Initially, I was gonna talk to both him and Ottavia together; that was something that he said very certainly was going to happen, in the early going. He really wanted me to meet her, and I did, too. I kept pushing for the three of us to hang out. At the time, I figured, Oh, they’re busy, it’s tricky with schedules. It felt to me as though, at the beginning of that year, it was important for him to project an image that this was a relationship that was really working.
OTTAVIA BUSIA-BOURDAIN: I mean, the fact that we had a kid, and got married, in a few months of meeting, in that sense, yeah, he was impulsive. But while we were together, and things were going well, I thought he was actually very levelheaded, and he really had always thought about the well-being of Ariane, or my well-being, before deciding to do something or not.
As a dad, he was always the good cop. I think it was fair, because he was around so little, so when he was home, there was no enforcing homework, there was no discipline. He was 100 percent fun dad, and he called himself “Silly Dada,” ’cause that’s what he was doing.
ARIANE BUSIA-BOURDAIN: I watched Archer with my dad, which I found pretty funny, even as a little kid. Of course, I still watched the regular kid TV shows, but I wasn’t hearing about anyone else who was playing Grand Theft Auto with their parents. And I kind of realized when I was younger that, Oh, not a lot of kids fall asleep to Dexter.
I remember him struggling to put my Barbie DreamHouse together. Or I’d pretend that he was in a barbershop, and he wouldn’t let me cut it, but I’d just put random soap on his hair. He played with me all the time; he went with it. If I was like, “Hey, let’s pretend to do this,” he’d pretty much do it all the time.
We had this tradition where we’d go to the Palisades, in New Jersey, and we’d climb up all the way to the top of this little mountain. There are perfect stairs, but we decided to just go through the trees and branches and stuff, which you’re not supposed to do. And after that, we’d go to Hiram’s, which is this very low-key spot for hot dogs, that’s their specialty there, and I used to go there all the time with him. We’d go there on Father’s Day. And he’s been going there since he was younger so, of course, he’s very familiar with the place. Every time we’d go to the Hamptons, we’d go to this place called Sip’n Soda, and we’d both always have lime rickeys there. Those two places were our favorites.
In New York, he would usually take me to one of those restaurants, like fast food, that my mom doesn’t approve of. I think my mom knew, but he would make it seem like we were on this mission.
He would say, “All right, let’s tell your mom that we’re going to get the newspaper downstairs, but we’re actually going to go to Papaya King.” We’d get a hot dog and a papaya shake and we’d eat it in this little garden. Then we’d come back and say, “That was an interesting newspaper . . . yeah.” I’m sure my mom knew. Why would it take us twenty minutes to get the newspaper?
OTTAVIA BUSIA-BOURDAIN: He really liked making breakfast for Ariane, and then, when she was a little bit older, they started cooking together. And especially in the summer, when we would rent a house in the Hamptons for a month, and they were really cooking together, and spending so much time together, and going to the beach together.
ARIANE BUSIA-BOURDAIN: I always cooked with him. We’d always cook ratatouille, from the movie Ratatouille, and we made it exactly like they made it. We’d cook schnitzel; he’d make little stations: one of them has the breading, one has the flour, one has the eggs, and my dad put it in the pan. He’d cook omelets for me all the time, and I’d help him flip it. He would let me sprinkle chocolate chips or blueberries into pancakes, and then he’d let me flip the pancake a little. When we were in the Hamptons, he’d cook dinner, cook breakfast, so that’s when he really cooked for me.
He taught me how to cut things and not chop off my fingers, to curl my fingers under. He gave me my own little knife, and I still have it, and still use it.
OTTAVIA BUSIA-BOURDAIN: He was a great dad. And he was silly. He was like an overgrown child. They would make videos together. And play silly games, and he would tell her crazy stories, and he always said that we were a family of weirdos, but that was great, you know.
ARIANE BUSIA-BOURDAIN: We had this little thing called the Weirdo Club. And I don’t really know what it was about, it was just us being weird. And I really liked it. He encouraged weirdness. He pretty much encouraged every single thing I wanted to do in my life, and gave me the information to back it up.
I just started drawing by myself, and I did very much get inspired by his drawings. I’d seen him draw before, and I don’t think I really liked them back then, because they are very sketchy, you know, very his style, and then as I grew older, I kind of learned to like that style. So a lot of my artwork, you know, comes from his. And he might not really see that right away but it does; I do think of his style when I draw.
I was singing for a long time, and I still am. In order to be in my camp, where I do rock music, I also need to play an instrument. And I was thinking, Oh, what instrument should I play? My dad was like, “You know, the bass is, like, really cool. You’re just in the back, you’re just grooving, and it could also be the lead instrument of the song, it could just kind of put the song together.” That sounded perfect for me, because I don’t really like being in the spotlight all the time, so being on the bass, it’s my thing. I play bass pretty much because of him.
OTTAVIA BUSIA-BOURDAIN: He really felt this responsibility to be healthy. He started actually getting checkups, and going to the doctor, and he had a CAT scan of his lungs, and turns out that they were totally fine. He was making an effort to be healthy, because he wanted to be around for Ariane.
But then, once he moved out, he seemed to be really impulsive. Definitely for the last two years of his life, he made many impulsive decisions.
When he told me that he wanted to move out, there was not a big shock. For quite some time, we were basically friends. We didn’t work out as a married couple, but we would get along so well, there was no reason for either of us to move out or change the way things were. Like I said, we didn’t work out as a married couple, but we were doing very well as a family.
But then he fell in love, and his girlfriend told him that she didn’t want to be a weekend lover, so he decided it was the best thing for his relationship to move out. And because of the relationship we had, I couldn’t say, “Oh no, you have to stay with us.” You know, it was his prerogative; he was a grown man, and we didn’t have that kind of relationship anymore.
I was worried about Ariane, but I was happy for him, because it was like, “Maybe you’ll find another chance at love,” and I was like, “Go for it,” you know.
He told me, “Nothing is gonna change. I’ll be there every morning to take her to school, and I’ll be there for dinner, and I’ll still sleep over a lot of nights.” And for a bit, it really seemed like things were gonna work out, but then everything changed. And that’s not the way things went.
I feel like, for him, it was very important to have the kind of stability that he had at home. Even if our marriage didn’t work out, there was still routine, and there were people who really cared about him. And Tony, he had this image of, you know, this bad boy, no fucks given, but he was actually really sensitive, and really fragile. And I really think he needed a stable environment around him.
When he left, he didn’t have that anymore. It’s weird to say nobody was protecting him, because he was a grown-ass man, but still—I feel like he needed, if not protection, at least stability.
46
“Tony’s Changed; Tony’s Very Different Now”
LYDIA TENAGLIA: [Over the years] Tony’s demeanor shifted; he went from, “I can’t believe my luck, getting out of hot kitchens to do this,” and you see, almost, a vibrating crazy energy. Then you see, in the middle of No Reservations, somebody coming into his own: truly, deeply understanding how the visual medium could be an extension of his own thoughts or writing, and how he could pl
ay with that. Toward the end, I just see someone who was getting really tired, just kind of weary, not just about traveling and things he saw and was exposed to.
DANIEL HALPERN: I started to notice it before Appetites [the cookbook he published with Ecco in 2016]. He seemed even more distant. He seemed not to have that same kind of energy. He just seemed to be carrying a greater weight in every way on his shoulders. And he didn’t seem to be getting enough joy out of life.
He was, in some ways, breaking down, even physically, although he was in amazing shape. Something wasn’t exactly right. He got tired. And I think all of the flights. Very few people could deal with that. He seemed to, but the last couple of years, he looked worn out. And not really happy. Very thin. He looked in some ways like he was suffering in a psychological way.
MICHAEL RUHLMAN: I made shows with him in Napa Valley, two in Las Vegas, New York City, Cleveland, and the Hudson valley. As the years went on, he seemed to have increasingly less fun, seemed to be increasingly less joyful.
AMY ENTELIS: I would say that, in the last couple of years, I worried a little bit more about whether he was gonna want to move on, in the sense that the work was becoming a little routine.
The two-hundred-plus days a year on the road, and the constant travel—I’m not privy to what was going on in his head, but we all used to wonder, How does Tony do this?
This looks like the greatest job in the world, but we were up close enough to it to know that it was really wearing. It would be wearing on anybody. And this was many, many years of it, not just at CNN.
I think the shows were as good as they ever were, but in terms of him, and how he approached them or what he wanted to do, I felt like there was some kind of a shift. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but in terms of enthusiasm, it was waning a little bit. Whether that was the case or not is still unknown to me, but some of the energy and enthusiasm seemed to lag a bit.
LIZZIE FOX: In the last round of negotiations, we thought, Well, maybe it will be only a year, and we had asked for three. And, with enthusiasm, he signed on for more.
TODD LIEBLER: I think the big changes with Tony were his relationships. Like, as he was getting married, or having a child, seeing a new girlfriend, those were the times when you saw the biggest change in him. Ultimately, the last big change was not a good one. It always would be these intense women who had this effect on him. And that’s when we really noticed the big changes.
KIMBERLY WITHERSPOON: He was devastated by the end of the relationship [with Ottavia], and it left him vulnerable to Asia.*
SANDY ZWEIG: In terms of the last couple of years, there was a turning point that I saw, and it had to do with Asia. He was supposed to meet her in France.*
He had gotten shingles, and a lot of stuff had happened. I just remember him sitting in my office, and he— We weren’t close, you know? We had a professional relationship, but he just sort of opened up about how horrible it was, and how he’d passed out on the street.*
ASHA GILL: I remember when he was in France [in summer 2016]. I got a call then, and he was just not in a good space. So we had, over a week, quite a few conversations. And then he’d have a go at me. “Stop trying to make me feel better.” Whatever was happening then, that was the first time that I really was concerned and worried, in fifteen years.
KIMBERLY WITHERSPOON: When anyone had misgivings, or just an issue with Tony, it would often land in my lap, and it was up to me to speak with him about it. And he was generally receptive to hearing it, and interested. But I’m not sure how much he could hear the increasing apprehension that we felt for his safety, his judgment, and his emotional and psychological well-being in his romantic relationships.
I was trying to get him to see that he had as many life choices as any of us have, and that his choices weren’t as limited as he seemed to think they were. Once he became involved with Asia, many of us were voicing our worry directly about that relationship. And while he was engaged by it—I never felt that he shut me down when I was conveying the concerns—he thought the positive outweighed the negative.
SANDY ZWEIG: Looking back, it gave some insight into what that relationship might end up being. There were certainly highs. In the beginning, he seemed very happy. Toward the end, it seemed like he just was thinner, and probably not taking care of himself as well.
PETER MEEHAN: I saw him in August 2016. I was writing something about him for an Australian magazine, so I went out to [his] Southampton [rental house]. There were a bunch of ZPZ guys there, showing him footage from the Rome episode [of Parts Unknown]; he was crazy, talking about the cameras and Fellini and the whole thing.
Then Tony and I went out to the front porch to smoke cigarettes, and that’s when he told me about Asia. She had sent him a picture of some kind of Japanese-style tattoo, which was like a broken-up yakuza girlfriend–style tattoo; it was some kind of message etched in her skin that was like, “Fuck off,” and you could tell it just set Tony’s heart on fire, and he was like, “I’m gonna do this.” It seemed romantic at the time.
DAVE CHANG: The things that Tony used to love were disappearing, and he couldn’t fill that heroin void anymore, and then a relationship came in at the right place, at just the right time for him. Something new, and dangerous, and foreign—all the same things that travel presented to him. It was inaccessible; the same thing that fine dining had been to him. Same shit. It was like, “I can’t get access to this, and it’s impossible to know.”
ROY CHOI: When I saw him with People magazine [for a September 2016 shoot at the Chateau Marmont, to promote Appetites], I felt something weird about him that day. It was a larger impatience toward something. I just felt like everything was the same, but they turned the music up. I just felt like the volume of everything was louder. There was still the same Tony, but just with this impatience.
ADAM EPSTEIN: On that last speaking tour [in October and November 2016], he was in great shape, physically, but he did seem very darkly reflective, moody; you would rarely see him grin.
ALISON MOSSHART: I remember when we were talking a lot was when he was on that last speaking tour. And I remember that he was just not loving it. I don’t know how anyone could, to be totally fair. [But] he didn’t seem miserable. He seemed OK.
ROBIN STANDEFER: I could see Tony starting to morph a little bit, for sure; embracing a darker side. He was doing the New Yorker story, and we were part of that story, because of the market, and he asked us to come out to a Korean restaurant, and then to a club, and we were out all night with him and the writer [Patrick Radden Keefe]. We were talking about history and writing and reading, and then we sort of meandered down to this crazy Korean karaoke club, and singing and doing shots for hours, till like six in the morning—and it was that night that I started to feel a shift; I just felt like there was, in Tony, a need to follow the demons a little more than there had been for the previous three years. I felt it.
MICHAEL RUHLMAN: The last time I saw him was at the opening of the Wasted! documentary [in the spring of 2017]. There was a palpable depression to him. I thought, It’s just got to be fatigue. His travel schedule was fucking insane. But he seemed demonstrably sad.
KAREN RINALDI: One of the last times Tony and I talked, he said, “I’ve never been happier in my life.” It was at the Grape, Olive, Pig book party, in May 2017.* I just wanted him to be happy. I remember thinking that it was Tony letting all the noise out for a minute. It was an incredibly intimate, wonderful moment. He showed me his new carp tattoo.
MICHAEL RUHLMAN: He was a great correspondent. One of his last emails was in response to my inviting him to my wedding reception. He said, “I’ve fallen in love, too.” He briefly described it, and the last words I have from him are “love abounds,” which was so uncynical and so— I was surprised by the just heart-wide-openness of it all. He truly was a romantic. It was part of what was so great about him—he was a cynic who loved the world and always expected the best.
MORGAN FALLON: Even though we were
familiar on set, getting to really know him personally didn’t come until I was directing. I saw what was really going on under the surface [of] someone who had great reverence for the quiet places, big, open places where he could feel small and anonymous, like Oman, in the Empty Quarter [of the Arabian Peninsula], or West Texas, Big Bend, and those deep canyons. I saw in him this desire to be somehow swept away into the oblivion. Maybe that was his attempt to mitigate the kind of trauma he was experiencing as his celebrity grew, and his ability to walk down the street, or go to places that he loved, or have a normal conversation with someone, or just be left the fuck alone, kind of evaporated.
There was less looking for an acute sensory experience, and more of a slower, longer burn of searching for something that was bigger than himself. The other thing I saw change in him was that, frankly, he’d started to cry more. I had never seen the facade of control crack, but in multiple scenes, you started seeing him get choked up, not necessarily in sad ways, but in very connected, very empathic ways. I saw it in Antarctica, I saw it in Texas, in Florence. He was connecting with someone else, and really understanding his or her experience. I mean, we all know that Tony was, in some ways, a pathological narcissist, and I think that in those moments, that was broken down. There were certain people who were able to scale that wall and access him in a way that opened that up.
LIZZIE FOX: I think that he was a volatile person, in his ups and downs. At the end, there were a lot of ups. I remember he wrote me an email totally out of the blue. It was like, “Thank you so much for all the opportunities and really believing in me.” It was so sweet, and I never think of Tony Bourdain as sweet. I thought, He must be in a good place. But then it’s always, with an addict in particular, the shoe is gonna drop sometime, so if it’s a high high, it’s gonna come down to a low low. My brother’s an addict, so I grew up, from a young age, observing that sort of behavior.
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