Hollywood film director Quentin Tarantino praised the life in Israel during the COVID-19 pandemic during his appearance on the late-night talk show Jimmy Kimmel Live! earlier this week.
Tarantino moved to Tel Aviv with his wife, Israeli singer Daniella Pick, for only three months at the start of 2020, but was forced to stay for a whole year due to the COVID pandemic.
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Quentin Tarantino and his wife Daniela Pick at the 2019 premier of 'Once Upon a Time in Hollywood'
(Photo: EPA)
The legendary director, producer and writer appeared on the show to promote his new book “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” named after his latest film. He also talked about living in Tel Aviv, learning Hebrew and his fifteen-month-old son.
“I would rather not have been out of my own country against my will for a whole year,” Said Tarantino regarding the predicament he and his family found themselves in. “However, if I'm going to be in another country, the country that handled COVID the best is probably the best country to be in.”
Kimmel also referred to Tarantino and Pick’s son, Leo, who the director affirmed was not named after Leonardo DiCaprio, who starred in Tarantino’s 2012 movie “Django Unchained,” but rather after his wife’s grandfather.
(Quentin Tarantino on Jimmy Kimmel)
“But also because in our hearts he’s just our little lion, that's how we thought about him,” said Tarantino, who also talked about his son's very first, and currently, only word. "He can only say one word and that is 'abba' which is the Hebrew word for dadda."
The director also boasted about his own wide vocabulary of Hebrew words, which he picked up during his year in Israel: “I’ve learnt a lot of words, not enough to actually carry out a conversation."
“But I’m actually learning a lot with Leo because he watches these baby TV kind of things and it's all in Hebrew. And so I'm learning with him things like ‘Cat is Hatul’, ‘Horse is Sus’, ‘Cow is Para’. So I'm learning the Hebrew Sesame Street version of Hebrew.”