If you've been on Netflix in the past few days, you've probably noticed that there's a new #1 series in the US. From Scratch is the latest show that everyone seems to be talking about but also crying over.
From Scratch follows the love story between Amy (Zoe Saldaña), an American student studying abroad in Italy, and Lino (Eugenio Mastrandrea), a Sicilian chef. Their whirlwind romance faces several unforeseen challenges, including their very different cultural backgrounds.
Inspired by the memoir From Scratch: A Memoir of Love, Sicily, and Finding Home by Tembi Locke, this limited series was created by Tembi and her sister Attica Locke, and it was produced by Reese Witherspoon's Hello Sunshine production company. The book was selected as Reese's Book Club pick in April 2019.
Now, from the trailer alone, I knew this show was going to be a sob fest. Like, there was no way I wasn't going to weep.
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And I'm not alone. Everyone who has watched all of From Scratch agrees that it's heartbreaking, and you should probably grab at least five boxes of tissues before watching.
I did not expect #fromscratch to be this emotional 😭 Netflix needed to give a warning
i’m watching #fromscratch on netflix and i went from wanting to eat pasta, to dance in a parking lot, to be happy for a wedding i wasn’t invited to and to visit sicily. i am ugly crying rn this is a true love story like i haven’t seen on tv for a long time and i wasn’t ready 😭
So, because the real love story that inspired From Scratch is just as emotional, lovely, and heartbreaking as it is on the show, here are 15 facts about the real couple:
Now, from here on out, there are MASSIVE spoilers ahead for the entire series!
1. First, just like in the limited series, Tembi moved to Florence, Italy in the 1990s while studying abroad, and it was there that she fell in love with Rosario "Saro" Gullo, a Sicilian chef. While making the series, Tembi decided not to watch a lot of the scenes in order to "protect [her] own memories" of the time she spent with Saro, specifically the early days of their relationship.
2. While the show changes Tembi and Saro's real names to Amy and Lino, Tembi said that there is still a connection between her name and Amy's. In the show, Amy's full name is Amahle, while Tembi's is Tembekile. Tembi said that while she grew up in Texas, people often changed her name to an "Anglicized version," so Tembi became the "shorthand name," similar to Amy in From Scratch.
3. One of Tembi and Saro's first adorable moments together was when Saro helped Tembi retrieve her stolen bike. She told the Today show that Saro had "a vision of an us and greatness so effortlessly that it suddenly seemed as right as butter on bread. I was taken aback by his boldness, his certainty." She even revealed that Saro often said "I think we could be something great" when they first started dating.
4. The apartment in Florence that Amy stays in when she first meets Lino is an actual apartment in Italy that was located next to Tembi's real apartment when she lived there in the '90s. "It's literally the exact piazza I lived in," Tembi told the Today show. "The place where Lino stands in the rain is the exact place where Saro stood."
5. Also, Sloane's bar that Amy works at in From Scratch is the location of a real bar that Saro once owned with one of his friends.
6. The scene when Amy adds too much vinegar while trying to cook for Lino in Episode 1 is inspired by a real moment when Tembi invited Saro to her Florence apartment to cook a meal for him. "I was certainly not prepared to do that level of cooking, and I botched it," Tembi recalled to Eater. "It was funny, but also an attempt to be intimate and vulnerable with someone instead of creating that 'perfect' date environment."
7. Tembi did move back to the US, leaving Saro in Florence to work as a chef for a while. In real life, they eventually reunited in New York before they decided to move to Los Angeles for Tembi's job. In the show, one of the reasons Amy goes back to LA is to be with her sister.
8. The cute scene where Amy and Lino bond over both liking grits, aka polenta, was inspired by a real moment between Tembi and Saro. "I, of course, had no idea what polenta was when I first moved to Italy, and even for a long time I didn’t connect it with grits," Tembi told Eater. "Then, when Saro came to live in the States, I would make grits and he was like, 'You know this is just polenta, right?' Grits actually became a thing that he really loved; he embraced them for the classic Southern dish that they are."
9. While some moments in From Scratch are obviously dramatized for television, Tembi explained that they are rooted in real stories she shared with Saro. In particular, with the moments involving Lino's family, Tembi told the New York Times that they are based on stories Saro told her. "I didn't witness those things firsthand, but we used them to create scenes on screen," she said.
10. Sadly, just like Lino in From Scratch, Saro was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer called leiomyosarcoma in 2002. He died in 2012 after Tembi spent 10 years caring for him.
11. Similar to what Amy and Lino go through in the series, Tembi and Saro also dealt with disapproval of their relationship. In real life, Tembi said that Saro's parents didn't approve of their interracial relationship, and they even boycotted their wedding. In fact, they didn't reconnect with Saro's family until after his cancer diagnosis years later.
12. Tembi and Saro did adopt a daughter named Zoela, just like Amy and Lino adopt their daughter named Idalia. Like in the show, the couple adopted Zoela around the same time as Saro's cancer diagnosis. Tembi said, "Zoela came to us during that time. And I think one of the things that I learned is life is still happening all around us and for us, we'd always wanted to be parents."
13. The series dives into the love of food a lot, which was important to Tembi. In an interview with Shondaland, she explained that after Saro's death, she used the chef's instructions he left in his book for her as an "emotional guidepost" to connect her to him. Tembi wanted that feeling to translate on screen.
14. In the final episode, Amy goes to Sicily to bury Lino after his death, which is similar to what happened in real life. Tembi's memoir From Scratch: A Memoir of Love, Sicily, and Finding Home chronicles the three summers in Sicily following Saro's death, which included one summer with the entire family, just like with Amy in the series.
15. And finally, in real life, when Tembi went to Sicily, she wrote the first draft of what would become From Scratch: A Memoir of Love, Sicily, and Finding Home. Reese Witherspoon's production company became interested in adapting the story in 2018 after Attica began writing for the TV adaptation of Little Fires Everywhere and mentioned her sister's book to Hello Sunshine executive Lauren Levy Neustadter. Tembi's book wasn't even published yet.
