crab. Can you do scallops? No. Yep, do it all the time. Oh, can I have? Okay. Yeah. I'm not going to feel that sorry. You're eating scallops. Gallops and mussels. That's kind of it. Pudding, dessert. You've got a sweet tooth?

40:23No. But I have had maybe four sticky puddings since I've been here in a week. You like it? Where are you getting them from? Room service? Yep. anywhere I can get it. It is so... It kind of reminds me of like... It's happy. Like an umami version of like a banana bread. Do you know what I mean? A bit. It's that toffee. I love a toffee. And it's got dates in it. So when I have... Rillswood Room Service they just thinly slice a quarter, a date and just place it on top. So within it, there's no dates or raisins or anything inside. I like that. So that would be your pudding, your dessert of choice for the last supper?

41:16No, it would be banana pudding. Okay. I love banana pudding. See, I only learned about banana pudding through... American people. American people. So how'd you make yours? So in a way, it's kind of like that. It's a bit like that, yeah. So instead of sponge cake, we use, they call them Nilla wafers. Yeah. They're like just little vanilla, wait for it, little cookies. And we place them all on the bottom. And then some people either will do a banana flavored pudding or just a vanilla pudding. And then you have the thinly sliced bananas that you place all around. And those are the tiers. And then you do the cookies.

41:51It's like banana custard. What's going to be the dessert for Thanksgiving? Would it be a banana? We're going to do, first I have written down sweet potato pie. And I was like, nope, let's take it up a notch. So now I'm going to do a sweet potato cheesecake. Wow. All right, nice. We're going to do apple pie. But I like to have the apple pie. I like to merge things. I love fusion. So because I know that people are going to miss the pecan pie of it all, in the apple pie, I want it to be a bit more of a nutty crumble on top. So I'll make it like a conventional one. What are you consider? A struzzle.

42:29A struzzle. A struzzle. Yeah. Yeah, almost like, but I love the crust of pie. So I'm literally like putting both things in together. So I have the apple filling, have the strusel and then lay. I think you should leave now. To get going, I'm telling you. And so we're going to do that, that. My partner makes a really good bread pudding. What, like bread and butter? No, I don't think it's the same. Bread pudding is like, you make like a custard almost. And you break up day-old bread and you put it in all in and you bake it. okay probably similar yeah sounds similar we have one that we do yeah which is you pour like a custard over the top yeah it's exactly the same does he ever use a panettone bread no do that okay it really because it's sweet and it's got the kind of currents in it or whatever it's really delicious that's really smart what music what's going to be your background music do you know what that what's so fun for us about thanksgiving is that that kind of is the thing that brings in the whole holiday season so like when we're cooking that's like the first time that the Christmas music starts to come out so who are you listening to Bing Crosby Nat King Cole oh the old the old oh geez yeah for sure oh it just feels so comforting yeah and then will you celebrate Christmas as well yes yeah so it's it's nice it like that's the thing that starts it off and it feels a little less pressure Thanksgiving then.

44:02And do you go around saying what you're thankful for? We do. Do you know what you're going to say? I think I'm most thankful for actually the people who have been in my life and has stayed by my side through all of this and the career and everything and all these many changes that has happened in my life. I'm really grateful for the stability and them being around me. You're so humble. It's my parents. You're not a show off at all, are you? They do not play around. And I think growing up too, I lived in the inner city, but being that my mom's an educator, education was very important. So I went to lots of my entire primary school career was at private schools and private international schools.

44:44And in many instances, I was either the only black girl or, you know what I mean, I was going to school with people who were very wealthy, but because of my intelligence, I got in. I got basically on scholarship. I did go to Yale. And so I was always taught whatever you learn and experience, you always bring it back home to your family, to your community, to your friends. And so, yeah, it's my parents that, and how I was raised. And I'm just grateful for this to be one of my gifts that I have. And I just try to make the best use of it. And I don't hold too tightly on it. I really love cooking.

45:23I would be a chef if I could. What's next? What's your next project? I have a movie. The theater. Come back. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. I would probably do the West End first before I did. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's so special. Is it, are they more, not that you would need a forgiving crowd, but I feel, are the Broadway crowd a harder? No, it's not even that. There's just so, and I shouldn't say there's not love for Broadway in New York. It's far from it. And maybe even more just nostalgia for me because that's where I started. And I was so scared and nervous and everything was so new. And it felt like family, like genuinely in such a beautiful way.

46:02And like they knew that I was here. This is my first job. And I was homesick because it was during the holidays. And like, I don't want to say fans because that makes me feel weird. But like the audience would like give me little gifts. The fans. It was so unbelievable. But yes, I absolutely would. But I have a movie that we filmed in Paris with Natalie Portman and Jenny Ortega and Catherine Zeta-Jones. Yeah. It's like a whodunit. So we're just starting now with some of the film festivals. And so I guess I don't know when it's going to come out, but I'm assuming if we're beginning now. You never stop working, girl.

46:42Before we let you go. Yes. Can you give us a nostalgic taste or scent that can transport you back somewhere? Oh, a nostalgic scent or taste. Food, like a food. Yeah. Potato salad. Oh. My grandma's potato salad. She made it at every... Every function. Yeah. Every function. Whether it was like, it would be there on the Thanksgiving table, which probably I wouldn't normally do that, or Christmas, or equally with the cookouts and stuff like that. and she had a special bowl that she would put it in. So every time I taste that, immediately, it's something that's so ingrained in our family. Immediately, I think of her and family and how that was just such a major part and core of my family.

47:34A lot of my family has passed away. But when I was younger, we were just so close and all the aunts and uncles and all the kids would always come over and there was always potato salad there. So I think if I were to taste some of that or smell it, then immediately it would transport me back there. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. We've loved having you. We love talking food. Oh, a dream. And you've been perfect for that. Thank you. And good luck with Eternity. Thank you so much. And also just, we can't wait to see you in more things, but yes, please can you just give us your voice a bit more, please?

48:10Because it is fantastic. Thank you. I really, really appreciate it.

48:27Divine Joy Randolph I loved her She was divine Beyond Absolutely gorgeous Loved her What a lovely woman I feel like We could do a part two With Divine We could I feel like we only Scratched the surface On her food stories Yeah And I loved chatting to her. She was so... So, so humble. Yeah. And kind of, yeah, just a gorgeous woman. Just gorgeous. I hope you eat well in London, divine. And please come back and do the podcast again, because you're fab. Yeah. Eternity is out on the 5th of December. Go and see it. She's gorgeous in it and funny. And she has a fabulous blonde wig. And it's a great cast.

49:10And it's got two of our old guests, Elizabeth Olsen and Callum Turner, also in it and the food mum the food mum was amazing good really good good delicious yeah i think the chicken recipe like moorish could have easy yeah easy recipe really it wasn't too stressful thank you molly baz doing more of your recipes and the trifle was that's a lenny trifle recipe that's a lenny trifle recipe yeah it's getting christmassy already yes last night I was in town to meet some friends. Christmas trees are up. Piccadilly Circus, you want to see Fortnum and Mason's windows. They've done like an advent calendar, like one, two, three, on all their windows outside.

49:54I think Fortnum's does the best Christmas window dressing. I've never seen it. It's just gorgeous. It's so Christmassy and fun. It looks great. Well, speaking of other shops, I will have already done this gig by the time this comes out, but I am singing at the Royal Albert Hall to celebrate Choose Love being 10 years old. And we're singing, I'm singing with the House Gospel Choir, which I'm really excited about. And also just really an important charity that do incredibly brilliant work. But they also, if you are going to be in London around the Christmas period or before and you're going Christmas shopping and you don't know what to do or get, Choose Love have a pop-up shop.

50:38Where is it this year? It's on Regent Street this year because I drove past it yesterday. It looks fab. You can get either a fabulous T-shirt and that money will go towards displaced people across the world. To help displaced people across the world. But also you can pay for specific things, whether that's a life jacket or worn clothing or food. So it's really amazing and it's a great Christmas present. Are we helping this year? Would you like to be on the tills then? I wouldn't mind being on the tills. Let's get you a slot. okay okay anyway so that's choose loves um shoppers uh in regent street thank you for listening or if you're on youtube watching thank you for watching and we'll see you next week