Kristin Scott Thomas

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0:09Lennie Ware: It's got the amazing singles, I Could Get Used To This, Ride, Automatic.

0:18Lennie Ware: My favourite, which you might not have heard yet, Superbloom.

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2:50Lennie Ware: Hello and welcome to Table Manners I'm Jessie Ware and I'm here with Mum in Clapham who's done all the cooking today Thank you Mum How are you? I haven't seen you for ages No we haven't seen each other for ages and I'm just back from Sri Lanka and I've got to shout out Jane Howell Who's Jane Howell? My new best friend, the American ambassador in Sri Lanka darling and Theresa Malmahony, who is the British High Commissioner. Oh my goodness. We're both table manners devotees, darling. Oh, well, there you go. Yeah, there you go. Stopping for pics in Colombo. Yeah, stopping for pics in Colombo. We're global, darling.

3:26Lennie Ware: Love it. What are we eating today? I've made a kind of Vietnamese chicken salad. So it's called crispy butter chicken salad, but it's kind of got a kind of Vietnamese edge to it. Great. And I've done some jasmine rice. And then I've made just a little apple cake with some nice creme fraiche, the expensive sort. Lovely. Well, only the best for a dame. A dame. We have dame Kristen Scott Thomas coming on today to talk about her new film that she directed and wrote and starred in. Which we've been lucky enough to see. Yes, My Mother's Wedding. Starring Kristen Scott Thomas, Scarlett Johansson, Sienna Miller.

4:07Lennie Ware: So many other people. It's fantastic. so she's coming over for lunch. Kristen Scott Thomas, you will know from whether you've seen her on stage winning Olivier's for The Seagull. I saw in The Seagull at the Royal Court Four Weddings and a Funeral. Horse Whisperer, English Patient. Now her best role ever, Slow Horses. Dame Kristen Scott Thomas coming up on Table Miners.

4:38Lennie Ware: Welcome. Thank you very much. You look fantastic. I do feel very well. Do you? Yes, it's very nice. Oh, that's good. You walked in. You're very happy that you smelt food. Yes. Are you hungry? I am. Well, the tragic fact of my life is that I'm mostly hungry all the time. Why is that tragic? It's fabulous. Yeah. What have you had for breakfast? Omelette? Boiled egg. Oh, yeah. Boiled egg and toast. Okay. Yeah. Any marmite on there? Nope. Just plain toast. Not even any butter on it today. Oh, God. This isn't sounding very fun. No, no, no. It usually is much more fun than that, but I've got to refrain.

5:16Oh. Yeah. Acting. Acting. Acting. I think you're French, really. So you should be having a big slab of butter. I don't always have a big lunch, but I do think lunch is an important thing. And I like... It's a bit of a myth that French people go off and have huge lunches. They often have just a salad or something. But they often have wine with it, don't they? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But then, you know, when I first went to France, I think it was only like in the 70s that they stopped giving wine to children in school canteens. You're kidding. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

5:50Lennie Ware: What do you think they were giving them? Well, they would have a little... A little, you know, there would be a carafe of wine on the table for lunch for over-sixteens or whatever it was. Fun. But in those days, wine was a very different product. and for instance now I don't know what what the alcohol content on that is yes have you got glasses is it is it oh my god all of us squinting yeah uh 13 percent oh sorry that's it would be much lower alcohol content so maybe an 11 or a 12 12 max probably and they all behave very well and they would cut it with water you know but I think but I'm not saying it's a good idea and we should bring back wine at lunch for school children but um but you know it's a it's it's the world's changed you know did you bring your children up in france yes so my children are all very very french i'm half french right um and um yeah there we are we're sort of caught mid-channel really i'm really jealous of that because i think it's i i listened to you talking about how um you did you not make it in drama school did somebody tell you not to be a an actor oh here we go okay is this okay this is fine fine so basically I was very young and quite now I looking back I realized quite sort of um I think one would say traumatized but I went to drama school and couldn't really handle it and didn't really know what I was doing and I was very young and I was all over the place and um was far from home and I had absolutely no boundaries you know I was just sort of doing any old thing and um I wasn't going to lessons and anyway I didn't really want to be there I wanted to oh important point I had gone to that drama school to be um set pretending that I wanted to be a teacher when I really wanted to be an actor but I was too scared to say I wanted to be an actor um and so I kind of got in there under false pretenses and they spotted those false pretenses pretty quickly and and then I got sent sent off their mistake yeah but you got sent off and wasn't it a family friend that told you to go to France Yes, yes, yes.

8:17My godfather said, no, this isn't going to do. You can't be because I was working. I did all these jobs, you know, sort of one minute I was a waitress. Then I worked in the in Harvey Nicks. Then I was, you know, I was just doing things and I really wasn't a happy person at all. And he sort of scooped me up and said, right, you're going here. There's your ticket. You're going to there. You're going to look after those children for a bit. So he sent me off as an au pair. And, you know, that was that was the beginning of my life in France. How old were you? 18.

8:49Lennie Ware: I can't imagine how... No, I was a bit older than that. I must have been older than that. I must have been almost 20, I think. But when you just talked about, and we're getting into it straight away, but you were pretending that you wanted to be a drama teacher and you got found out and then you kind of got rejected. And that must have been incredibly brutal for a young girl. Yeah, it was really brutal. It was extremely brutal. And I did not take it well. And, yeah, I was, yeah, chucked out. Not chucked out, but I was told if I put one, I wanted to transfer to go to another department, to the acting department, and I'd managed to organise an audition with that acting department.

9:33But then the non-acting department, the teaching department I was in, said if you put one foot in what's-his-name's office, then you'll be out. And so I just sort of gave up at that point. and I remember going in and I'd made this model of the Globe Theatre because that was part of what we were doing at the time, making little models of theatre. It was a really interesting course, to be fair. Where was it? The Central School. The teaching department was really, really interesting. Learning how to be a teacher was really interesting. You did all sorts of things. It was really, you learned how to be a stage manager, you learned child psychology, which really did not interest me at all.

10:10I was basically a child myself. and the teaching, actually teaching bit I was a disaster at. But I really liked this modelling and making this model. And I went into that room and I was in floods of tears and I just smashed the whole model. I just, you know, took a kind of thing to it and just smashed it to bits and then left. Very upset.

10:32Lennie Ware: And very childish, you know, as a kid. But, like, wasn't there one kind of, like, the devil on your shoulder? You were doing the right thing by, well, they told you if you went into the drama school then you know but weren't you tempted because you had this opportunity did you want to do the the right thing or not just very very confused and I know it just all over the place and um and luckily there was my godfather who's noticed this and took me away from that and put me somewhere else and there's the other place I ended up au pairing was actually really really really helpful and wonderful they were really because they were really supportive and well I didn't really know I didn't really know what I wanted to do because I thought it was impossible to be an actress I just thought it was impossible I don't know why I thought it was impossible but you yeah I don't know into central well I got into central as a trainee teacher so I got everything under false pretenses so this awful feeling of and I I mean, we all get it, don't we?

11:35We all get that feeling of when am I going to get found out? When are people going to find out that I'm a fraud? I shouldn't be here. I'm sure we all get that feeling. But that was sort of confirmed, really, when I went to drama school, that I was a fraud because I wasn't any good at being a teacher. I wouldn't be able to be an actress because I wasn't allowed to. It was kind of confirmation of my worst fears. Was it quite mixed then, drama school, or was it mostly middle school? class girls I mean you've been oh no I got oh my god no I got such grief for that I can't even begin to tell you such grief for that it was like of course you were born with a silver spoon in your mouth etc which of course was not the case the fact that I spoke like someone from the 1950s was what put them onto that yeah but anyway but those days have gone well and yeah and when I found this wonderful family in France she had been a concert pianist and had a car accident and ruined her hand so she'd converted into helping tv shows you know because there was a great an awful lot of sort of cultural television in those days back in France and she was a sort of link between the camera and the orchestra so she'd know when you'd have to zoom into the violin and when So she managed to recreate something musical with what she was able to do now.

13:00And she had lots of friends who were singers and musicians and actors and directors and really encouraged me. And in fact, when I was about to chicken out of going to my audition for drama school in France, she came to the kitchen and said, what are you doing here? I said, well, I'm just washing up. And she goes, well, I thought you had your audition this afternoon. And I said, yeah, but I'm not going to go because there's no point. You know, like this. And she said, absolute nonsense, and grabbed me by the wrist. I still remember her little hand, her claw around my wrist, and dragged me downstairs, hailed a cab, gave the man 50 francs, and said, take her to the theatre.

13:40And I got in, so I have everything to thank her for.

13:43Lennie Ware: Was it more freeing acting in French? Yes. Like not being in your... English is your mother tongue, right? Yeah, English is my mother tongue. it was and at the same time it was terrifying the first year I didn't really say very much I did a lot of mime but I discovered a passion for um for this writer called Marguerite Duras and one of I'm ashamed to say that one of the reasons I enjoyed reading her writing so much and she wrote plays and she wrote novels and she was quite um she was a very famous figure in the 70s and 80s and one of the reasons I really enjoyed it because her sentences are really short and the publisher the books they were published in were very large writing so it was incredibly accessible but the thoughts were quite profound and sometimes very complicated so every then that's where I got this reputation for being incredibly brainy because I was reading Marguerite Duras but it was simply because the print was big and the sentences were short I've heard that when you act in France or in French, you've no accent.

14:53Lennie Ware: They can't detect. It's not quite true. I do have a bit of an accent, but it doesn't really matter. I think the difference between, in England, we have an obsession with regional accents. Yeah. And who belongs where and where do they come from and what would it have. And it sort of bleeds over into foreign. So, you know, where do they come from? It's all very mysterious. In Europe, it's much more fluid because people arrive from Spain or they arrive from Portugal or they arrive from Germany or they arrive from northern Europe. You know, there's much more of a mixture. So people aren't so hung up on the way people speak there.

15:34So I know that when I was making films a lot in France, we took the film to a regional place to do press conferences. and somebody said, you know, was I from the next door town? Okay. Because they didn't, you know, couldn't tell. They couldn't tell. Where did you audition for Cherry Moon? In France? In France, yeah. Oh, wow, was Prince over there? Yeah, he was there, yeah. Because they were making the film in the Victorian studios down in Nice.

16:04Lennie Ware: Oh, wow. So for people that don't know, you were in Prince's film Under the Cherry Moon, is it called? Under the Cherry Moon, yeah. And you thought you were going just as like for one of the girl parts. Yeah. But you got the lead. Yes. And you had to snog Prince a lot. Quite a lot, yeah. And be in sexy cars with him. Yeah. I had to do all of that. And that was kind of like your first acting job, right? That was my first acting job. Talk about baptism of fire. I mean, it was amazing. What was he singing then? What was his album out there? The album that accompanied the film was called Parade. so it was just after Around the World in a Day is that the one?

16:45I think the one with Raspberry Beret on it Oh right and that's what I had been listening to over and over again on my little Walkman that somebody brought me back from Japan because you couldn't buy them in France yet and that's what I'd been listening to all summer when I was camping in a school because we were performing a Marguerite Duras play in a field in Burgundy and suddenly I get this call to go to Paris to go and audition for this man I'd been listening to all summer. I mean it was all spooky and I go along Was he in the audition? No but there were lots of people around the camera a bit like that and then suddenly there's a huddle somebody pokes his head up and says would you be interested in auditioning for the lead?

17:35Lennie Ware: And when did you You battered that imposter syndrome away at that point. You were like, let's go. No, no, no, no. The imposter syndrome was very much lurking at all times. But I thought, well, I suppose I did. I pushed it to one side and I stepped forward and I said, yes, I would. And there we go. That was a wild moment. Totally wild. Was there real chemistry there? it was I mean we were both really young I mean he was I think he was 24 I was 23 you know all I could think about was this play that I was doing at the time which was super intense and great and was a big success and then suddenly to be in this complete other world of luxury hotels I'd never even been to a hotel before that oh wow and luxury hotels and everything was sort of gold and sparkly and there was prince who was actually a real person not somebody that had just been listening to and somebody in this incredible outfit with these three manager people around him and it was all a bit sort of it was very very peculiar was he quite small he's tiny tiny tiny tiny tiny was Was he kind?

18:58Super kind. Okay. Yeah. No, really a generous spirited person. Did you keep in touch? Yes, we did. Yes, we did. But the problem with people like that who are so talented and so extraordinary is there are a lot of people who are protecting that. and so to try to get through this wall of people who for various reasons some of them good reasons some of them less good reasons want to kind of keep you away that was quite that was a learning curve I mean the whole thing was just a mad mad mad moment and um but we did keep in touch because many years later I was doing publicity for a film I think it was Richard III and I went on a TV show, morning TV, breakfast TV, and you have to get up at the crack of dawn and go along and they're all being very chirpy and everything's sort of...

19:56They've been up to 6 '3". Yeah, like this. And it was in New York and had a very big press schedule.

20:07And I go on the thing and they get asked the question, what was your first film? It was with Prince and da-da-da-da. I hadn't heard anything from him since then. And then a bit later on in the day, I got a call in the studio where I was having my photograph taken saying, and there was a bit of a kerfuffle in the studio, Prince wants to talk to you. Oh, I'll just take that. I love that. And then we stayed in touch since then. But I love the idea that he was watching Regis and Kathie Lee at seven o 'clock in the morning.

20:34Lennie Ware: It's like he was omnipresent. He was kind of watching over everyone that he admired. It seems, from what I know, he always had a knowledge of the people that he admired. Yeah, he kept tabs on the people that he'd kind of nurtured, I think. Did you ever go to Paisley Park? No, I never went there. No. Sorry. No, it's okay. Disappointing, isn't it? Was he a good kisser? Very. You've had some good leading men. I have, haven't I? Yeah. I've been very lucky on that part. We need to take it back to the beginning, though, and very much what, you know, your film, your new film that you've directed or written.

21:15Lennie Ware: Yeah, I call my mother's wedding. Yeah. um is inspired by and um but can you paint a picture of a scene around the dinner table when you were younger who was there and what were you eating well first of all there were quite a lot of us so there are five children and most of the time my mum because there weren't very many um but because my father died when I was five and then my stepfather my mother married again and my stepfather was killed when I was 12 11 and they were both in they were both pilots in the navy so they were both either on a ship the other side of the world or they were an aeroplane flying on and off fleet air arm fleet air arm yeah exactly and so it was mostly my mum and then the five of us and I was thinking about this this morning I was thinking I know exactly where I used to sit we had an octagonal table on a pub table base and I would sit here my littlest brother would sit to my right my sister to my left my mom on the corner there and i can just still feel that thing and though she was she did a lot of macrobiotic stuff at one point which is dreadful but she was a good cook she was a really good because you've got her your sister did her yes yes she did and um which was the most wonderful present it's a great it's such a great present she would tell so basically my mother died four years ago but we and when we were clearing out the house my sister was adamant that we kept the recipes and so she collated these recipes and made it into a book you know it's very easy to do nowadays um that she gave us all for christmas so we've got all our favorite things so tell us the granny the granny findon secret cake and things like this you know tell us i know i can't oh it's secret okay okay can you tell us about one other one that isn't a secret um what she she used to make this thing called egyptian chicken which was all very good yeah yeah with lemon rind and um and and olive oil um what else she did carrots a lot delicious way of doing carrots and because she traveled a lot yeah because she'd lived in the far east and she'd lived in africa she'd lived in um and she spent a lot of time in greece on holidays and things um she was really interested in different flavors and tastes and everything She was, yeah, she was a really good cook.

23:36And her mother before that had been a very good cook. So, and my mother had been her, I think my granny was a domestic science teacher or something like that back in the day. So, yeah, we've always been, we've always been quite greedy. We've always liked sort of things that were really sort of, oh. Can you cook? I used to be able to cook quite well. And I'm afraid I've gone slightly off the boil because I just don't do it enough now. Do you eat out a lot? uh tends to eat at the moment we seem to be doing that quite a lot yeah that's all right in france or london no in london i in london we eat out quite a lot and in france i tend to cook a lot because that's where i like to cook okay because i really love i really love going just to the market or the supermarket and being able to buy one pair if i want one pair and that one doesn't look very nice and i'll have that one and um to be able to to it's just we do we have i'm going to be brutal about it but the produce is better in france than it is here for stock so if

24:45Lennie Ware: we were coming around to yours in france what would i do what would you be making us well i'd have to ask you whether we eat red meat or not yes we do okay i would go to my butcher and i would buy a really simple piece of um piece of beef and i'd cook it i'm really good at i'm really good at just the right amount of juice inside what's the secret i think the secret is now is not getting the pan too hot i've changed to these metal pans now i don't use any of those um non-stick ones i used to um but not getting it too hot i mean getting it hot but not too quickly and then you get a really then you seize it and it has to be the same you have to press your thumb here but on the meat yeah on no you well no but it's the same consistency as you're the the meaty bit of your good trick it's brilliant that that works really really well okay and that would be a medium rare that would be a medium yeah rare to medium rare okay and how long would you let it rest a good 20 minutes oh yeah wrap it up okay so good and then i would do you green beans but really nice green beans yeah with a tiny little tiny little bit of garlic and a bit of shallot are you putting in there i love a bit of shallot and then i would we always have a green salad but not one of those i don't like roquette in a bag drives me mad fine um i like a nice lettuce or a cos lettuce or a batavia or something like that which has been freshly washed and that tastes really fresh okay because things that sit around in supermarkets just just just don't taste the same and can you tell me what your vinaigrette is ah so i put a spoonful of dijon yeah in a jar yeah and then i put about that much um oil vinegar vinegar okay which one well it depends on what i I feel like cider vinegar is really good.

26:45Really good red wine vinegar. Sherry vinegar is great. And then I use my oil. And either I'm going to use a sort of simple vegetable oil with a bit of walnut or noisette or something like that. That's really good. Or some really good olive oil.

27:04Lennie Ware: Okay. And sometimes I put a tiny little bit of honey in. Yeah. Tiny little bit of honey in. No lemon? And sometimes, no, I don't put lemon in. And sometimes I crush a bit of garlic and leave that in the bottom. But I wouldn't chop it up, but I'd just squeeze it and leave it in the bottom. Salt and pepper, yeah. Okay, yeah, yeah. Quite a lot of salt? Well, it depends on the mustard, because the mustard is quite salty sometimes. Do you ever change your mustard to whole grain? I quite like that, yeah. There's nothing better than a French vinaigrette, is there? I think the thing is, some people like it really thick and kind of creamy.

27:37I don't. I quite like it thin. and I don't want it all over my leaves. I want it to enhance the leaves, not just sort of completely smother them in dressing. I don't like that. What's your kids' favourite dish that you make for them? Gosh, I don't know. I'd have to ask them, I suppose. I think they like it when I make a bourguignon or something like that, which I love to do. And I cook chicken. And also, I really love roast veal. I know some people feel very sensitive towards that, but in France, we don't. And I think the secret to all that is not to eat all those things too often and keep them for special occasions.

28:25And then, you know, this weekend, I've been, this week rather, I made a big lentil salad. Oh, yeah. I love that. Pui lentils or green or brown? Pui, which are green. Okay. So you cook those, but I like using a little bit of bacon. But you can't, it's quite difficult to find bacon in a slab here. You have to buy pancetta.

28:46Lennie Ware: Yeah, or lardons you get. I don't like the ones that are already cut. They're chopped up. No, you're quite purist. There's always too much water. And it comes out and it's sort of foamy. I don't like that. Okay, so you're doing... You know what you like. I can be remarkably unpurist, by the way. but if I can no I like this so puy lentils with like pancetta or bacon a carrot a little bit of celery tiny little bit of celery that much celery chopped up and an echelot with the cloves stuck in it and then some herbs I love that my mum makes one like that and then when it's warm still warm I put a really good this time a thick vinaigrette over the top mmm so good oh my god that's delicious That's very good.

29:37Lennie Ware: So, back to your film. Yes. It was really, yes, starving. Congratulations. Thank you very much. All star cast. All star cast. You must, you know, make a good impression on set. Well, you know what? I had these three, well, I'm talking about the women who play the daughters in the film. I play the mother. They play the daughters. and the film in the beginning was going to be called Who Art in Heaven? A sort of reference to the missing father. Right. And then, for various reasons, it was changed to My Mother's Wedding. Okay. So the three women who agreed to play my daughters are Scarlett Johansson, Sienna Miller and Emily Beecham.

30:24They are completely different types of actresses and utterly brilliant, all three of them.

30:29Lennie Ware: They had real chemistry together. Incredible chemistry. It was really beautiful. It's like an instant sort of sisterhood. It was extraordinary. Scarlett is one of the most generous and reliable and fabulous actresses who I've known actually since she was 11. Yes, Horsesburg. Horsesburg. Yes. I love the calls from that. I remember reading that when we were on holiday in Wales, Mum. It must have been in the 90s. When was it written? I think it was written in, yeah, 92, 93. Yeah, and I think I was reading it by, like, when I was maybe 11 or 12, probably 10, 11. And when did the film come out? I think, oh, God, I don't know.

31:14It was such a hit, wasn't it? 98, 99, something like that. You were with Robert Redford as well. Yeah. Yeah, lovely man. Yeah, I bet. So beautiful. So beautiful. That whenever he kind of walked into the room, everyone would just go. And when he went in front of the camera, you know, by accident, he'd wander across to go and move a prop or something. Suddenly you'd like be at the movies. He was incredible. And such a good actor as well. I mean, he was great. And a really great, a really great director. I loved working with him. That was amazing.

31:53Lennie Ware: But back to Scarlett. Back to Scarlett. She was back. You've worked together three times, haven't you? Yeah, that was the third time. So yes, Scarlet was, the moment Scarlet agreed, and she agreed so quickly, she read it and said, yep, I want to do this. And from then on, it was just, everything kind of fell into place. So I will be eternally grateful for her fast reaction. But the problem was we had a very short window because she was going off to do something else. She was going off to do Jurassic Park. And I was going off to do more slow horses. So we had this very short window. in which we would be able to make the film.

32:28And I'd really written that role for Sienna because I'd always thought of Sienna for that role. For the movie star. For Victoria, yeah. And she is fantastic in it. She's so funny, isn't she?

32:40Lennie Ware: She's really fun. She's sexy. She's brilliant as it. She's great. It was really fun. And then Emily is an actress that I'd admired for a few years because she has such an amazingly sort of... she's got this sort of face that you can see through in that you can see all the emotions, just like clouds over her face. And I just love that. And was very happy when she accepted to play the youngest of the sisters. Georgina. Who's called Georgina. But I, you know, this is based on your childhood of losing two fathers. I mean... The nub of it. Yes. it is autobiographical in that sense is that what Catherine and Georgina and Victoria went through is something what is exactly what I went through sorry wow wow that looks amazing no that looks amazing mum that looks delicious it smells so good I hope so those herbs are lovely oh mum it looks beautiful we should try this thing that Alice so Alice has just been in Vietnam and this is kind of a Vietnamese pardon yeah And this is a kind of crunchy Vietnamese salad.

33:55Delicious. Yeah, coriander. Exactly what I love.

34:00Lennie Ware: And then Alice has brought this thing back for us. Crispy rice cake. Oh, how delicious. But I feel like we should try it with it because it's straight from Vietnam and I can't do anything with these stupid nails. I'll do it. Honestly. I think this is going to be particularly good for a podcast. What, the crunch? Yes. Yeah, really good. Yeah. But what do you do with this? You just eat it. You just eat it? Yeah. It's quite yummy. Mmm. Oh, this is really good with that little peppery thing at the end. Mmm.

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36:58Lennie Ware: I've made crispy butter chicken salad, but it's kind of basically Vietnamese, I think. Oh, how lovely. There's a lot of Vietnamese cooking in Paris. Yeah, I'm probably not as good as them. But all the ingredients seem quite nice. This is so good. Oh, please help yourself to unlock. Can I give you some rice? Yeah. There's masses of chicken there. Yeah, lovely. Is there enough dressing on it? Oh, it's so good. Is it? Thanks, Mum. God, this is the best podcast. Thank you. But back to the film. Yeah. You know, these three sisters I've heard you talk about, they kind of represent you in different. You've got the movie star, you have the daughter Katie Frost, who is, you know, honouring her father's...

37:48Lennie Ware: Overachiever. Overachiever, honouring her father's legacy. Obsessed with keeping everybody together. Yeah. And then you have Georgie, who is, you know, the caring kind of... Perfect mum. Perfect mum, having a bit of a shitty time. Yeah. But, like, which bits of the sisters are you? I mean, obviously the film star I can see. Well, it's difficult to talk about that because obviously every single thing that you ever do as a creative person, you know, your own sort of soul filters through. That's the point. Yeah. So it's very difficult for me to say which bits. But I mean, basically what I've just said is that I, for a very long time, because I was the eldest daughter and because we were facing quite a lot of emotional difficulty, I felt that my job was to sort of keep everyone happy, keep the thing moving along.

38:43Terribly bossy, apparently. I didn't know that, but ask any of my siblings and they will tell you that. There are lots of us. We as a family, we were five. So I felt that sort of slightly overachieving, and I've got to get it right and I've got to do this. And I think that Catherine sort of represents that part, if you like. That's Scarlett Johansson. That's Scarlett Johansson. And then the role played by Sienna Miller, who's the flighty actress, is also part of me and part of the sort of wanting to please, wanting to be loved by everybody. So the Catherine Clifton part doesn't give a damn what anyone else thinks about her.

39:28She's just forging ahead, making sure everything... And the Sienna Miller role, the Victoria, she is the opposite. She wants everybody to love her and the rest of it. And Georgina just is trying to have a normal life with these very extravagant sisters. I think my favourite scene in your movie was when your husband that you're marrying

39:53Lennie Ware: sings a song to you. It felt so much like European cinema. That part, it felt kind of like an Almodovar film. It felt more European. Do you know what I mean? I really loved the... It was incredibly tender and beautiful. It was really sweet, isn't it, that moment? It was a beautiful moment. Is he based on your husband now? No. James Fleet played my brother in Four Weddings and a Funeral. Yeah, the bumbling. And then he played my husband in The Three Sisters. And then he played my husband again. So anyway, no, it wasn't, it wasn't nothing. They're not based. It's all fantasy. People say, is this really your mother?

40:33No, I wish I'd had her. I wish my mother had been like that. Was she glamorous, your mother? My mother was incredibly beautiful. I wouldn't say she was glamorous. She was incredibly beautiful. I mean, sort of extraordinarily beautiful. But she didn't really have any money. She didn't have, she had a certain style, I suppose, but she didn't have any money to be glamorous, do you know? Can we talk about boarding school? Oh, if you want.

40:57Lennie Ware: Well, it's... I better have a drink. Yeah. Well, you've talked about, you know, you get this horrendous news that your father has passed away. Yeah. And you're kind of sent back to boarding school. Yeah. Because that's just how it was. And, you know, your mum was keen for you to remain in boarding school because it was a great school. but there was maybe a fear about being allowed because your father was no I mean he was no longer with you and I don't know whether it was subsidized or the fees and stuff like that so she went to desperate attempts for you to get great education but how was boarding school for you it was really tough it was tough because uh it was just bad timing basically so when um And when I first went, it was just after my mother's second wedding.

41:47We'd been bridesmaids at this wedding. And then we had to, he was, my stepfather was sent away to see. So he was going to see. And my mother moved with him down to wherever he was posted. And it was deemed that it was a good idea to put us into boarding school. So, so daddy dies, mummy gets married to someone else, and then you're plonked in a boarding school, which was perhaps not the best idea. How old were you? I was eight. My sister was seven. Oh, okay, right, okay. So, and, you know, thinking about... And the nuns were completely adorable, and I think about these nuns, and my sort of heart swells, because they were so, so sweet.

42:22They weren't wicked, nasty nuns at all. So you had the Nartis house tight, the good ones. They were really, really lovely. Sister Marceline was my favourite. I mean, Sister Marceline, I have a memory of Sister Marceline. I got measles or something, and I had a terrible fever, and I was put into sickbay, and my mother was miles and miles and miles away, couldn't come and she was sent for but it took you know a few days for her to get there and this was a long time ago yeah we're talking like 69 70 and um i woke up in the middle of the night and there lying on the floor was the nun who'd taken off her veil but she was fully dressed but she'd taken off her little bonnet underneath but she was lying on the floor making sure i was all Right.

43:09Lennie Ware: That's very kind. You know, I can never forget that. So, and then on Thursdays, we'd have our hair washed. You know, it was sort of, it was kind of, anyway, it was what it was. And then when I went to my secondary school, I was very proud to be able to go there because my mother had been there. And I was very excited about it all. But then at the end of my first term, my stepfather was killed. And so that was tough. There was no pastoral care, so to speak of. in those days. I mean, they've come... I mean, boarding schools are not the same thing as they were in the 70s. And they go home those weekends, don't they?

43:47Yeah, we didn't. It was every six weeks.

43:49Lennie Ware: Yeah. Yeah. And you're little. So it was... I mean, I was little, and it was tough. But she thought she was doing the best for you. Well, actually, I think the second time around she didn't have any thoughts. It was just like she could not... I don't think she could really compute what was going on, because there she was with five children, two dead husbands. How did this happen? She's 33, you know. Shit. How does this happen? And it just seems so unfair. You know, life isn't fair. You keep hearing that. No, life isn't fair. Get on with it. You know, but that was a really bad... Was he your dad's best friend?

44:22He was a great friend of my father's. Okay. He was going to be my sister's godfather, but they changed their minds at the last minute. Gave the job to someone else. Okay, so he was very close. Your mum has always known him. I've known him for a long time, yeah. He was a lovely person. He was a really lovely person. Can you imagine taking on four kids to die on your horse? So that is the true bit in the film. When is it coming out? At the end of May. Are you writing anything else? Oh, good. Trying to.

44:55Lennie Ware: I'm absolutely loving this. This is my heaven. Is it? It's not very good for the old herb in tea. It's quite spicy. So we'll have to all check with each other. But we don't have a bit of mint. Is that phenol in there as well? No, it's white cabbage, red onion, julienne, carrots and cucumber, and then there's coriander and mint. And then you make a ginger and chive oil. Ginger and chive? Yeah. How do you do ginger and chive oil? You heat the oil quite high and then you put in chopped ginger and chives and that's the chive oil. And then you let it go cold. You cool it? Yeah. so it's infused yeah so good really nice good yeah you see if i'd fed you you'd all be asleep under the table because it would be so heavy well i thought yeah i just thought you won't eat heavy food you know what i really love as well is endive do you know what i mean by white vegetable thing um baked you know um i don't know what those braised braised yeah Yeah, I like this.

46:07Lennie Ware: Braised on good. That's a good idea. We've never done braised on deep. Who would like some apple cake? Me. Good. And I bought this fancy pants stuff because I thought you'd like it. That looks very French. Let's talk about France and you as an au pair. Yes. Were you having to cook for your kids? Yes, I had to cook for the kids. And they were very worried because I was English. How rude. I know. Yeah, no, I learned a lot about that. and I was quite big on kind of giving them... These children had to have soup in the evenings, so I had to make all these different soups. So you're good at soup? Why did they have to have soup?

46:50I don't know. It was a French rule. I don't know. That French rule in that family. And did you have goods? They weren't entirely French, actually. They were half German. Oh, OK. So they might have had a bit... Maybe the soup came from the German side? It might have done. Potage. Potage. did you have goutte as well a goutte yes definitely have a goutte was it always notella no it's always in that family it was a this is what they do because you can buy a paro raisin like you can in the bakers here a what but a par a paro raisin a paro chocolate yeah so the other day i went into one of those places and i said can i have a paro raisin please and she goes a what okay a pain of raisins yes she got that anyway so what they do in france is they get a baguette because the bait the bakeries in france cook very early in the morning and then for the eat and then they shut after lunch until four o 'clock and then they do a new batch for the evening because baguettes as you will have found out don't last more than about a blink.

47:54Yeah. And what you do when you're a mummy in France is you go to a baker, you buy a baguette, you chop it into pieces about that long and you shove a bit of chocolate in the middle. And that's what French kids have.

48:07Lennie Ware: Fab. It's sort of deconstructed power chocolate. So do you think living in... Oh, this is really good. Yeah, it does look good. Do you think being in France from such a kind of young age informed your taste buds hugely? Did you pine for anything from the UK? Yeah, I did. I used to pine for Marmite. But then, you know, I'm mostly in France in the good old days of the EU, so I could get most things, and they used to have a certain department store. Which passport do you have? I have both. I'm not quite sure. This does look good, yeah. It's got a saltiness to it. It's really good. Oh, yeah, yum. Whose recipe is this?

48:49Lennie Ware: Melissa Clark. Clark. Oh, I like Melissa Clark. New York Times. it's a good app my best and there's an old fashioned American food critic called Patricia Wells who wrote about bistro cooking in the 80s or 90s and that book is my bible it's fantastic I feel like it's time for the last supper you're going to a desert island what would be your last supper before you go to that desert island for a very long time. Starter, main, pud, drink of choice. My starter would be... It's a very difficult toss-up, actually, because it would have to be either those delicious Spanish anchovies on brown bread. The otters.

49:40Oh, yum. No, no, no. I can't really tell you the name of them. They come in a blue tin. Is that a secret?

49:44Lennie Ware: Oh, no, it's not a secret. It's just you don't know it. They come in a blue tin and they're very difficult to find. and they're salted. I thought that was autis but... No, no, it's something else. Autis is very good but it's not... I know exactly the ones you need. A dark blue jar. They either come in a sort of kilner type jar or a tin. Anyway, those are brilliant. Just on a piece of brown bread. With butter? Brown rye bread. Oh, lovely. Oh, it's so good. So that's your starter. Drink of choice? I think I would have... What would I have? I think as my main course, I probably have a veal chop with some lovely mushrooms.

50:26And then I would have a nice glass of burgundy, but I don't really mind as long as it's nice. Okay. Any greens on the side? Oh, yeah, lots of greens. Love broccoli. Obsessed with broccoli. Love Cavallonero. I also really like plain old savoy cabbage me too just sweated with a stock cube and a bit of butter

50:56Lennie Ware: caraway seeds lovely I like sweetheart cabbage better because it's sweeter a witch what is hispy cabbage is that sweet it's quite the same thing isn't it I thought it was yeah I think so okay and then I want cheese what's on your cheese board which is your best cheese Stilton a really good dry piece of cheddar you know the really crumbly kind a bit crunchy because it's vintage or not is it crunchy i don't know you know i've got the crystals yeah that's really good really like that and i would have a um what are they called the french it's called a french we had at our wedding um gosh i can't remember it's it comes in a box and it's It's only a mandor.

51:41A mandor. There's only a very short season for them. It starts on the 15th of September. That I know.

51:47Lennie Ware: Are you going to have a sweet thing after your cheese board? Yeah. What are you going to have? Chocolate. I have just discovered. No, I've gone off chocolate. Have you? Don't know why. No, I have just. Oh, actually, I don't know. Either a lemon, sort of a really good lemon, thick, eggy, yolky, yellow, strong yellow tart with a nice flaky base. Or I have just discovered the most amazing Basque cheesecake shop. Oh, gosh. Where? Is anyone allowed to know? It's called, it's got one of those funny, Marik Tsu or something. Where is it? there's one in Soho there's one in sort of Paddington and there's one somewhere else and you'd have a big slab of oh so good do you know Nigella makes it with licorice sauce oh that's good oh no thank you oh I love Nigella but no thank you yeah I yeah okay that's a that's a strong it's very greedy basically why is it greedy it's not greedy it's kind of it's quite heavy yeah I like that and then we go and have a sleep yeah Then you go and have a walk, because it's always good to walk after you've eaten.

53:00And then you're going to have a little snooze in front of the football.

53:04Lennie Ware: You can walk home. Yeah. Before we let you go, can you give us a nostalgic taste that can transport you back somewhere? Oh. When we cleared up my mum's house, we found jam that was positively museum worthy. It was so odd. Vintage. vintage like 2004 or something anyway we and she had made the most amazing marmalade with using apples because you know i always put marmalade i always put apples in jams and things like that because it's great for setting them but she used more apple than technically necessary and it was so good the mixture of apple and marmalade you know orange bitter oranges it was absolutely delicious and that if she could be here to make me some more of that i would be so happy thank you so much for being on the podcast it's been such fun thank you oh you are a great back just to be able to you can always come back and thank you so much for being so open and telling such fantastic stories i'm so glad you enjoyed the film i really we really did and congratulations on that yeah thank you thank you thank you

54:32Lennie Ware: Kristen Scott Thomas. Very classy lady. They say don't meet your idols, but I have now, and she was gorgeous. Off the mic, she was talking about being the proudest grandmother. Yeah. And showed us pictures of her grandchild. I know, gorgeous. Very proud. Yeah. thank you so much for coming on and being really open and she loved the food the food was banging today mum was it darling oh my god that is my that could be on my last supper that kind of meal really yeah I over catered though yeah but we love that thank you Kristen Scott Thomas for coming on thank you for quite a like heavy fab last supper veal chop I don't think we've ever had no but she's French you see yeah yeah and well done mum because I know your hip's still not great is it not great but you just do it don't you because I'm a trooper darling yeah you are we'll see you next week for more Table Manners Jessie I need to say something I'm never going back to an ordinary creme fraiche it's changed my life okay public service announcement okay sure that was really good delicious we'll see you next week for more Table Manners

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