When executive producer and Academy Award-winning actress Reese Witherspoon was tasked with casting an actress to play Amy Wheeler in “From Scratch,” a limited series made by Netflix for Tembi Lock’s memoir, she looked no further than her dinner table.
Witherspoon was dining on the other side of Zoe Saldana, who was with her Italian husband and exchanged bits of dialogue in his native language, when she realized the “Avatar” star would be the perfect actor to play Amy.
The show is an epic romance about Amy’s passionate romance with a great Sicilian chef named Lino (Eugenio Mastrandria), whom she met while studying in Italy. When Leno is diagnosed with cancer, the couple must come to terms with family and overcome their love in the face of impending loss.
“I don’t know if there’s much romance in the world right now,” Witherspoon said. diverse Monday at the show’s pilot episode in Los Angeles. “We haven’t seen a modern romance like this true story in a long time, so it’s really nice to see Zoe Saldana – who actually married an Italian and speaks Italian in the movie – to watch this love story happen and know it’s very personal to her.”
Although the project marks Saldaña and Witherspoon working together for the first time, Saldaña was already familiar with some of the cast and crew when she joined the production as an actress and executive producer — notably Judith Scott, who played her mother in the 2005 comedy “Guess Who”. .”
“From Scratch” also marks Attica Locke’s second production with Hello Sunshine, Witherspoon’s advanced female media company, following the release of “Little Fires Everywhere” in 2020. In the upcoming release, Attica served as a presenter and served as executive producer alongside her sister Tempe.
“I love stories about fathers and sons, about fathers and daughters, and about parent-child relationships,” said Keith David – who plays Amy’s father Herschel – on the carpet. “How can it be broken, how can it be fixed. How can it be fixed. It is all part of this.”
Previous Hello Sunshine movies have been released on other streaming services like Apple TV+ (“The Morning Show”) or Hulu (“Little Fires Everywhere”), but Witherspoon said diverse The release of “From Scratch” on Netflix was a deliberate choice to make cross-cultural romance more accessible in international entertainment.
“We thought it was the perfect platform because of the international aspect of the show,” Witherspoon said. diverse. “The nature of Netflix’s ability to reach people all over the world was really important to us.”
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