Vanessa Williams is a singer, actress and author born in Upstate New York. In 1983, she made history as the first African American woman to be crowned Miss America, an achievement that was overshadowed by racism and a media storm. Despite the controversy, Vanessa went on to carve out a celebrated career in entertainment. As a singer, she released 13 studio albums, earning multiple Grammy and Tony nominations. Beyond music, she is known for her iconic role as Wilhelmina Slater in Ugly Betty and is currently treading the boards as Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wears Prada musical in London's West End.

Angela prepares a delicious tomato & vodka bucatini with crispy pancetta pangritata while Nick pours an Araldica Barbera D'Asti Superiore, recommended by the experts at Waitrose.

Vanessa Williams brings some Hollywood glamour to the Dish table for our 100th episode. Our trio talks New York City takeaways, Vanessa shares her family’s favourite pasta recipe and she explains how she and Stanley Tucci are connected IRL (in the real world).

Find Angela's Christmas menu with Dishpatch, the restaurant meal kit experts, on Waitrose Entertaining.

You can now watch full episodes of Dish on YouTube 

All recipes from this podcast can be found at waitrose.com/dishrecipes

A transcript for this episode can be found at waitrose.com/dish

We can’t all have a Michelin star chef in the kitchen, but you can ask Angela for help.

Send your dilemmas to [email protected]and she’ll try to answer them in a future episode.

Dish is a S:E Creative Studio production for Waitrose