Harry Hamlin: ‘I’m Just Getting Started ... I Don’t Think About Aging’

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“I’ve never seen a cooking show of any kind,” admits actor Harry Hamlin, 72, who now finds himself the star of his own culinary show, In the Kitchen With Harry Hamlin, premiering May 15 on

AMC+ and IFC. He and his niece, chef Renee Guilbault, 47, host the show, and Hamlin says “we just did whatever came to mind.” That “whatever” turns out to be an informal mix of Hamlin and

Guibault sharing their favorite recipes, cooking tips and secrets for successful dinner parties, all while engaging in relaxed conversations with Hamlin’s wife, actress Lisa Rinna, 60, and

their celebrity friends who pop by, including Ed Begley Jr., 74, Ted Danson, 76, and Mary Steenburgen, 71. Hamlin shares with AARP how he unexpectedly ended up with a cooking show, his

thoughts on aging and the one way Lisa cheats on him.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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Given you’ve never seen a cooking show, did the network give you any direction?

No, we had no direction at all. When [the network] asked me to do a cooking show I said, “Excuse me? Why?” I guess one of the executives’ wives had seen me making some food for the girls on

Lisa’s show [the Bravo reality show The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills] and they liked it. Lisa thought it would be a good idea, and I guess happy wife, happy life. I said, “Well, if I’m

going to do a cooking show, my niece is a world-class chef. She trained at Le Cordon Bleu. I will do it under one condition, and that is she can do it with me.” And they said, “OK.”

Hamlin and wife Lisa Rinna, seen here being interviewed on the "Today" show last February, have been married for 27 years. Nathan Congleton/Getty Images

Who taught you how to cook?

I learned it on the fly. No one taught me. I’ve never taken a class or anything like that. I’m the only cook in our family [Hamlin and Rinna have two daughters, Delilah, 25, and Amelia, 22],

so if they were going to eat, it had to be me. I had to make something that tasted reasonably good so they would eat it. I was able to keep them alive.

Did your mom or dad like to cook?

My father ... was a barbecuer, and he liked to cook exotic things. I was born right after the Second World War, so the kind of food [my parents] ate was whatever they could make out of

what had been rationed during the war. Every Sunday we would alternate between beef tongue and pickled beef tongue. It was like a potpourri of really weird food.