Teyana Taylor is already known for wearing a lot of hats—singer, dancer, choreographer, actor, director—but she casually added another one to the list during a wide-ranging conversation with Oscar Isaac: aspiring chef.
While discussing her work with Paul Thomas Anderson on One Battle After Another for Variety, Taylor revealed that she’s currently enrolled in culinary school, pursuing cooking with the same intensity she brings to her creative projects.
The confession came almost offhand, but it immediately caught Isaac’s attention.
“I’m also in culinary school to become a chef,” Taylor told him, prompting an immediate reaction.
“Culinary school as well—how do you have time?” Isaac asked.
Taylor explained that cooking isn’t just another hustle—it’s grounding. She explained that the kitchen offers a rare moment of quiet amid her packed schedule. “It’s actually the thing that gives me a few [moments] to just be quiet and cook,” she said, describing food as its own form of art.
That sense of patience and process, she noted, has reshaped how she thinks creatively. Some things, as she put it, “you’ve got to let sit for three hours before you can cook it.”
Of course, culinary school hasn’t been all knives and sauté pans. Taylor admitted she was surprised by the academic side, including business classes.
“When I signed up and realized I had business classes and all other types of shit, I was like, ‘Oh, s**t, baby,’” she joked. Even then, she pushed through—doing coursework on her iPad while traveling to film premieres.
Beyond food, the conversation also touched on Taylor’s approach to acting, particularly her method of layering emotion into her characters. She described visualizing feelings as colors, allowing her to shift emotional states quickly within a scene.
It’s a technique that blends her background in dance and choreography with instinctive performance. “I’m an over-communicator,” she said. “If we talk about what a scene feels like, I just do it.”
Isaac praised that fluidity, noting how her physical awareness lends gravity to her performances.