THE WOMAN MAKING AMERICANS EAT THEIR GREENS She was the wife of and won Al Gore an Oscar. Now Laurie David has a new mission to save the family, one meal at a time

REPORT Tim Teeman PORTRAIT Emily Shur

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t’s easy to think you know all about Laurie David before you meet her. She was married to the comedian and TV star Larry David for 14 years, and his portrayal of their relationship in his cult series, , means that people often confuse her with her screen incarnation, Cheryl. The night before we meet, I catch an episode of the show in which Cheryl, played by Cheryl Hines, asks her Iconsistently embarrassing, socially hopeless husband to have sex, but Larry wants to secretly watch a raunchy Girls Gone Wild video. It’s a typical, excruciating Curb scene. And so, the next day, even though we are supposed to be talking about the importance of family dinners, about which she has written a book, I ask Laurie if the story is true. What was it like to be married to David and, as he created and writes the shows, was their marriage like one long agonising episode? “Don’t confuse TV and reality,” David, 52, cautions. “That scene’s an obvious exaggeration, but all the stories are taken from With Larry David and life. Larry is inspired by life, but has a vivid former Vice President imagination. Like the ‘Larry’ on the show he is Al Gore in 2006 curmudgeonly, like ‘Larry’, to some degree he’s the guy who runs into difficulties. He stopped showing me the scripts eventually because I that a shared meal is the key to a happy home Her latest “epiphany” came after realising was always trying to tone it down. I remember and a greener planet. During her high-profile that it wasn’t enough that she had banned after one sexually graphic episode the other marriage she became the leading climate- individual TVs from Romy and Cazzie’s mothers greeting me at school with a look in change campaigner in Hollywood, convincing rooms, “because they can watch TV on their their eyes which I found utterly mortifying.” celebrity friends such as Tom Hanks, Steve computers”. Since there is so much to tempt She isn’t close to Hines, but refers to her Martin, Will Ferrell and Jack Black to be family members away from the dinner table, as “Larry’s other wife”. She doesn’t let their green. Her passionate advocacy has included this book is her attempt to get everyone eating daughters, Romy, 14, and Cazzie, 16, watch a book about global warming and an online together and talking again. “I realised it was the show. “It’s not age-appropriate,” she says. Stop Global Warming Virtual March, headed working for me when my daughters were still She first met Larry David at a gig at a New by John McCain and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. there, long past dessert,” she says. Isn’t that York comedy club. “I told him he was really However, she is best known for producing her a luxury, I say. A lot of parents can’t marshal good and he said, ‘Really? Do you wanna sit friend Al Gore’s Oscar-winning documentary, all the elements of their families together down? You liked it, huh?’ He started hitting (she strongly denies at night, not to mention family members’ on me immediately.” She laughs. They were recent rumours that the pair had an affair). conflicting timetables and the decline in friends for years before becoming a couple. While David’s passions haven’t died, she people using fresh ingredients to cook with. She says she wasn’t physically attracted to insists, they have been “redirected” to the “Sure, I can afford to buy organic food, go to farmers’ markets, have the outdoor space to grow my own food and the time to prepare it,” says David. “But any family, whatever their ‘All Larry’s stories are from life. He stopped showing me circumstance, can make some changes. I don’t mind if they’re sitting down to make a peanut the scripts because I was always trying to tone it down’ butter sandwich together. This doesn’t have to be every night; you could make one evening out of the week the family meal night. him at first, “But I’m very attracted to talent.” table. Her ferocious zeal has moved from Sundays are great: you shop for the food Larry, however, “worked very hard” to start carbon emissions to the pride she has in her together in the afternoon, then cook and a relationship. He would invite himself over garden of beans, artichokes, lettuce, broccoli, eat it all together later.” Eating in front of the to watch political debates on TV. “Eventually, onions and beetroot. Isn’t it a bit muted after TV, she says, is making us obese. “I know how he wore me down. A sense of humour is her campaigning of yore? “The Earth’s future hard modern life is, but I don’t believe that a great aphrodisiac. How can you not fall in and what we eat are connected,” she says you can’t make time to prepare food and eat love with somebody who makes you laugh?” stoutly. “I think we should be eating less meat, with your kids and connect with one another.” Laurie’s daughters and her marriage and which will reduce the amount of greenhouse There is a darker catalyst behind her divorce from Larry crop up more than once gases, and we should source our food locally passion. Growing up as the youngest of three in The Family Dinner, a book of recipes and and ethically or grow our own. I’m not a sisters, she found meal times – indeed, all

PREVIOUS PAGES: HAIR AND MAKE-UP, GERALDINE SHAKER. THIS PAGE: SPLASH NEWS GERALDINE SHAKER. THIS PAGE: HAIR AND MAKE-UP, PREVIOUS PAGES: advice she has written in which she argues vegetarian, but I am a less-meat-arian.” family life – fraught and traumatic. “I spend

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a lot of time as a mum trying to create the she rose to become the influential head of The two of them laughed when they read perfect childhood, which I never had,” she a division within the Fox cable network. reports of her supposed affair with Gore in the says. Her father, Larry, was a pool equipment During the 14 years she and Larry were tabloids this summer. “I’ve known Al and [his salesman, her mother, Lola, a housewife. The married, she had a “lightbulb moment” about wife] Tipper for years. When I saw him deliver family would sit down every night, but the environmentalism, “when I went over to the lecture that became An Inconvenient Truth, food was from cans, or frozen. Around the table my friend Arianna Huffington’s house and I knew it had potential, which is why I helped was a correspondingly chilly atmosphere of saw her SUV in the drive and thought, ‘We’re make it into a film. I absolutely deny we had baiting and recrimination between her sisters all in trouble here if we carry on driving these an affair. I wanted to laugh it off originally, and her mother, or her sisters and her father cars.’ ” Larry, noting her transformation, but when I saw it on the news, I knew I had to or her mother and herself. “Dinner was always said he thought he married “a narcissistic, come out and say it wasn’t true.” At the outset about getting back outside on my bicycle,” materialistic kind of princess from Long she believed that the gossip was the work of David says. “I remember it being about Island, and it turns out she completely anti-environmentalists who wanted to shift the anxiety: eating all the vegetables, trying to misrepresented herself”. Suddenly, he focus from the BP oil spill, then that it was an hide the peas, which I hated, leaving the plate had bought a Prius and was fronting their experiment by “a mad college professor to see clean. I was constantly giving food to the dog.” commercials. He would come home to how easily a baseless rumour could spread”. She was a daddy’s girl, and very close find 100 people in the living room having David doesn’t care about ageing (“I just to her father; a tomboy, the surrogate son a meeting about green causes. “He was very hope I’m getting a little smarter and enjoying in place of the one he never had. But her accommodating and supportive,” Laurie says. life more”) or plastic surgery (“Never. Never. father died of a heart attack when she was “But he didn’t adapt to recycled toilet paper, Never”), and only thinks about dying when 12 and her mother became an alcoholic. “My or me standing outside the shower and telling she’s on a plane (“because I’m not in control sisters were away, so I became a caretaker of him to hurry up, or telling him off for keeping when we hit turbulence”). Yes, she does fly her, which is fine if you’re an adult, but very the water running when he was shaving.” (although no longer by private jet). She is difficult when you’re a kid. And family dinners Of their break-up, Laurie says, “I love not a rigid greenie, but feels passionately stopped.” Boyfriends supported her through him as a friend now, but we weren’t good life about changing the world “in whatever way the worst of times, she says, but David wanted partners.” There was no adultery, she says, “or I can. If we eat more responsibly and eat less to please her mother, and would write and we wouldn’t be such good friends now”. They meat we’ll have healthier kids and a healthier leave poems on her pillow. Worried about the tried to stay together, and had therapy. “It was planet. I put a great deal of pressure on myself harm her mother’s cigarettes were causing, she my decision to break up,” she says. “I wanted to give back.” Unsurprisingly for one so driven, would hide them, until the day she left for emotional things he wasn’t able to provide and she says impatience is her chief weakness. college and all the packets tumbled down from their hiding place in a bedroom cabinet; her mother was furious. Their relationship as ‘My childhood mealtimes were about anxiety, trying to adults was “difficult”, although her mother was included in all family events. She died a “terrible and ugly” death from lung cancer. hide the peas. I was constantly giving food to the dog’ David traces her “compulsion to help”, as she puts it, “back to the Beatles”. At 12, she was obsessed with the band and excited by I wanted to be happy. You’ve only got one “Just this morning I went outside and saw the imminent release of the movie Let It Be, life, right? Watch the show. Even his TV some bug or animal had taken the heads based on the 1970 album of the same name. wife couldn’t stay married to him.” They will off all my broccoli. But the great thing about “But their popularity was waning,” David says, never reunite, she insists, but “he is a huge growing things is that you have to wait for “and I was worried nobody would go see the part of our family – I adore him”. When they them to grow.” Is she really so unimpeachably film and that would upset them.” She took divorced, Larry said “ex” sounded too harsh, virtuous? What’s your favourite junk food, her local newspaper and cut out so suggested that they were each other’s “y”. I ask. “Potato chips and chocolate,” she replies. every advert for the movie and posted the Part of David’s book looks at family David watches her daughters growing adverts on lampposts to encourage her mealtimes and divorce. After she and Larry up and worries about them “constantly”. “But neighbours to see the film. “If I believe in separated, she made sure, no matter how what gives me some comfort is that for an something, I want everyone else to believe difficult it was at the beginning, that sit-down hour a day we sit opposite each other and talk. in it too,” she says. “That is who I am.” meals continued: she and the girls together It doesn’t guarantee anything, or protect them, David was “fiercely independent” from (sometimes with friends to break up the but it makes the odds a little higher, I think.” a young age. At Ohio State University, as “heavy” atmosphere), then Larry and the girls As she rises to go, she tells me where she has parents unloaded their children’s furniture on their own and, when she and he felt more been happiest this year. On the Vineyard with from station wagons, she walked from the emotionally able, the whole family together. Thorpe in the summer they retrieved some local bus station with her suitcase, guitar and Larry has even joined the table with Laurie’s scallops from the sea, brought them home, cut typewriter. Fascinated by news photography, companion, Bart Thorpe, a farmer from them open, took the shells and scattered them she studied journalism and worked on the Martha’s Vineyard. They’ve been together under an apple tree – “because of the calcium” student magazine. “Those were tough years: for three years. Thorpe has a seven-year-old – gave the scallop guts to the chickens and there were only six Jewish students at the daughter, and melding the two families has cooked the scallops for dinner. “To me,” university,” she reflects. After graduating, been difficult, says David, but again it is done says David, “that is as good as it gets.” ■ she got a job overseeing advertising copy for a around the table. She and Thorpe have cows, Cincinnati car dealership, then moved to New goats and grow vegetables together. Thorpe The Family Dinner by Laurie David is York to write for a music magazine before has asked her to marry him, she says, but she published by Grand Central Publishing, becoming a researcher and guest-booker on hasn’t given her answer. “I’m not in any rush priced £18.91. To buy it for £16.99, free p&p, call David Letterman’s chat show. Within ten years to do anything, but I am thinking about it.” 0845 2712134 or visit thetimes.co.uk/bookshop

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