Tony Shalhoub’s love of bread balanced out the challenges of being himself in his new CNN series ‘Breaking Bread’
By Lisa Respers France, CNN
(CNN) — Give Tony Shalhoub a role playing a character and he’s going to feast on it, but when it comes to showing up as himself, it’s a little bit trickier.
“It’s the most difficult thing. That was one of the most startling things about it, was that unscripted is just much harder for me personally,” he told CNN in a recent interview. “It just came to me that maybe that’s why I became an actor to begin with, is that people just tell me what to do. Just to say this, stand here, make this face.”
The “Monk” star is hosting a new CNN docuseries, “Breaking Bread,” which will see him embark on “a mouthwatering journey around the world, with bread serving as the conduit into a variety of international cuisines and cultures,” a synopsis described.
“The ultimate comfort food, bread is the foundation for any shared meal and Shalhoub will make and break bread with a cast of characters he picks up in every corner of the globe from Brazil to Tokyo.”
Shalhoub has wonderful memories connected to bread, which makes him the right man for this particular carb-heavy job.
“When I was a kid, there were these two old aunties that were from out of town, but they would come into town and they would go from one relative’s house to another and they would make this beautiful Syrian bread, this flatbread,” he recalled. “They would take 25, 30 pounds of flour down into the basement where my father had an oven set up down there, and they would have all of this flour and all of this labor flipping the dough by hand with a cigarette in their mouths.”
He took memories like that on his journey discovering fascinating things about each country, their culture and, of course, their bread.
For example, in Brazil, the “Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” actor learned that the country was much bigger than he realized, and that along with the Portuguese there is also a sizeable Middle Eastern and Japanese population.
“It’s such a great blend of such a beautiful melting pot,” Shalhoub said. “I was eating things there that I didn’t really know existed.”
And the man who famously starred in one of the most beloved food movies of all time – 1996’s “Big Night” – said the series turned out even better than he expected.
“It kind of surpassed our expectations to be honest. We had a kind of a framework that we wanted to work within, but – and I’m loathe to confess this because I don’t necessarily want the CNN people to know this and now they will – but we just really didn’t know what the show was going to be about,” he said, laughing. “We kind of had to go on faith or on hope that it was going to take on a life of its own and become something that we hadn’t necessarily planned on. And then that’s kind of how it turned out.”
For Shalhoub – who also said “Breaking Bread” is a show he’s been wanting to do for years – it turned out fluffy, golden and just delicious.
The series premieres Sunday at 9 p.m. ET/PT on CNN.
The-CNN-Wire
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