Why Reese Witherspoon Thinks the Time Is Right for Netflix’s New Romance Limited Series ‘From Scratch’

variety.com:

Katie Reul editor When executive producer and Academy Award-winning actress Reese Witherspoon was tasked with casting a performer to play Amy Wheeler in “From Scratch,” Netflix’s limited series adaptation of Tembi Locke’s memoir, she looked no further than her dinner table.

Witherspoon was dining across from Zoe Saldaña, who was accompanied by her Italian husband and exchanging bits of dialogue in his native tongue, when she realized the “Avatar” star would be the perfect actor to play Amy.

The show is an epic love story about Amy’s whirlwind romance with a hunky Sicilian chef named Lino (Eugenio Mastrandrea), who she meets while studying abroad in Italy.

When Lino is diagnosed with cancer, the couple must reconcile with family and navigate their love in the face of imminent loss. “I don’t know if there’s a lot of romance in the world right now,” Witherspoon told Variety on Monday at the series’ pilot episode screening in Los Angeles. “We haven’t seen a modern romance that’s a true story like this in quite some time, so it’s really beautiful to see Zoe Saldaña — who actually has married an Italian man and speaks Italian on film — to watch that love story happen and know that it is so deeply personal to her.” Though the project marks Saldaña and Witherspoon’s first time collaborating together, Saldaña was already familiar with some of the cast and crew when she joined the production as an actor and executive producer — particularly 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 female-forward media company, following the release of “Little Fires Everywhere” in 2020.