The character of Olivia (played by Linda Cardellini) in Netflix’s Nonnas is very loosely inspired by Jody “Joe” Scaravella’s longtime girlfriend, Francesca Leone. Here, it is to be noted that Stephen Chbosky’s film, written by Liz Maccie, has made some really drastic changes to Francesca’s journey (as described in Joe’s cookbook, Nonna’s House) for creative and dramatization purposes. However, the soul of her character and the contributions she made in Joe’s life remain more or less the same. According to Joe, it was Francesca who introduced him to real culinary education, without which he would have never been able to lay the foundation of his beloved restaurant, Enoteca Maria (named after Joe’s late mother, Maria).
Unlike Joe, who was born and raised in America, Francesca grew up in Calabria, a region in Southern Italy, with her four siblings. In childhood, she often visited her nonna’s house, which was some five minutes away from her family’s home. During the summer, when Francesca and her siblings didn’t have school to attend, they helped their nonna bake bread. This gave them firsthand experience with the sacred culinary skills and traditions of their grandmother. Francesca never really left her family until she got married. Her husband, a native of her village, had moved to America when he was 4 years old. He used to visit Calabria once a year, and that’s how the two met. According to Francesca, it was an old village with nothing much to explore, which was the reason why many folks her age left for cities, looking for better opportunities. After her marriage, Francesca too left her old village behind and arrived in New York to build a new life with her husband.
The idea of a big city always looks promising and romantic from afar. But you see, the ground reality is always different, or shocking to say the least. A similar feeling struck Francesca when she first set foot in New York. She lived with her in-laws in a five-bedroom house in an Italian neighborhood, Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. The thing is, it wasn’t anything like Francesca expected, but we all have our journeys to follow and struggles to endure. She and her first husband soon got an apartment of their own. They even raised two kids, but unfortunately their marriage didn’t last long.
It was after her divorce that Francesca met Joe. Their shared love for Italian food and customs helped them bond together. The two occasionally cooked together, helping them to connect on a different level, something Joe had never experienced before. If it was Joe’s mother and grandmother who taught him to appreciate good food, it was Francesca who taught him how to cook. She shared her culinary wisdom with him, making Joe wonder about the old Italian traditions and hidden food treasures that he wasn’t aware of until he met her. In his house in Brooklyn, where Joe lived before his mother died, he had dug out a room under the back porch, which the family used as a smokehouse. Francesca and Joe would often wake up at five in the morning to cook Italian sausages, one of the delicacies Joe had learned from Francesca, passed down to her from her foremothers. These cooking outings stayed with Joe for a long period of time and eventually influenced his decision to hire nonnas, instead of professional chefs, to cook for his restaurant. He likely came to a realization that, just like Francesca, these grandmothers from different cultures will also have so many age-old customs to share with the world. And I guess he was right, as today so many nonnas from various parts of the world cook their traditional delicacies in Enoteca Maria.
But even though Francesca had such a huge impact on Joe’s life, their relationship didn’t last long. They parted ways, and Francesca remarried another man named George Lecznar, who passed away recently of pancreatic cancer. I believe the tragedy of Olivia’s late husband in Netflix’s Nonnas was inspired by Francesca’s loss in real life. Before George’s tragic demise, he and Francesca had moved to Pennsylvania, where Francesca still lives today. Here she has a huge garden where, using her nonna’s traditional skills, Francesca grows all her vegetables and uses them to cook the dishes she had learned from her late grandmother. By cooking her nonna’s recipes every now and then, Francesca tries to remember her grandmother and keep her spirit alive.
