Move over, Carmy Berzatto, there’s a new chef in town.
Emmy-nominated actor Harry Hamlin now has his own cooking show – and he’s not sure why.
“I’ve never seen a cooking show,” Hamlin, 72, told The Post.
“They don’t interest me in the least, and I can think of a lot better ways to spend my time than that. So, it never even crossed my mind. When they came to me from AMC…I basically said, ‘Are you kidding me? Why?’ I found out later that it was an executive’s wife [who suggested it].”
“I said, ‘Look, I’m a cook with a small ‘c’…I will only do it if I can have my niece who is a Cordon Bleu trained chef in the kitchen with me.”
“In the Kitchen with Harry Hamlin” premieres Wednesday, April 15 (10 p.m. on AMC+ and IFC). In each half-hour episode, Hamlin and his niece, Renee Guilbault, whip up a dish in his home.
Then, they throw a dinner party for Hamlin’s celeb pals such as Bobby Moynihan (“Saturday Night Live”), Ted Danson and his wife, Mary Steenburgen, and Dean Norris (“Breaking Bad”), where they dig into the food while having a free-wheeling conversation (such as Hamlin reminiscing about the times he’s gotten arrested in his youth).
“An older fraternity brother asked me to take some pills to another fraternity brother down South, and they looked in my bag, I got caught,” he explained to The Post.
“I guess I was a [drug] mule. I didn’t even know what the stuff was, but I went to jail for that. I recommend 18 days in jail for everybody. It’s a good leveler. I think I was 18 or 19, at the time.”
Hamlin’s wife, “Days of Our Lives” actress and “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” star Lisa Rinna, 60 – who he’s been married to since 1997 – also appears on “In the Kitchen With Harry Hamlin,” confessing that she doesn’t like cooking or throwing dinner parties.
“We have different tastes in music. She’s into fashion, I’m not. I’m into cooking, she’s not,” said Hamlin. “I’m into camping and hiking, she’s definitely not…Our relationship does not depend on our liking the same stuff. What it depends on is that we respect each other, we love each other, we listen to each other. I think that’s the secret.”
It was Rinna who put Hamlin’s kitchen skills in the spotlight, because he first became known for it during an appearance on “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.”
“The [show] asked me one time – they said they wanted to have a lunch at our house, would we hire a caterer? And I’m just a cheapskate,” Hamlin recalled.
“So I said, ‘No, I’ll cook for them.’ And I cooked the bolognese, and it took off like a rocket, somehow. It became a thing on the show, and then out in the zeitgeist.”
Hamlin is best known for 1981’s “The Clash of the Titans,” “L.A. Law,” “Mad Men,” “Veronica Mars,” and he’s currently in “Mayfair Witches,” now filming Season 2 for AMC. But, his career hasn’t been without its ups and downs, as his gay role in 1982’s “Making Love” ended up costing him.
“That movie was about something real that was happening in the world that no one really wanted to talk about at the time,” he said.
“I thought it was necessary when it was offered to me. And by the way, it was offered to everybody before it went to me. And, everybody turned it down, because they all thought it would end their film career. They were not wrong about that. I was able to transition, I went and did ‘L.A. Law’ and had a great career since.”
He added, “But, the first feature film I made for a studio, I did last year, with Jane Fonda – ‘80 for Brady.’ It had been a 40-year hiatus. But, I’m still happy I did the movie, and I don’t regret it at all.”
