Helen Mirren Recalls Her 'Great Humiliation' Hosting Her First Dinner Party in Los Angeles: 'Disgusting' (Exclusive)

Helen Mirren tells PEOPLE about her kitchen mishaps and go-to takeout orders when chatting about her new Uber Eats NFL campaign

It hasn't been so easy for Helen Mirren to recreate classic British dishes in Los Angeles.

When talking to PEOPLE about her new Uber Eats NFL campaign, the Golda star and self-proclaimed “takeout person” dishes on one instance when she wishes she had ordered delivery instead of cooking.

Mirren, 78, first came to Los Angeles during the “very early days" with her husband, Taylor Hackford, whom she married in 1997 after a 10-year relationship. Their first dinner party together resulted in a particularly memorable kitchen disaster for Mirren.

“I decided I'd cook a good old-fashioned British Sunday lunch type of thing: roast meat, roast potatoes, Yorkshire puddings,” she recalls of her menu.

The latter dish was her “downfall,” according to the Oscar winner. “They came out like these horrible little bullets. They were disgusting and I was absolutely mortified.”

Despite the politeness of her guests, nothing helped Mirren’s embarrassment. “I knew how awful they were. That was my great humiliation," she laughs.

Mirren is self-critical in the new ad campaign, too, which will also feature cameos from Idris Elba and Michael Cera in separate commercials. Tapping into the actress’s poised roles on the big screen, the commercial shows Mirren having an inner monologue about what she should order.

“Like ants, the people of the city scurried,” Mirren says in a distinguished tone while looking out the window.

“Above them all, a Dame — ugh, Helen, you’re narrating again, you stupid sausage,” she interrupts herself, switching into a casual voice. “Oh, I’d love a sausage.”

Back in her sing-songy voice, she continues her monologue, “Feeling peckish, Helen ordered her morning groceries —” But she continues to swap back into her typical voice, “ugh, goodness, not this — she narrated — ugh! Sod it.”

The doorbell ringing stops her inner conversation and Mirren retrieves her Uber Eats bag. Before closing the door, Mirren sees her neighbor in the hallway.

“Helen wondered what her neighbor looked like naked,” she accidentally says out loud in her narrator voice. A startled-looking man asks, “Excuse me?”

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Mirren thinks in her stoic tone, “Helen picked up her groceries and wanted to die.”

Not all of her culinary adventures are as tumultuous as her real-life dinner party or fictional Uber Eats order. Mirren says her love of cooking blossomed during the pandemic.

“That was the great thing about lockdown, I started looking up recipes and thinking about what we'd eat. There would always be something that we didn't have so we were always having to order these weird spices online,” she explains.

When she and Hackford aren’t trying out new recipes they spot on the internet, Mirren is opting for Indian, Chinese or Thai food takeout.

“Those are the kinds of food that I love to order because I would have no idea where to start cooking that kind of food,” she says. “Especially in London, I'm a big takeout person.”

When it comes to Uber Eats, Mirren says she is a true fan. “This is no bulls--t, I promise you. I was amazed," she says of her first time ordering — prior to when she secured the gig. "It was so cool, it was on time, it was so easy to order.”

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