Who is The Chef?

,,

"I have an Italian cook. 

Gino Siscaccagrachi or something like that"

"Right before we were about to shoot him performing his new song in the episode, as he toured the set in his black shoes that lit up with a pink light when he walked, he asked my producer Erin O’Malley for a megaphone. People were called. A megaphone was found. Later, when the cameras were rolling, I stood in the back of the set and watched the song start. Right before the first notes, he pulled out the megaphone and called out: “Does anyone want to fall in love tonight?” Everyone cheered. We hadn’t asked them to. It was just a feeling. You just had to shout out. The megaphone made the song suddenly feel like a movement, like a political rally, like we were all standing there together that night in support of falling in love. It was brilliant.

We shot nights for a week in this enormous house an hour outside of Los Angeles, which meant working from 5 p.m. to 7 a.m., when everything starts to feel like a dream. I was incredibly shy around him, convinced that I would say the wrong thing and make him leave. But once I got over the initial terror of speaking to him, I realized we were just two people who were both obsessed with making the episode good. He wanted to choose the name of the non-speaking chef character, the chef’s wardrobe, the paintings on the walls, the linens in the bedroom set, his wardrobe, Zooey’s wardrobe, the music, the pancakes, the hairstyles ... he had a piece of art, a poem written out in the shape of an egg, flown from Minnesota to hang on the wall of the set. His vision of the episode was all-encompassing, but I never felt overpowered. He always asked what I thought. It was like he was asking me to rise up to meet him.

At 3 a.m., in the middle of the week, I was holding on to a cup of coffee for dear life when someone elbowed me. “Hey, I think Prince wants you.” I looked up. Prince was standing on the balcony, beckoning to me. I put the coffee down and prepared for the worst. I must have done something wrong. It was all over. I walked up the stairs and followed him into a bathroom. He turned out the lights. For a moment, I was standing in a small, dark bathroom alone with Prince. Then he flicked a lighter on underneath his chin.

“Isn’t this funnier?”

I realized he was acting out the scene we were about to shoot. As scripted, Zooey was in a dark closet, and Prince surprises her by turning on a flashlight under his chin. Prince thought a lighter would be funnier. It was, and it would be beautiful on-camera. I started laughing. He smiled. I tried to stay cool. “Yeah, that’s funnier. Let’s do that.” As if there were ever a world where doing exactly what was inside Prince’s head wasn’t one of the greatest privileges of my life. We were still standing in the dark with only a lighter between us. I think he kept the light on for my benefit, because nothing could have ever stopped Prince from being able to see in the dark. He made his own light.

The Pancake Chef's Name is CHARLES.