We spoke with Vanessa Marano recently about the movie One Delicious Christmas. She stars in the film which is about a restaurant and inn owner, so hires a hot shot chef to come in and shake up the Christmas menu, so she can secure some funding from a hot shot mogul. It’s different than things that we’ve seen Marano in before, but something we’d love to see more from her in the future.
She’s a talented actress and and singer, and we had a lot to talk with her about.
When it comes to any role (or you know job), you have an opportunity to learn. We think that it’s absolutely important to learn from everything in life – it’s the only way to move forward. One thing that we like to ask people when doing interviews is what is the biggest thing that they learned on the set and what is the thinking that they hope others learned from them.
To the question Marano replied, “That’s such a great question. I don’t know if I taught anybody any lessons but I hope that just creating a work environment that felt really fun and kind and professional resonated with everybody because what I try to bring to every job that I do, is I try to make it a really positive experience.”
She continued, “A, it makes my life easier, but it is a positive experience, and B, because I think people do their best work when they feel like they like coming to work every day. We’re so lucky that this is a job that we get to do. So many people don’t have jobs that they love in this way, but it is also a lot of work. It’s very, very, very long hours and it’s really easy to get exhausted by those long hours. If you can make the experience a delightful one, I’m all for it.”
In speaking with Marano you could tell this was genuinely something that she was concerned about. Her voice contained, what we perceived genuine concern that we don’t hear in a lot of voices.
But that’s always been the Marano that we see on the screen and in interviews. She’s always made us feel as though she’s a genuine person in Hollywood. And that is rare.
She continued, “I’d say the biggest lesson that I learned from everybody on this film too is I had never done a Christmas movie and I really did come into an environment with a very experienced cast and crew in that space, and they do it in such a short period of time. The efficiency of that was something that was really wonderful to be a part of and the shorthand of even people who hadn’t necessarily worked together in the space before a ton, they still came from a place of understanding because of their thorough experience with the genre.”
The actress continued by talking about something that she had never experienced on a set.
“I’m also always excited when you get to work with a female creator in a head position. To be working with a female director on this who was also supported by a female first AD was something that was really inspiring to me as someone who’s been in this industry for 20 years. I’ve been really lucky that I have been able to work with a ton of women in positions of power. It still doesn’t happen as often as you would like it to, especially in positions like a first AD when there is a female director.”
She finished off by saying, “I realized on this film, I had never worked with– I worked with female directors and I worked with female first ADs and I’d never actually worked in tandem with them. Stacy, our director came from a first AD background and it was really interesting to hear her insight on that. She goes, they did not partner us together often. It was not usually a female team. That’s only really starting to happen now and it was really cool to be a part of it.”
One Delicious Christmas will be airing on The Food Network on December 15th, but it is streaming now on Discovery+.
