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