It was “a bit like therapy, which I’ve never done,” renowned chef Jamie Oliver says of his experience on Netflix’s Chef’s Table: Legends. “It was probably long overdue.”
The Netflix docuseries is composed of four episodes, each spotlighting a different culinary icon, with Oliver being featured alongside José Andrés, Thomas Keller and Alice Waters. The approximately 50-minute episode dives into Oliver’s television beginnings with The Naked Chef and follows his journey from novice cooking show host to mentor to activist.
“Early in my career, don’t ask me why — I was genius or mad — but I started making all of my content. I set up a production company as a chef that didn’t know what he was doing,” Oliver tells THR. “I’ve always been in control, and this is the first time when I’ve been in no control,” he adds of filming the docuseries, which required him to be retrospective, calling it out as something “the program wanted me to do.”
Having been full-on for the past 25 years, looking back isn’t something Oliver has made time for. Of spending 12 hours chatting for the documentary, he jokes, “My ass was definitely sore. I don’t sit down much.”
The show’s director, Brian McGinn, proved to be quite similar to the chef, Oliver learned after their 10 days together. But one of McGinn’s biggest challenges, at least in Oliver’s eyes, was unraveling his packed career. “I felt sorry for him, really,” Oliver says. “I had so much old content for him to go through.”
Oliver says he’s proud of his Chef’s Table: Legends episode, which covers several aspects of his life, including his commitment to education, whether it be through his former restaurant Fifteen — which trained young adults from disadvantaged backgrounds — or his series Jamie’s School Dinners, which showed the chef’s dedicated campaign to offering nutritious yet still tasty school meals to children in the U.K. Still, he says the episode was just the “tip of the iceberg” of his career.
Jamie Oliver on Chef’s Table: Legends: “Kids need to be connected with food so that they can … be happier, healthier and live more productive lives.”
Courtesy of Netflix
While his efforts thus far have focused heavily on the U.K., Oliver, who hails from Essex, England, feels it’s important work that can be done elsewhere in the Western world. “Every story I’ve told in the U.K. has been relevant in the U.S.,” he says. “We’re so different, but we’re so similar, and we both can be blessed in so many ways to live in the countries that we live in with the opportunities that we have.”
The docuseries’ message is a universal one, Oliver notes, in that food and nourishing oneself is always important. “We’ve created all this content, and we’ll continue to do that for free,” he says of his series. “British and American kids deserve and need to be connected with food so that they can have choices when they become young adults and can be happier, healthier and live longer, more productive lives.”
This story first appeared in a June stand-alone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
