Danielle Deadwyler’s Zora is the Secret MVP of Netflix’s ‘From Scratch’

Netflix‘s From Scratch is a show that puts its heroine Amy Wheeler (Zoe Saldana) front and center in all things. Amy gets to swan about Florence and fall in love with a handsome chef. When she leaves law school for a career in the art world, Amy not only flourishes as a gallerista, but is later poached by a local art center. Amy eventually marries Lino (Eugenio Mastrandrea) in an Italian villa and their marriage is only marred by his tragic fight with cancer. And when tragedy strikes, Amy’s entire family rallies to her cause.

Through it all, though, one character is by Amy’s side more than anyone. Not Lino, but her older sister, Zora (Danielle Deadwyler). It is Zora who calms Amy’s nerves about falling in love, who lets Amy and Lino crash in her apartment’s spare room, and who apparently starved as a child when Amy lost her lunch money. For my money, Zora is the true heroine of From Scratch. She’s more than a sister or best friend, but a martyr who puts Amy’s happiness first. Even when Zora eventually does get her own happy ending, Amy’s story takes precedence.

If Zora is the true MVP of From Scratch then Danielle Deadwyler is the show’s true muse. Amy might get all the attention, but Zora and the woman who plays her both deserve a lot more shine.

From Scratch is based on the memoirs of Tembi Locke and was created by Tembi and her sister Attica Locke. Amy is clearly a stand in for Tembi Locke, Lino for Tembi’s first husband Saro Gullo, and Zora for Attica. Given that the Locke sisters worked on this semi-autobiographic show together, you’d expect that Amy and Zora’s relationship would be depicted as a close and powerful bond. What’s still wild, though, is how Zora isn’t just a great sister to Amy. She’s a goddamn saint.

Throughout From Scratch, Zora is Amy’s greatest cheerleader and most trampled-upon doormat. When Amy and Lino are struggling in the early days of their relationship, Zora literally gives them a place to live. In thanks, Lino rearranges Zora’s kitchen to his preferences, thrusting her beloved Diet Dr. Peppers under the sink. When Zora discovers Lino has cancer, she seemingly drops everything in her life to help support Amy and Lino through his recovery. She even sets Lino up with the best doctor possible.

What thanks does Zora get from Amy and Lino for all this sacrifice? Very little. In fact, the sisters only fight once in the entire series, after Amy breaks a promise to have Zora’s back when she brings her boyfriend to Lino’s pop-up opening. The fallout of this argument reveals that on days when Amy would forget her lunch money, Zora would give her hers, choosing to skip a meal over letting her sister go hungry.

Does this conversation shift the dynamics between Amy and Zora? No. In a subsequent episode, Amy and Lino literally leave Zora’s wedding to pick up their adopted daughter from the hospital. (I think they could have stayed for the vows, at least, and blamed their tardiness on traffic.) When Lino is dying, Zora nobly stifles any news about her own pregnancy to be there for Amy.

The only reason I could buy Zora’s inhuman level of devotion to Amy is because Danielle Deadwyler convinced me of its sincerity. Deadwyler comes to From Scratch on the heels of her luminous turn in Station Eleven and in anticipation of a possible Oscar run for her work in the film Till. She’s a star on the rise and fills Zora with an energy that suggests Amy’s sister is leading her own off-screen show. There’s a conviction to everything Zora does that is 100% thanks to Danielle Deadwyler’s performance — not the script.

Like the character she plays, Danielle Deadwyler deserves the kind of attention that From Scratch gives Amy. Zora is due her own happily ever after. One where she isn’t asked to take a ten-hour-long flight from Los Angeles to Italy while pregnant just to keep Amy company on her birthday. And Danielle Deadwyler deservers to star in her own dreamy Italian romance already.

The best, and most underrated part, of Netflix’s From Scratch was totally Danielle Deadwyler.