The Soup That Warmed the Heart of Hamnet’s Cast and Crew
Grip Tomasz Sternicki talks about the dish that Jessie Buckley made famous
When Jessie Buckley won the Golden Globe Award this year for Best Performance by a Female Actor in a Motion Picture (Drama) for her role in Hamnet, she gave a special call out to grip Tomasz Sternicki. “During shooting… I found him one day at the back of his truck, and he was chopping up potatoes and onions and meat, and he brought his ginormous cast-iron pot over from Poland,” Buckley explained in her acceptance speech as reported by Elle. “He was making soup. And this soup started turning up on set. It was delicious.”
There is no specific recipe for Sternicki’s celebrated soup. He relies instead on intuition and improvisation, mixing together beef, carrots, peppers, tomatoes, onions, potatoes, zucchini, and sometimes eggplant. His instructions are simple. Sauté the meat, onions, and peppers in a pan. Then everything goes into a pot along with the spices. Add salt, pepper, chili peppers, and soy sauce to season. After a few hours of slow cooking, the soup is ready.
We spoke with Sternicki about his culinary heritage and the soup that fueled the making of Hamnet.
The official trailer for Hamnet
Having grown up in Poland, why is soup so important to you?
I simply love soups. It's true that in Polish cuisine, dinner consists of two courses. There's always soup and a main course. And there's quite a wide selection of soups, with many interesting flavors. Goulash soup is my favorite. It seems the soup came to Poland from Hungary and became very popular on Polish tables.
Grip Tomasz Sternicki
When did you start making soup on set?
This cast iron pot began its cinematic journey a few years ago in Ireland, during the filming of Natalie Biancheri's Wolf. It was the time of COVID, and a few of us from the crew were locked in a COVID bubble with the actors. On our days off, we could only go to the beach. I came up with the idea of cooking. I imported the pot from Germany, and it became the center of our social life. The first to be fed were Lily Rose Depp and George MacKay. I guess they liked it.
How did your soup fuel Hamnet’s cast and crew?
Cooking and eating together really brings people closer. During the filming of Hamnet, we were like one family—one that loved each other. I'm glad that the pot of soup contributed to that.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.