Matt Damon and Tom Holland Make Epic Pizzas

Welcome back to the Pizza Interview, a series from New York Times Cooking where the Q&A has a catch: Our guests have to make pizza.

Christopher Nolan’s upcoming epic, “The Odyssey,” is set to hit theaters this Friday. Based on Homer’s roughly 2,000-year-old poem of the same name, the film stars Matt Damon as Odysseus, king of Ithaca, as he attempts to return home to his wife Penelope (Anne Hathaway) after the Trojan War. Tom Holland plays Odysseus’ son, Telemachus, who leaves Ithaca to search for answers about his father.

Watch the full video below (or on YouTube), and read ahead for excerpts from the interview and outtakes, which have been edited and condensed.

Have you ever made a pizza before?

MATT DAMON Yes.

TOM HOLLAND Yes, I have made a pizza before. I went to a pizza party when I was about 12. Haven’t made one since.

DAMON So it’s been 18 years since you’ve made a pizza.

Do you like to cook?

HOLLAND I love to cook.

DAMON I don’t. I love to eat. I’m an extraordinary eater.

What’s your favorite pizza place?

HOLLAND Did you ever go to that pizza place in Favignana? When we were shooting there.

DAMON I did not eat any gluten.

HOLLAND Oh you didn’t, did you! No! Are you back on gluten?

DAMON Nope!

HOLLAND No? Are we doing gluten free today?

DAMON We’re going to do a bait and switch. I’m going to make a pizza that everyone here can enjoy, and then they have a gluten-free one for me.

Do you believe pineapple belongs on pizza?

DAMON For some people, I believe it does. For me, no. I don’t like sweet with my savory when it comes to pizza.

HOLLAND I like it! I probably wouldn’t order it but I do like it.

Who’s usually the cook in your house?

DAMON My wife is not bad. She’s pretty good. We, uh, Seamless is a wonderful option.

HOLLAND What’s Seamless?

DAMON It’s a delivery service.

HOLLAND Oh, no way! I don’t want to pretend I cook all the time. In England we have Deliveroo. Which I am a frequent user of. I am trying to cook more and more. It’s one of my things I’m trying to do this year.

Matt, have you found any good gluten-free pizza?

DAMON Yeah! There’s a lot more gluten-free options in general. I feel like people are kind of hip to it, particularly in bigger cities you can do pretty well. And then there’s a lot of stuff that just doesn’t have gluten in it, so that’s what I kind of wind up eating. I didn’t know until a couple years ago that I had that gluten intolerance. Just because I feel so much better without eating it, I just have stayed off it. But it’s a bummer. I love bread, I love pasta, I love pizza, but it’s worth it, ultimately.

HOLLAND I thought you were just doing that for the movie.

DAMON I was!

HOLLAND And then you realized how much better you felt?

DAMON Yeah.

Have you ever worked in the food service industry?

DAMON I worked at a place called Croissant du Jour with Ben Affleck. It was like, mostly baked goods — croissants, sandwiches, that kind of stuff.

HOLLAND I worked as a potwash in a pub.

DAMON That’s what you guys call a dishwasher? Potwash?

HOLLAND Yeah, yeah. Didn’t last very long. Wasn’t very good at it.

If you were away from home for 20 years, what’s the first thing you’d eat?

DAMON Well it depends on where I was away from home and what kind of food they had available there. So the question would really be what I miss the most at home.

You were on an odyssey.

DAMON So I’m on a boat, I’m eating fish. I’d probably eat a good steak when I got home.

HOLLAND My brother Sam makes this dish called a chicken Véronique, which is like a shredded chicken in a creamy sauce and then he like, hand peels green grapes and roasts them. And then he serves it on like a Dauphinoise potato bottom.

DAMON That sounds fantastic.

HOLLAND It is unbelievable. That’s what I would have.

Odysseus returns home in disguise after 20 years and subtly signals to his loved ones his true identity. If you had to do this, how would your loved ones know it was actually you?

DAMON It depends on which loved one, you know. I have a little inside joke with each of my daughters. One of my daughters, whenever I see her she goes, “Hey Chat, how you doing?” and I go, “Hey Chat.” So I could walk by her and go “Hey Chat,” and she’d know who I was.

HOLLAND I’d probably just go see my mum. You know, I’ve been seeing those videos recently. Have you seen them? They like, get an NFL team to sit in an auditorium and then they get all the mums to stand up at the front and turn their back to the room. And the kids have to like, call their mum in a funny voice, and it’s like 99 percent of the time the mum will turn around when it’s their son.

DAMON Oh really?

HOLLAND It’s actually kind of amazing. So I’d probably just go see my mum, and she would know immediately.

DAMON You must have the most wholesome Instagram feed of anybody.

If you were to show each other around your hometowns, where’s the first place you’d eat?

DAMON Oh, boy I wonder if all of them exist anymore. There’s a place in Central Square, Cambridge called the Middle East Cafe which is great. They’ve been there forever. That’s a great spot, I would take him there.

HOLLAND There’s a pub in Kingston called The Cocoanut. It’s a Thai restaurant and you can bring your dogs there and people just let their dogs off so it becomes like a dog free-for-all. Wally is the lady that runs the pub, and it’s like a bit of a family favorite of ours.

If the cast of “The Odyssey” owned a restaurant, what would everyone’s role be?

HOLLAND We’d have to put Chris [Nolan] on the door.

DAMON Well I might put you as the maître d’.

HOLLAND Yeah?

DAMON Yeah, I would want you to be the face of the restaurant.

HOLLAND Welcoming people in. “Welcome.”

DAMON Clearly I’d be washing dishes because I would not be cooking.

HOLLAND You could run the business though. Imagine like, you and Ben [Affleck]. Oh he’s not in “The Odyssey.”

DAMON He’s not in “The Odyssey,” but I could call him for advice.

HOLLAND Exactly.

DAMON Let’s see, where would you put [Jon] Bernthal? If it were in a bad neighborhood, you’d want Bernthal at the door.

HOLLAND That’s absolutely right. Chris maybe gives me the vibes that he would be a good baker for some reason.

DAMON So you’re putting him on dessert? All right, I like it. Annie [Hathaway], where do we put Annie?

HOLLAND Is she into cooking?

DAMON I think she is. I think she might be our chef.

HOLLAND She could be head chef. Oh, bartender!

DAMON Charlize! I’d put Charlize [Theron]at the bar. Himesh [Patel] would be on dishes with me.

HOLLAND Zendaya. She’s a good cook, yeah she’s a good cook.

If you were a food dish, what would you be? Can you answer for each other?

HOLLAND I would say you’re a filet m-. A filet m- I can’t remember the word, my brain has gone blank! A filet mignon? That’s what I’m trying to say! Or a T-bone steak. Porterhouse.

DAMON I’d say prime rib. Like, fantastic cut. Delivers on its promise. You can count on it. Tom Holland.

HOLLAND We’re just talking about, “I think you’d be this kind of meat.”

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