Seven minutes to the fourth hour!” Speakers erupt inside the TODAY show studio, calling for the fill-in co-host to get to the anchor desk. Inside Scarlett Johansson’s dressing room, her Glam Team and assistant scroll on their phones.

There is no sign of the actor.

She’s still in a meeting with show producers. But right on time, Johansson will sit down with host Jenna Bush Hager and reveal on live television that she was once ghosted and dumped. She and Hager will get their ears pierced while holding hands. She will be asked if she likes mayonnaise. She will, with her inimitable, vocal-fry-alto voice, admit she likes Blues Traveler.

Then, during a commercial break, she will race up a narrow staircase to a 30-square-foot kitchen. 

Scarlett Johansson is making chicken wings on live television. That’s a fairly absurd sentence, but it’s reality. I’m watching Johansson’s last day as the guest host on TODAY with Jenna & Friends—a gambit of revolving famous faces following longtime star Hoda Kotb’s departure from the show on January 10. A chef from Queens BBQ joint Pig Beach is next to her doing the rapid-fire morning show-how-to thing.

It could have been a rote moment on American television. If, of course, one of the hosts wasn’t Scarlett Fucking Johansson. 

She’s into it. The sleeves of her oversized blazer are rolled up. As I witness her genuine surprise at the addition of baking soda to the lemon pepper marinade, I have a realization: Johansson is The Last Old-Hollywood Actress Working Today. The voice, the face, the talent, and the glamour, combine to put her right there alongside Bacall, Garbo, Kelly, Hepburn, and Hepburn. What’s more, Johansson possesses (until perhaps this very second?) something all too vital—and increasingly rare: a sense of mystery.