Search icon

Movies & TV

29th Oct 2022

Zoe Saldana, 44, is playing a student half her age in new Netflix series

Tobi Akingbade

The show has left everyone Googling Zoe’s age

Avatar and Marvel actor Zoe Saldana has left Netflix viewers scratching their heads over her real age as she takes on a new role in From Scratch, a romantic mini-series that has just landed on the platform.

Spoiler alert: She’s 44.

Based on Tembi Locke’s From Scratch: A Memoir of Love, Sicily, and Finding Home, the show follows an artist named Amy Wheeler (Zoe) as she falls in love with a Sicilian chef (Eugenio Mastrandrea) and they build a life together that transcends cultures, languages, and life’s biggest challenges.

Zoe Saldana starts the show as a 44-year-old (Picture: Netflix)

The show has quickly become beloved for its depictions of romantic, familial, and parental love, and it will make you cry tears of joy and tears of heartbreak in equal measure.

Amy, who is based on the memoir’s author Locke, is a loving daughter and sister who was raised in Houston, Texas.

When the series starts, the law student takes a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to study art in Florence, where she meets Lino.

Amy, when we meet her, is in her early-to-mid twenties and has just arrived in Florence. She’s enrolled in an art programme that her overbearing father frets will distract her from finishing a law degree. It’s a love story for the ages

While many viewers talked about how emotional the show is, others couldn’t help but notice that Zoe Saldana, who is in her 40s, plays someone half her age. And gets away with it.

https://twitter.com/DrNomhle_Global/status/1583484526046875650

On the series herself, Zoe Saldana told Tudum, “I worked really hard on this show, and I just hope that audiences are able to take away things that we give them. Whether it’s a sigh of release, relief, visibility, peace, closure or joy. That to me is what really, really matters.”

From Scratch is executively produced by Academy and actress Reese Witherspoon.

The show also marks Attica Locke’s second production with Hello Sunshine, Witherspoon’s female-forward media company, following the release of “Little Fires Everywhere” in 2020. On the upcoming release, Attica served as showrunner and worked as an executive producer alongside her sister, Tembi.

Related links:

 

LISTEN: You Must Be Jokin’ with Aideen McQueen – Faith healers, Coolock craic and Gigging as Gaeilge