'His love taught me so much.' The heartbreaking true story behind Netflix's From Scratch.

Netflix's From Scratch can be deceiving. 

Both the cover art and the first couple of episodes lead you to believe the series is a light-hearted romantic comedy, kind of like Emily in Paris meets Under The Tuscan Sun. 

But From Scratch is a different kind of beast. The series, which is based on Tembi Locke's 2019 memoir of the same name, follows a couple's entire love story from start to finish. And there's no happily ever after. 

Speaking to TODAY, Locke explained that viewers are in for a different kind of love story. 

"They are in for a love story that, like life, is surprising and ever changing. A love story that deepens in ways that perhaps you don't know could happen. They're also in for a love story that goes beyond romantic love – bigger and more expansive than just romantic love," she said.

Watch the trailer for Netflix's From Scratch. Post continues below. 

In 2018, when Locke was still working on her manuscript, her sister Attica, a bestselling novelist who was serving as a co-executive producer on Little Fires Everywhere, pitched her memoir as a TV show. 

"Attica was like, 'Don’t be mad, but I kind of just pitched your book [as a TV show]'," Locke told Netflix's Tudum earlier this year. "I was like, 'What?' Because literally it was still a manuscript."

"To share it felt very vulnerable, but I wrote [the memoir] from my heart, and this is another moment where I’m just going to take the leap from my heart," she explained. 

"I thought, 'How many times am I going to get a call like this in a lifetime? So I was like, 'You know what? Attica just pushed us off the cliff. Let’s see if we’re going to sprout wings and fly'." 

Reese Witherspoon's production company Hello Sunshine picked it up, and the sisters co-wrote the script together. Locke served as a co-creator and executive producer on the show, while Attica was the showrunner.

It's a deeply personal story about a family, a great love, and an enduring grief. It's made even more personal by the fact the show is based on Locke's own life. 

The series follows an American woman named Amy Wheeler (played by Zoe Saldaña), who moves to Florence to complete an art course. There she meets a Sicilian chef named Lino Ortolano (played by Eugenio Mastrandrea). The pair quickly fall in love but face numerous hurdles in their relationship due to their different cultural backgrounds and dreams and goals. 

Lino eventually moves to LA with Amy and they begin to pursue their dream careers. Then Lino is diagnosed with a rare form of cancer. After he goes into remission, the couple adopt a daughter. They have seven wonderful years together, and then the cancer comes back. In the second last episode, Lino dies peacefully in their home. 

Like Amy in From Scratch, Locke lived in Italy after graduating high school, where she met a Sicilian chef named Saro Gullo. In a meet-cute that sounds like it's ripped from the pages of a Hollywood rom-com, the pair met when Gullo helped Locke after her bike was stolen. 

They quickly fell in love. 

In the memoir, Locke recalls Gullo saying to her, "I think we could be something great". 

"It suddenly seemed as right as butter on bread. I was taken aback by his boldness, his certainty," she writes. 

The series stays fairly close to the real story. Amy's apartment in Florence is actually located next door to the apartment Locke lived in when she met Gullo. And the bar where they meet, is actually the bar Gullo once owned with his friend. 

Locke told TODAY she didn't watch the first couple of episodes because she wanted to preserve her own memories of falling in love with Gullo. 

"I didn't watch the visuals because I want to maintain and protect my own memories. Suddenly you start to remember the thing that was made, and you forget the original images," she explained. 

Like in the series, Locke eventually moved back to the US, while Gullo stayed in Florence to continue working as a chef. Gullo eventually moved to New York to be with Locke, and the couple relocated to LA so she could pursue a career in acting. 

In 1995, they married. 

"He soothed the places I hadn’t known needed soothing, seemed perfectly willing to embrace the parts of me that were wanton, unsettled, unfinished, and contradictory. Together we had engaged life as two forks eating off one plate. Ready to listen, to love, to look into the darkness and see a thin filament of the moon," Locke describes their relationship in the memoir.

In 2022, after seven years of marriage, Gullo was diagnosed with leiomyosarcoma, a rare form of cancer. He underwent 10 years of treatment. During his treatment, the couple adopted a daughter, who they named Zoela.

"We’d always wanted to be parents," Locke told TODAY. "One of the things that I learned is life is still happening all around us and for us." 

In 2012, Gullo died peacefully with Locke by his side. 

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Locke told TODAY there's a special moment in the series, a secret message to Zoela from her late father. 

"There's an audible Easter egg in the series for her so that when she watches it, she's going to hear a message from her dad to her," she explained.

While From Scratch is a story about loss and grief, it's also a story about hope and new possibilities. 

Like in the series, Locke spent time in Sicily with Gullo's family, grieving and learning to live without him. 

"What if my own life was like a flower? Something I had to continually tend to and nurture. Sicily was the water and sun that fortified me to stand stronger in my life after loss," she writes in the memoir. "And maybe my leaving a rock at the cemetery, as an act of remembrance, had additional meaning. Maybe it was a symbol of the lasting permanence of Saro's love. His love, life, illness, and death had taught me so much but it was the undergirding of his love that was my salvation in loss."

In 2020, in the middle of the pandemic, Locke remarried with Zoela by her side. 

"And so the three of us — my daughter, my new husband, and I — got together, and we decided you know what, it’s about making the commitment to each other, and so we said let’s just go for it," she said. 

From Scratch is streaming on Netflix now.