Natalie Portman is in Australia preparing for Thor: Love and Thunder but she took a break from training to call in to The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. Obviously, the conversation turned to the pandemic because, duh, how does that not come up. Natalie admitted to riding the same roller coaster as the rest of us. However, on those days that she is inspired, Natalie has been posting vegan cooking videos on her Instagram, began a book club and bought a woman’s soccer team for Los Angles. Okay, maybe she’s slightly more inspired than I am on those ‘good’ days.

On the training for Thor
I had months of pandemic eating baked goods and lying in bed and feeling sorry for myself. I’m super tired after working out and [tired] during and dreading before.

On her cooking videos, Jimmy says she should do a show
I feel like I don’t have a lot of skill. I feel like If I can do it, anyone can do it. [I like] sharing those things because I’ve gotten a lot of great recipes from Instagram and people that I follow. It makes it easier now that we’re cooking every meal.

I’m vegan and a lot of people think we’re like eating alfalfa in the corner. I like showing that there’s really delicious easy things you can do at home that your kids will eat that are plant-based. I’ve been lucky enough to learn a lot from other people I admire.

On how her book club happened
I started sharing what I was reading and what I love. It’s great getting feedback and getting to read alongside people. It’s an awesome opportunity to get to meet some of the authors that I really love by getting to interview them for the book club. It’s an easy pretext to talk to people I look up to.

On bringing a women’s soccer team to LA
It’s so exciting. A group of us became really passionate about women’s soccer because we have the best players in the world in the United States in the most popular sport in the world. We got together and we are bringing Angel City FC the women’s soccer team to LA in 2022. We are super excited to celebrate these incredible athletes. It’s the first female-led, female-investors I think of any professional sport.

[From The Tonight Show on YouTube]

I checked out some of her cooking videos after watching this segment. They are called Natalie’s Table and she FaceTimes with some name chefs as they make a recipe together, kind of like Selena Gomez’s show. Only, as Jimmy points out, Natalie definitely knows what she’s doing. Her chopping skills smoke mine and she is a much cleaner cook than I am, the area around my stove always looks like a murder scene. But she lists her recipes in her captions, and they aren’t too far reaching for a home cook. Plus they sound and look delicious. I think a lot of folks, myself included, are trying to incorporate more plant-based dishes into our diets so this is a great resource. Like Natalie said, there are some general misconceptions about vegan cooking and this is a good way to make it more approachable.

I have not checked Natalie’s book club out yet to see if our tastes are similar. Apparently, she interviews authors as well, which would be interesting. I’ve been reading a lot lately and miss our book discussions here, so I’m hoping to get something like that started – maybe on Instagram? Anyway, if you watch the segment below, you will see that Jimmy, as he mentions the book club, ever so briefly lifts up a book. That is, in fact, Natalie’s book, Natalie Portman’s Fables. She has rewritten a number of classic fables with current day sensibilities and it was released on Tuesday. I enjoy fables and fairytales so I would be curious in Natalie’s interpretation. As soon as I stop feeling guilty for having wasted my pandemic in light of everything Natalie has done during hers, I’ll go check it out.

Here is Natalie’s segment:

Photo credit YouTube and Instagram