How Did Tony Shalhoub Learn To Play A Chef On Screen?

The Sporkful

Tony Shalhoub is an actor whose roles skew towards the quirky and neurotic — and his characters’ quirks often come out through food. In the classic 1996 film Big Night, Tony plays an uncompromising Italian chef whose Jersey Shore restaurant is on the brink of failure. In the TV show Monk, he plays a detective with OCD who has many strong opinions about how he wants his food. In The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, he’s a math professor who, at one point, devises a complex system for not getting too drunk. We cover these roles, as well as a new one he’s recently taken on: hosting a travel show on CNN, Breaking Bread. (Breaking Bread airs on Sundays at 9pm on CNN, or you can stream it the next day with CNN’s All Access subscription.)

The Sporkful production team includes Dan Pashman, Emma Morgenstern, Andres O’Hara, Kameel Stanley, Jared O'Connell, Morgan Johnson, and Jazzmin Sutherland.

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2025-11-03 32 min

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