Acclaimed director Quentin Tarantino arrived in Israel with his wife Daniella Pick and son Leo shortly before the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, on what was supposed to be a short visit. But this turned into more than a year.
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Appearing on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Tarantino said that the Jewish state was "the country that handled COVID best," and this allowed him to fly back to the United States in recent days to promote his new novel "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" based on his 2019 film of the same name.
In his interview, he spoke about his de facto relocation that had been imposed on him due to the global contagion. "The idea was that we would spend 3-4 months in Tel Aviv and 3-4 months in Los Angeles, and then COVID hit. I would rather not have been out of my own country against my will for a year. 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," he said.
When asked whether his son Leo, who was named after Pick's grandfather, was speaking already, Tarantino said: "He is talking, they are not necessarily words. He can only say one word, and that is "aba," which is the Hebrew word for "Dada." And a third of the time, he means me."
Is Tarantino himself learning Hebrew? "I've learned a lot of words," he said. "I haven't learned enough to actually carry on a conversation or string anything but a perfunctory sentence together. But, I'm actually learning a lot with Leo, because he watches these baby TV kind of things, and it's all in Hebrew... So I am learning the Sesame Street version of Hebrew."
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