Not sure what to do with all those holiday veggies? Turn on Netflix! On Best Leftovers Ever, hosted by Jackie Tohn, contestants must find a way to give old leftovers new life. For the GLOW alum, 40, it was the perfect fit.
“I started acting when I was 9 and I didn’t get GLOW until my mid ’30s. So the thing that majorly drew me to it was it was this amazing hosting opportunity. They wanted a comedian, they wanted a woman, they wanted someone from Netflix, so all the pieces were sort of working together,” she explained. However, it was the concept that drew her in, adding, “As a person who was a broke actor for so long, leftovers are my jam. Like, that’s all I had for most of the time.”
Tohn went on to explain that when she was growing up, she’d create multiple meals out of leftover pizza.
“If I got a pie of pizza that was on sale for, like, $6 for the whole pie, the next day I would put balsamic and salad ingredients on top and make a pizza salad,” she shared. “The next day, I’d put veggie sausage on it and make it meat pizza. Truly, my financial situation for a long time made it so I had to make the best and make the most of my leftovers.”
The American Idol alum also added that she comes from “a big leftovers family” and saw hosting a comedy cooking show as “a dream come true.”
Best Leftovers Ever also filmed at the perfect time, following season 3 of GLOW — and when season 4 was still on the table.
“We got picked back up so we had already made two-and-a-half episodes of season 4 and then we got our renewal,” she explained to Us about the Netflix show, which was renewed then canceled because of the coronavirus. “We were on our two-week break like everyone else starting in March and then it kept going and going. So, I shot Leftovers in November 2019, and we picked GLOW Season 4 back up in March of 2020 — literally, right before the pandemic. Had we started the show in February, we would have finished season 4. The timing just crazy sucked.”
There aren’t any official plans to bring GLOW back, but Tohn added that “everyone is on board” to hopefully create a movie one day.
Best Leftovers Ever is now streaming on Netflix.
With reporting by Diana Cooper
