As Donal Skehan returns to our screens this week with a gorgeous new Italian cooking show, he takes a moment to reflect on 20 years in the business. He talks to Janice Butler about turning 40, the lessons he’s learned along the way and some exciting new personal and professional projects.
There’s a sense of the end of summer when I catch up with Donal Skehan. There’s a change in the weather; he’s just returned from a family holiday in Sweden, where his wife Sofie’s family is from, and we both express a sigh of relief that school is back.
He seems a little more organised about the transition from summer chaos to school structure than I do: “Sweden in the summer is magic. We’re just back, so I’ve been doing my meal prep and the weekly schedule is getting back on track,” he says gleefully.
Swapping Sweden for Italy, Donal was back on our screens last week, gushing about his “long-standing love affair with Italy and its cuisine.”
In Donal’s Italian Kitchen, he travels through Italy, chasing the places, people and dishes that have shaped his cooking. He revisits honeymoon memories in Florence, learns from two nonne with a lifetime of wisdom between them, and shares notes from Italian-American diners in LA.
Then of course, he recreates some of his favourite recipes, for viewers to try at home.
“I filmed a show called Granma’s Boy for Fox International when I was just starting out, and basically, I went to every region in Italy and cooked with the grandmothers. That cemented my love of cooking. Over the years, I’ve brought my family back to Italy in different guises, so it’s been beautiful to be able to showcase those regions,” he says of his relationship with Italian food.
“In my own cooking, over the years, the pasta dishes continue to be the ones that are the most popular and possibly the most controversial, like the one-pot pastas,” he adds. “But I always believe if you have an understanding of the rules, you can break them a little bit – just don’t let the Italians see,” he laughs. “But my audience does expect doable home cook recipes, so there’s a few tweaks here and there.”
From Meals in Minutes to Kitchen Hero, Donal has been a regular fixture on Irish TV for the last 20 years. When he first burst onto the Irish food scene, he was a fresh-faced kid with a camera and a blog who had once been in a boyband. After nearly two decades spent filming global television hits, writing best-selling cookbooks and building a digital empire, the Howth native has begun a new chapter, and that’s reflected in this new TV series.
“I’ve done a lot of travel-style cooking TV shows in other countries, but this is one of the first times I’ve done one for Irish TV. I absolutely love it, and I feel it gives an undercurrent for everything that we cook in the show and really gives people a taste for Italian food and cuisine,” he says.
Turning 40 on the live stage at the Bord Bia Bloom festival in June might have looked like peak showbiz, but behind the scenes the milestone birthday gave the father of two time to reflect on what’s been an incredible career and life with his wife Sofie and sons Noah and Oliver.
“Anyone who hits that 40 milestone will take a moment to look back,” he says. “For me, I started in this business when I was very young; I was only 22. Most people are well into their 30s before they get a book deal. I’m very conscious that I started this when I was very young, so in some ways, you have to think about what’s happened and what is it I want to do now,” he adds.
“The core of what I do is write recipes for people who are time poor, who have families, and I know that’s the baseline for whatever I do moving forward. But I’m really excited for this next stage in my life.”
Looking back, is there anything he’d change?
“Nothing really goes to waste – I would say I always took the opportunities that came my way, and every one of them stood to me in the future in some shape or form,” he answers. “I remember doing an infomercial when I was in the States and thinking, ‘What am I doing?’,”he laughs. “But looking back, I don’t regret it. I wouldn’t change anything. If anything, my advice would be to take the opportunities and then hone what you really want to do.”
While he says the early days in his career were probably the most challenging in terms of “getting a foothold in the industry”, he remarks that the family leaving Los Angeles after four years was probably one of the hardest decisions he had to make.
Donal and Sofie lived in Los Angeles from early 2016 until April 2020; they had their sons there. In the past, he has described their time in the US as a “wild ride” and a “special chapter” that deeply influenced his career, family life and cooking style.
They made the decision to leave once COVID hit so they could be closer to family. “I don’t know if I was ready to leave America,” he says. “We had worked really hard over there, but trying to balance family life with a transatlantic flight home every month was becoming untenable. So that was a hard decision to make, but it was the right decision in terms of being closer to family and having that help. At some point in your life, with career and family, you have to make a decision about what’s best for your family life and for your mental capacity for it all,” he adds.
Looking ahead, he’s about to start filming a new TV project for ITV; “I’ve just got my first solo UK TV show, that we’ll start recording next week,” he says excitedly. “It came out of the blue, but has been a long time coming at the same time.
“It’s a Saturday morning slot, on after James Martin,” he explains. “We’re basing me in Howth Castle, my hometown, and I’ll be travelling around Ireland, showcasing the best of Irish producers and interesting food stories. Essentially, I’ll be selling what’s fantastic about our island, so I’m very conscious that it’s a huge opportunity to put a spotlight on Irish produce and I don’t take that lightly,” he adds.
On top of this, he announced during the summer that his production company, Appetite Media, had signed a major digital and social media partnership with Fremantle. The deal is designed to expand his digital footprint and distribute the company’s television catalogue to a global online audience. This is surely the key to Donal’s success: he’s always stayed ahead of the curve and adapted to the changing landscape.
“It’s a big part of how we’re evolving,” he explains. “You look at presenters like Holly Willoughby with her new YouTube show; that’s a big thing that we’d be aware of. There’s a turning of the tide in terms of content being made for online instead of traditional media. At the moment, you need to be able to straddle both. And it’s not just for me, it’s for the people I work with,” he adds.
On his Let’s Do This! podcast with his close friend, the Dancing With the Stars judge, Arthur Gourounlian, Donal has been remarkably candid about the physical toll of sustained career hustle and his aim of getting fit at 40. How’s that going?
“What fitness journey – are you joking?” he laughs. “It’s definitely one of those things where I try and make a stab at it and then things take over. I think for parents, if you weren’t necessarily good at it before, you’re not going to get better at it when you have kids,” he adds.
“But as a family we’re good at getting out in nature and walking. We try to get out as much as we can. But I think with the summer over, it’s a good time for a reset – I’ll keep walking, keep moving and do my best.”
If his personal health routine is about finding balance, his current living situation is a lesson in managing chaos. After 17 years of renting across Dublin and Los Angeles, Donal and Sofie finally bought their forever home: a charming, coastal cottage near his childhood home of Howth.
But turning a dream into reality has proven to be a marathon of patience. Now, with planning permission secured, the project has officially escalated into a massive demolition and structural rebuild. How’s it all going? “Oh, don’t ask me about that”, he laughs.
“We’ve a beautiful location, we’re really happy where we are, so it’s just a matter of time. I’m trying to get less stressed about these things over the years. We’re masters of patience at this stage,” he adds.
“You just have to know it will all work out in the end. I see now why these renovations make good TV shows.”
Donal’s Italian Kitchen airs Wednesdays at 8.30pm on RTÉ One. Catch up on RTÉ Player.