They were saying, “Who’s that bimbo with her midriff showing?” and, “She’s wearing a wig,” and, “She’s so young. What’s he doing with her?” So I was like, “I don’t want to appear on TV ever again.” I am not about this life. I want to be private.
He wanted me to be on the Tuscany show, so I said, “OK. I’m gonna just be some random person at a dinner table. I don’t want anyone to recognize me and make comments.”
But they did anyway. And it was even worse, because—the first time, I was all skinny, with the belly button ring, and fit, and everybody was like, “She’s probably just a whore—some young—” It was horrible.
But now this time, it was, “She’s so ugly. She’s so fat,” because I just had Ariane. So it was not hard when we were there, but it was hard once the show came out, and I was just like, “I don’t want to do this ever again.” But then, I ended up doing the Sardinia show, and he asked me to be in a couple of scenes of the Rome show as well.
For Sardinia, I was a liaison between [production company] ZPZ and my crazy Italian family. It was really, really hard. Organizing it was hard. I think we were on the brink of World War III at a certain point. It was the first and last time I did something like this. But once we were shooting, it was actually really nice. We had no issues when we were there. We had a good time shooting it. It didn’t really feel like work.
For the first year after Ariane was born, I would barely leave the house. I just wanted to be with Ariane, and I had no family in New York, and Tony’s family was not really helping, so it was me and Ariane, and occasionally a nanny.
It felt really isolating to raise a child in New York with no family. I grew up in Italy, surrounded by family, my aunts and my grandmother living next door; there was not a moment where I was left with a babysitter.
We went with Tony to Hawaii, and we went to Jamaica. We went to France. It was the only way for us to spend time together, because he was away so long. Especially after he added his speaking engagements.
But there were a lot of occasions when we just stayed in hotel rooms, and after a while it was like, OK, maybe we are not gonna do this anymore, because it was really hard.
I was basically stuck in a hotel room most of the day. In Brittany, in this little town in the middle of nowhere, we were in a hotel where there was no one. We were the only guests. And everything was closed in town, and it was really creepy. There was no one at the reception. You had a key to go in and out. And it was just hours and hours of waiting for Tony to come back.
ALEX LOWRY, DIRECTOR: I remember one night in the house in Provence—we had a big crew house—and I came into the kitchen one night, and Ottavia was sitting having a glass of rosé and she asked if I wanted to join her.
I asked, “How are you, how’s it going?” and she said, “It’s really difficult. You all go off and do your own thing, and I’m with Ariane all day, and I feel the crew, they all resent me a bit, because I’m taking Tony away from what he’s supposed to be doing, as his job.”
I said no, but she was right, because if he was giving me half his attention because he’s worried about what she’s doing, that’s a difficult situation. On a shoot, it’s a trench mentality—you’re all on the road together, and you’re buddies, and maybe you act a bit differently on a shoot than you do with your family.
OTTAVIA BUSIA-BOURDAIN: At a certain point, when Ariane had really started school, it was also an issue for her to leave all the time, so we kind of stopped going. There was one year where we barely saw each other.
KAREN RINALDI: When Ariane was young, we used to spend time together; he would come to the house during holidays, and come down to the beach a couple of times, and then he was never around. He was never just off the grid for ten days with family. I mean, maybe he did that once in a while. I think he tried to do it. I think that got less and less.
OTTAVIA BUSIA-BOURDAIN: I wanted to go back to school, but then it was like, I’m going to have to spend five, six hours a day there, and then I have to study. Going back to work was out of the question, because working fourteen, sixteen hours a day in the restaurant business was insane. And with him always gone, it would not have been fair for Ariane, for both parents to be out of the house. We were lucky enough that I could stay home with Ariane, so that’s what we decided, but it was not the easiest thing.
It was always horrible when he left. But then, when he would come back, of course, everything was wonderful, but he would leave again, and it was really sad. And the constant up and down eventually really took a toll on our marriage. And then it was like, “You really need to get yourself a life, because you can’t just be home waiting for me.”
So I started Brazilian jiu-jitsu, and I really got into it. But then every time he would come home, I had to stop, because I felt like I had to be home. And if I was not home, then I would feel guilty. And when he was home, he was home all day, basically, besides doing some voice-overs.
SAM GOLDMAN: Jeff [Formosa] and I were having lunch with Tony at some outdoor café on the east side, and we were just like marveling, because people would walk by, catch Tony’s gaze, and we would see them clutch their pearls, like, Oh my god, it’s Tony Bourdain! And a couple of minutes into this, Ottavia comes down with the kid, right? And the nanny.
Tony says, “Would you like to hold my child?”
Jeff sticks his arms out, and, like the world’s best football cornerback, Ottavia shifts through, intercepts the kid, and keeps walking. I understood that we were the bad old days personified. I think that was the only time I ever met her. It was clear she didn’t want, you know—and I get it. I get it.
I had no resentment about the fact that he got famous and became less and less in touch with us. I had seen it before, and it was expected. Shockingly, Tony wanted to come to a reunion of the bad kids from high school, at the Plaza Diner, in Fort Lee [New Jersey]. It must have been 2012 or so. When it was just the two of us, I gave him a little shit about being out of touch with Jeff [Formosa], and I remember this really well: he looked at me and he said, “You guys don’t get me. Mario gets me. Eric gets me.”
And I looked at him and I said, “Not only do we get you, we fucking made you.” But I was so proud of him, and the discipline he developed. I don’t know where the fuck that came from.
24
“Don’t Bother Tony”
Navigating Friendships and Fame
CHRISTOPHER BOURDAIN: Apart from filming a few episodes of TV with him, I took one other trip with Tony, on my own. We went out to Park City, Utah, for two or three days. That was actually a fun trip, because it was just me and Tony, and I think it was my idea. I said, “Hey, would you be willing to meet on a Thursday at LaGuardia, and we just go to Park City?”
I always had a lot of fun on trips with Tony. I think it was José Andrés, at Tony’s memorial service, who said, “If you got to travel with Tony, you were then waiting, for the next three years, asking, ‘Is he gonna call me again? Am I gonna get to go travel with him?’” It was very true. I mean, I felt that way even before he was famous.
This is a very personal thing with me, and it impeded my relationship with Tony in many ways for years, but I never wanted to ask him questions in a way where I sounded like our mom. I never wanted to ask the question that was riddled with bad feeling, or, “I’m feeling slighted,” or, “I want more of your time.” I just never wanted to be that type of voice with him, because our mom was always grumbling about something that was making her unhappy, and I just didn’t want to be that way. Every conversation between them, there was always a loaded question of some kind.
I screwed myself, honestly, because probably if I had been a little more pushy, I would have seen Tony a lot more. And I wanted to, but I never wanted to be the resentful-toned person who was feeling slighted, or wanted something from him, because everybody wanted something from Tony, you know? Everybody wanted a piece of him. And I didn’t want to be one of those people who wanted a piece of him.
HELEN
CHO, PRODUCER-DIRECTOR: I started out as a production assistant. I was asked to help produce an episode of No Reservations, and it was a special. The specials were always an excuse to get weird. This one was called “Burning Questions.” Tony had written a specific list of things that he wanted to include: a deranged child who’s into exotic pets; a rodeo clown, wielding a bong, in a wheelchair; a crazy stalker with security guards. So I had a weird list of things to find and cast.
Then I wrote a crew blog about my experience acquiring all those things. I had thought it was a hazing thing, but I took it very seriously, and found the seediest basement, cast a clown, found a bong, an exotic pet store, everything.
Chris Collins came back from [shooting with Tony in] Istanbul, and said, “Man, Tony’s been talking about you.” And I was like, “Why, what did I do?” And he said, “No, he really liked your crew blog post. He said that’s the standard to which all crew blog posts should be held.”
I was so young, still in college, and one of two Korean Americans working there, and I think Tony really championed the underdog.
I had worked up to the point where I was associate-producing on No Reservations. Then Chris and Lydia said, “Tony wants you to head up the social media department, as well as his personal social media.” It was pulling me off the production track, but I was young and new at the company, and I appreciated that Tony saw me as capable of being the head of something. I wasn’t trained or that interested in marketing or in social media; I saw it as an opportunity, and I took it.
By the nature of the job, I had to get close to him. I had to learn his voice, because if you’re gonna speak for somebody or post for somebody, you have to get to know him.
It kind of naturally moved from that to a real friendship. I related to him a lot on the loneliness level, feeling like a misfit in ordinary situations. Maybe that’s why he opened that door. We’d sit and talk, and it didn’t feel like a work thing. He’d say, “Hey, there’s this weird music video I just saw, you would like it,” or he’d ask to have dinner or go for a drink or watch a movie or something.
Meanwhile, I was still helping produce along the way; I wanted to keep that muscle alive.
I started to become dissatisfied doing social media. At the same time, I saw how many requests he’d get, and how much time was demanded of him, and how many people were just trying to take, take, take constantly. And I never wanted to be that person; I wanted him to feel like he could trust me, so I never asked him for anything or crossed that line. And I never said that I was unhappy, but he just picked up on it. He was that hybrid of having so much empathy and being hyper all-knowing, but at the same time, he could be pretty unaware or one-track-minded. It’s a weird mix. I’d hear from other people that he would never ask how you were doing, or how your family was doing, or anything like that.
When I look back, he had an intuitive sense, and would ask, “What’s wrong?” It meant a lot to me that he seemed to care, but I did not want to cross that line. I was trying to make the transition back into production, but I didn’t quite know how.
Unbeknownst to me, he made sure that I went on the [Parts Unknown] Korea shoot. And he would say things like, “Well, if you wanna be in the field, I know exactly who to fire.” But I didn’t want to put other people out of work, because these were my friends, and I also didn’t want to violate our friendship, and the working relationship.
Maybe that’s why we had such a close friendship, because I treated him like a human being. I saw, also, how lonely it was to be him. He would make me go to events with him. When you first start going, you’re like, “Oh, this is kind of cool.” And then after the third one, you’re like, “Got it. This is just people grabbing at him, and it’s really alienating.”
And to be fair, he was super tall, so he kind of stood out no matter where he went. But regardless, I understood, on a very granular level, how lonely and alienating that must have felt for him.
When we would go out to eat together, I would always offer to pay, and he would never let me, but I was serious. Like, This is not you providing for me constantly, this is not what this is about, you know. We’re friends, there has to be some sort of equality. He let me pay for things that he thought that I could afford, like a smoothie or a beer or something.
SCOTT BRYAN: One good thing about Tony is he always picked up the phone. Guys would say, “Hey, do you think you can get Tony on the phone, hit him up with an idea to get me on his show?” And every now and then I would call him. I didn’t want to bother him, though, with other people’s little things like that.
DAVE CHANG, CHEF-RESTAURATEUR; FREQUENT TV AND PUBLISHING COLLABORATOR: I wanted to make sure I never bothered him. I knew in my life, all I wanted was for people to just not talk to me, and I know Tony was like that, too.
FRED MORIN: We all had the same level of friendship with Tony, and that was the Tony level of friendship. We knew that we had to exert a certain restraint in the display of friendship, you know? We have a lot of people who say, “You’re friends of Tony,” but we never used it.
DAVE MCMILLAN: I believe Tony was my friend. I was Tony’s friend. But our friendship was a special friendship, because it was a friendship on his terms. We understood that. We were all sous chefs. No one could get him to do anything that he wouldn’t want to do.
NATHAN THORNBURGH, EDITOR-WRITER; BUSINESS PARTNER IN ROADS & KINGDOMS: There were a lot of different rooms in that man’s brain; you always knew it was a big mansion. Once in a while we’d have dinner and drinks. It was always a good time, and I loved being with him, but I tried to not get carried away.
ADAM EPSTEIN, LECTURE TOUR PRODUCER: I didn’t know him well enough to know if he liked being alone, but I did try to leave him alone. I didn’t want to be a star fucker.
DAVE MCMILLAN: I never asked him for anything, because he’d already done more than any person had ever done for me in my career, so—
FRED MORIN:—and we knew people who used the Bourdain acquaintance, you know? It’s easy to fall for that; we had, like, an offer a week for some shit.
DAVE MCMILLAN: “Do you think Tony would come to my wedding for twenty thousand bucks? Can you give me his email address?”
FRED MORIN: It was unspoken, but there was, for us, a cardinal rule that, we’re never gonna call him up, and say, “Hey, we have this idea for a show”—
DAVE MCMILLAN: We knew the golden rule was “Don’t bother Tony.” If he calls us, we’re there, but we don’t call. Don’t ask.
JOSH HOMME, MUSICIAN: I met Tony in Berlin. We [Queens of the Stone Age] were playing a show, and he was in town doing No Reservations. He came to the show, and we just— [snaps fingers] It clicked, it was immediate. We stood outside in the relative cold, smoking cigarettes, drinking beers, and talking about what we liked. There was a hearty, good exchange of possibility between us that was immediate.
I think what we were bonding over is kind of wanting to live outside the system, you know? Even though what you do in the kitchen, what you do in a band—everything is a system of some sort. But there was a pirate-ship mentality to both of these things, where you go from town to town, giving as much as you can, taking as much as you can.
We showed each other our worlds, and there was a bunch in my world that he really loved. I introduced him to [musicians] Alison [Mosshart], and to Dean [Fertita], and Jack White, and to [Mark] Lanegan. We were the doormen of worlds the other one wasn’t in.
DEAN FERTITA, MUSICIAN: We ended up doing a Christmas episode of Tony’s show. Both Troy [Van Leeuwen, Queens of the Stone Age guitarist] and I were predominantly vegetarian at the time, but when Tony cooked us a meal, we just totally went off the wagon. That experience alone opened me up to the idea of how important it is to let things take you where they take you. That came up a few times with Tony. Just being available to try new things with him, that still affects me daily now.
MIKE RUFFINO: Even among celebrities, he was a celebrity. He never complained about it, that I recall. Whenever
we discussed it, it was always in a broader context of just how absurd the whole idea is, and on the more practical level, where he would express some regret that he wouldn’t want to go to a place, because he would destroy it, you know? There was a night that I was at the Chateau, with Tony, and Eric Ripert, and Ludo [Lefevbre]. None of them had ever been to Irv’s, this hamburger place in West Hollywood.
It was [run by] this great lady. She made the best burgers, and she would do your portrait on a paper plate, in pen. If you ordered one burger, sometimes she would charge you for two. “You’re gonna want another one.” And she was right every time. She was hilarious, and the burgers were better than In-N-Out, I thought. And we were gonna go there, but Tony realized that if he went there, it would be all done. Everyone would take his picture and put it on the internet, and Irv’s would be jammed all the time, and that poor lady would be a little overwhelmed. So I went and picked up the burgers.
It’s a weird life, and I’m sure it contributed to his overall exhaustion.
NATHAN THORNBURGH: We ran a heavy risk, one that I didn’t fully appreciate, in getting involved with Tony [at Roads & Kingdoms]. Kim [Witherspoon], every once in a while, to her credit, would say, “Just so you know, this guy throws a real big shadow. Best-case scenario, people will start to look at you as Bourdain’s publication. If you do this right and it works out well, you’ll be Bourdain people.”
Tony had a weird effect on the things that he loved—like a restaurant that he dug—the reason he was there was not so he would overshadow it, but things that he was interested in got changed by his interest in them, and that’s not a predictable force.
PETER MEEHAN, JOURNALIST, FREQUENT PUBLISHING COLLABORATOR: Around 2010, we had dinner together [in New York] at Ko, back when it was in a little space on First Avenue. We walked after dinner down to PDT, my brother’s bar, to have a drink, and he was stopped by eighteen people to take pictures, in the course of two and a half blocks. And he was fucking gracious to all of them.
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