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The Untold Truth Of The Menu
The Untold Truth Of The Menu
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Subtitles (160)
0:00
From a character inspired by action star Steven Seagal to gourmet dishes hand-crafted by an
0:05
award-winning chef, the untold truth of The Menu is chock full of tasty tidbits.
0:11
The Menu is a very tightly wound film with a lot of precision, but that doesn't mean
0:15
there wasn't room for improvisation on set.
0:18
Stars Anya Taylor-Joy and Nicholas Hoult revealed that they had plenty of time to improvise
0:22
together while filming.
0:23
In a video segment for Vanity Fair, Taylor-Joy explained that director Mark Mylod wanted
0:28
all the actors to be improvising while the camera was on other characters and they were
0:31
sitting in the background.
0:33
Taylor-Joy revealed:
0:34
"We committed to the improv, like, pretty hardcore the first couple of days."
0:38
Taylor-Joy also confessed that she improvised a line during a scene with Ralph Fiennes - and
0:43
was terrified afterwards.
0:45
During the scene in question, Taylor Joy's character Margot primly tells Fiennes' character
0:49
Chef Slowik "thank you" as he's leaving their table, and it's clearly a passive-aggressive
0:54
move on her part.
0:55
Taylor-Joy recalls adding the line and thinking,
0:57
"Oh god, Ralph Fiennes is going to think I'm an absolute brat because that was not scripted."
1:01
Mylod kept her ad-lib in the film, and she felt vindicated as a result.
1:06
John Leguizamo plays Georgie Diaz, a washed-up action star who's pompous and arrogant.
1:11
He's clearly passed his prime but still behaves as if he's on top of the world.
1:15
As it turns out, Leguizamo based his performance on a real actor: former co-star, Steven Seagal.
1:20
"If I find out you're lying I'm gonna come back and kill you in your own kitchen."
1:24
Leguizamo told The Ultimate Rabbit:
1:32
As the story goes, Seagal shoved Leguizamo against a wall after losing his temper.
1:36
Leguizamo brought up the fact that he used Seagal as his inspiration for The Menu in
1:40
another interview with Entertainment Weekly, confirming that the film they clashed on was
1:43
1996's Executive Decision, one of Seagal's better-rated movies.
1:48
Leguizamo told the outlet:
1:53
One of the central tensions in The Menu is the fact that Margot doesn't want to eat the
1:56
food Chef Slowik has so painstakingly prepared for her.
2:00
Tyler, on the other hand, who's played by Nicholas Hoult, is in his element.
2:03
What this meant for Anya Taylor-Joy was that she didn't have to spend much of the film
2:07
eating, unlike Hoult.
2:09
Taylor-Joy discussed how impressed she was with Hoult's eating abilities during an interview
2:12
with BBC Radio 1, revealing that he "attacked every take with so much gusto and fervor"
2:18
and somehow managed to keep it all down.
2:19
Hoult told Vanity Fair that the hardest day on set was when he gorged himself on bread,
2:24
a day that Taylor-Joy described as "BreadGate."
2:27
If the high-dining experience shown in The Menu feels very real, that's because a real-life
2:31
superstar chef was a consultant on the film.
2:34
French chef Dominique Crenn - the only woman in the U.S. with a three-Michelin-star restaurant
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- worked to make the menu described in the script a reality.
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Crenn crafted many of the dishes herself, often re-doing them several times when scenes
2:46
required numerous takes, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
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One dish, which features a scallop balanced atop a rock, is a near-replica of a dish at
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Crenn's own restaurant, San Francisco's Atelier Crenn.
2:56
Crenn told The Hollywood Reporter:
3:02
She also spoke with Ralph Fiennes about the psychological aspects of his character, describing
3:06
how "mentally exhausting" it is to be the head of a restaurant of that stature.
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Does Crenn see herself as a mad genius like Chef Slowik?
3:13
The chef told Bon Appétit:
3:18
Nicholas Hoult's Tyler is the resident foodie in The Menu.
3:21
He's not a chef himself, but he's obsessed with the world of food.
3:24
As such, Tyler has obviously watched every episode of the Netflix docu-series Chef's
3:28
Table, something he proudly admits to.
3:31
If you've watched Chef's Table yourself, you might have noticed some similarities between
3:35
how that series and The Menu were shot.
3:37
These similarities were intentional: Chef's Table creator David Gelb was actually hired
3:42
as a second-unit director on the film, reports The New York Times.
3:45
Gelb's entire purpose for being on set was to film the restaurant and the staff in exactly
3:50
the same way an episode of Chef's Table would be shot.
3:52
Fans of the series will likely recognize the slow-motion close-ups and the focus on small
3:56
details - the bright heat of a blue flame, the precision of a hand laying down a tiny
4:00
piece of food on a plate.
4:02
The film's climax is also a reference to Chef's Table.
4:05
Director Mike Mylod told The Hollywood Reporter that the final s'mores dish was an homage
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to a dessert made by Grant Achatz at his restaurant in Chicago, which was featured in an episode
4:14
of Chef's Table.
4:15
Achatz's dessert is laid out over the entire table, which Mylod expanded to encompass the
4:19
entire restaurant.
4:21
The aerial shot of the s'mores dish is a tribute to that specific dessert, but also to the
4:25
cinematography of Chef's Table as a whole.
4:28
The Menu is quite a mysterious film in which the backgrounds of some characters are left
4:32
in the dark.
4:33
That's especially true of Elsa, the austere hostess character played by Hong Chau.
4:37
Speaking with Awards Radar, Chau described the process of deepening the character of
4:41
Elsa, which involved a lot of conversations with director Mike Mylod.
4:45
She explained that she was shooting a movie in Portland, Oregon when she got the role,
4:48
and she wanted to bring some of the city's "funkiness" to the character.
4:51
Chau had her own ideas about how Elsa should look, though Mylod wasn't especially receptive
4:56
to them, at least at first.
4:57
Chau told Awards Radar:
5:05
Luckily, Chau found an ally in Amy Westcott, the film's costume designer — and also the
5:10
director's wife.
5:11
Amy Westcott "was very willing to conspire with me against Mike Mylod," Chau went on
5:15
to explain to the outlet.
5:17
The outfit they ended up with — a sort of modern Victorian look - is unique enough to
5:20
give Elsa some personality, but not too zany that it contradicts the serious atmosphere
5:25
at the restaurant.
5:26
The Menu was written by Seth Reiss and Will Tracy, two comedians who have plenty of experience
5:31
in satire.
5:32
Reiss spent several years at Late Night With Seth Meyers and Tracy worked on Succession,
5:36
and both screenwriters previously worked for The Onion.
5:39
Of all their career experiences, it was their time at the satirical news website that proved
5:43
to be most influential in the making of The Menu.
5:46
Reiss told Slash Film:
5:56
Judith Light is a veteran Hollywood actor, known for her vast body of work on television,
6:01
in film, and on Broadway.
6:03
She has a small but important part in The Menu, that of Anne, a wealthy woman who frequents
6:07
the restaurant with her husband but doesn't seem to enjoy the food all that much.
6:11
Speaking with Cinema Daily, Light explained that she's a foodie herself, something that
6:14
drew her to the role.
6:16
Light told the outlet:
6:27
Light went on to say that she grew up in "a family of female cooks," which is why it was
6:30
such a pleasure to see the famous French chef Dominique Crenn in action during the shoot.
6:35
The actor told Cinema Daily:
6:46
Certain roles require actors to do intense prep work, whether it be learning a new skill,
6:50
perfecting an accent, or transforming their bodies.
6:53
For the stars of The Menu, preparation for the film was far more enjoyable.
6:57
Speaking with The Hollywood Reporter, Anya Taylor-Joy joked:
6:59
"This was a very hard job in terms of research.
7:01
Both Nick and I spent a lot of time on the couch watching 'Chef's Table.'
7:05
It was really hard."
7:06
Nicholas Hoult's Tyler is obsessed with shows like Chef's Table, so binge-watching the series
7:10
was always going to be helpful for him.
7:12
However, he didn't stop there.
7:14
Taylor-Joy also revealed that Hoult went even further in his research, actually going out
7:17
to eat at some of these fine-dining restaurants himself.
7:20
Hoult joked:
7:21
"I went and ate nice food, because I had to."
7:23
Anya Taylor-Joy and Nicholas Hoult have shared that they did a lot of improvising while their
7:27
characters were sitting in the background, but there was one moment of improvisation
7:31
that was front and center.
7:33
Near the end of the film, Chef Slowik reveals to Margot the extent of Tyler's deception:
7:37
He had known all along how the night would end and invited Margot anyway.
7:41
When Margot hears this, she slaps Tyler across the face.
7:44
As Nicholas Hoult told BBC Radio 1, Tyler definitely deserved a slap in the face, but
7:49
that moment wasn't actually in the script.
7:51
Anya Taylor Joy explained her decision, saying,
7:53
"I have a thing about feminine rage."
7:56
She went on to reveal that she often gets scripts that have men doing terrible things
7:59
to women, and the women just sitting there and absorbing those terrible things, upset
8:03
but not angry.
8:05
After reading the big reveal moment in the script, Taylor-Joy went up to director Mark
8:08
Mylod and told him,
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"I'm really sorry, but the only way to play this truthfully is for me to like, attack
8:15
him."
8:16
Mylod eventually came around to Taylor-Joy's way of thinking, and she got to react to Tyler's
8:19
betrayal authentically.
8:21
How did Hoult feel about the slap?
8:23
The actor joked:
8:24
"I didn't like it.
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I didn't like it one bit."
8:27
Chef Slowik's menu for the evening was meticulously planned out, which is part of the reason why
8:30
he doesn't take too kindly to the unexpected appearance of Margot.
8:34
To make matters worse, Margot is entirely unreceptive to his brand of culinary genius
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and refuses to play along as one of his dutiful, awestruck guests.
8:42
Most of Margot's stubbornness is in the script, of course, but Anya Taylor-Joy made a character
8:46
choice on set that made her dislike of him even more explicit.
8:50
Unfortunately, she put herself in a bit of pain in doing so.
8:53
She told BBC Radio 1 that she thought it was important that Margot have her back to the
8:57
chef in order to illustrate how she really feels about him.
9:00
What this meant in practice was that Taylor-Joy had to be constantly twisting around to look
9:04
at Chef Slowik while he delivered his monologues about the food.
9:07
She told the outlet:
9:08
"That essentially meant three months of the worst neck pain you could possibly imagine."
9:13
Taylor-Joy expanded on the experience further in a video segment for Vanity Fair, noting
9:17
that, despite the back problems it gave her:
9:19
"I still maintain that it was a good choice."
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