Soon after, a film agent signed me on and cast me in an Italian costume drama set in Cuba at the time of the conquistadors. They needed an “exotic girl” who spoke a bit of Spanish to play a Cuban native. Never mind that I had gone from the high-art world of Helmut Newton to a period piece that had cast a Tamil woman as a Cuban “savage” (topless in a loincloth, though I insisted that they give me hair extensions that would cover my breasts). Never mind that the peoples who populated pre-Columbian Cuba didn’t speak Spanish. I couldn’t exactly be picky—this was my first acting gig, five long years after graduating from Clark with a degree in theater. I was thrilled.
More roles followed, including another in a miniseries where I played a swashbuckling Malaysian princess from the nineteenth century, and a guest role on an Italian TV series with Nino Manfredi where I played a character that IMDB dubbed “Indian lady.” I hadn’t made it big, but I did feel like I was making it. I loved being on the set with the PAs and cameramen and grips, the hairdressers and costumers and producers and directors. I loved that our prepacked lunches included a small plastic container of red wine, like those little plastic juice cups with foil tops they give you on airplanes. (Even craft services are better in Italy than anywhere else.)
I liked acting better than modeling for a number of reasons. It was more stimulating, but beyond that, it didn’t feel like a blatant exercise in selling something. I wasn’t exactly doing Shakespeare in the Park, but for the first time since college, I felt the satisfaction of coming together with others, all of us with the same script in hand, bringing to life something bigger than any one of us could achieve on our own. The best modeling and photography does tell a story, of course. But with acting I felt that I had the chance to tell a story that unfolded, to be a part of a narrative that changed over time and provoked in the viewer a myriad of emotions, beyond the brief reaction provoked by a still image. I also loved meeting so many talented technicians on the set. I was curious to learn about how they approached their work, and I wanted to learn from them how I could be better at mine. My director on Domenica In, Michaele Guardi, taught me as much about improvisation as I had learned in four years of college.
So when the Food Network offered me the opportunity to host a show, I jumped at it. I had just published my first book and was eager to figure out what to do next. Even though it wasn’t an acting job per se, it was about food. I couldn’t wait to get back on a set. Little did I know that slowly, while waiting for that big break in acting, I’d actually become good at the work I’d found I loved. The experience I had on Padma’s Passport and then Planet Food would later be topped by Top Chef, which would wind up being the perfect mix of the things I loved: travel (we went to a new city every season, and another for the finale), food (I learned from the best), and hosting on television (something, that, by the time I started, I had ample practice at). Part of what I love so much about the Top Chef experience is that because it travels from city to city, much like the movies I filmed, the set really feels like a big circus: an improbable place built quickly out of nothing, and just as easily dismantled and stored for the next adventure. It’s especially unlikely given how complex the set is.
The Top Chef set is divided into two major parts. There’s the part you see on camera—the kitchens and Judges’ Table, and other sights like the pantry sporting the Top Chef logo—and there’s the part you don’t see. Wherever we’re filming, whether we’re in the desert or the rain forest, the production staff sets up a control room, or, as we all call it, Video Village. Video Village is where the elves work. Magical Elves, in fact—or at least that’s the name of the production company that puts on the Top Chef circus. These are the people who make the show the success it is.
Video Village migrates depending on the shoot location each day. It winds up in some pretty janky places: an alleyway near a Dumpster, a muddy field, a parking lot next to a construction site. If you show up on the set and wonder why there’s a tent in the middle of the sidewalk, you’ve found Video Village. Inside, there’s a low hum. People sit and hunch in front of laptops and tablets, jotting down time codes and snatches of dialogue for postproduction. Audible above the hum are the voices from the shoot, emanating from the monitors: Tom critiquing a sauce; the contestants fretting in the Stew Room, where they sit and wait before we send one of them home.
There’s a bank of a dozen or so monitors, each showing a different setting or angle. Two people always sit in front of the monitors, staring at them and talking, it seems, to no one in particular. The most vocal of the two is Paul Starkman, Top Chef’s director and resident mensch. At the bottom of each screen in front of Paul is the name of a different camera operator. Like a high-tech puppeteer, Paul controls filming by calling out their names followed by his instructions, his eyes seemingly everywhere at once.
“Send them in, Brenda,” says Paul, and he watches one of the monitors as the chefs trudge single-file toward Judges’ Table. “Give me Emeril. Okay, zoom in. Stay on Brook, she gives a better reaction. Look at that, Tom’s taking tickets! That’s so good, Eric! Give me Padma. Padma. PADMA! God damn it!”
In this way, the story line takes shape. As Paul gauges the unscripted judge and contestant reactions, he looks for theater in truth. Paul hears John Besh say, “That’s a very difficult dish to pull off.” In that line, Paul sees a dramatic element, snapping his fingers and exclaiming, “That’s good!” When a contestant stands out, in a way that’s good, bad, or both, Paul lets it guide him. “Is Dale the story tonight?” he might wonder aloud.
Next to Paul is the show’s executive producer, for the past several years a woman named Nan Strait (although we’ve had several others), who is the little voice in my ear. While Paul commands, Nan quietly guides me. I hear her often in my earpiece, helping me play effective host and occasionally protecting me (and therefore the show) from myself. I might be sitting beside Tom or Wolfgang Puck when my must-prove-I-belong-here reflex kicks in and I take a stab at culinary erudition. Suddenly, there’s Nan to tell me, as only she could, “Padma, save it for PBS,” or “That was great, but three million people just changed the channel.”
She’s also there to remind me that not everyone at home knows all the food words we’re tossing around inside our little bubble, where we all know the difference between brunoise and julienne. When I launch into praise of the African spice called grains of paradise without identifying what the heck it is, I hear Nan bringing me back to the real world. “All right, for those of us cowpokes who watch the Super Bowl and make Velveeta nachos,” she says, as gently as she can, “can you explain what the hell grains of paradise are?” When I do, Tom, not knowing I’ve been instructed to hold forth, looks at me like he wants to fillet me. I’m not telling him. I’m just looking at him while I tell the people at home.
Sometimes keeping my lips moving is part of the job. In my efforts to steer or maintain the conversation among judges to please the producers, I often embarrass myself. I awkwardly toss around cheffy terms like “expediting” and “pickup time.” I pronounce someone’s rendition of the root vegetable salsify delicious while pronouncing the word “salsif-eye” instead of “salsif-ee.” (I’ve also at various times rendered quinoa as “kin-oh-ah” and calcium as “cal-shum,” thanks to the many accents and languages in my head competing for access to my mouth. Realizing I’m mispronouncing a word always makes me cringe. It’s even worse when I do it in front of Thomas Keller and fourteen rolling cameras.)
Nan goes through the scripted parts of the show with me, not just to give me extra practice, but because some of the wording must be very carefully followed. Top Chef is technically a game show and therefore governed by FCC regulations. The contestants are supervised at all times. Their phone calls are monitored. If a contestant talks to me off camera, a producer jumps in to say, quietly and seriously, “Please step away from the judge.” The tone is such that you almost expect him to follow with “. . . and put your hands behind your head.” The slightest whiff of collu
sion is a no-no. I’ll be on the set, gabbing with a producer, and I’ll hear “Chefs within earshot!” Any talk about the show stops immediately. I’ll be in the bathroom stall and I’ll hear, “Chef walking!” as a contestant comes into the bathroom with their escort. Who knows, the thinking goes, whether or not I’m on the pot talking to Gail on the phone about a recipe?
Occasionally, the only filming going on is of the chefs in the kitchen. That’s when I like to visit Video Village to watch the cooking happen in real time on the monitors. Even though the chefs are typically working in a giant professional kitchen, the scenes conjure for me the solitude and quietude of cooking at home. The soundtrack is more familiar, too: the low buzz of silence broken up by the occasional slurp, clinking of spoons, rustling of cotton, the tinny scraping of whisk against bowl. It’s a testament to the skill of the producers, cameramen, editors, and the rest of the production team that the show is such a thrill to watch. Because without splicing, cliff-hanging commercial breaks, and music, the footage can be decidedly unexciting. Unexciting, but lovely, too, the happy tedium of cooking on display.
Whether you have an office job or one on a television set, the days and years pass and the next thing you know, the people you were thrown together with by chance become more than colleagues. Time fosters connection. And over time the people on Top Chef have become a sort of second family to me. After I moved out of the home I had shared with Salman, I felt totally rudderless, but the show gave me something to hold on to. It was a real thing that I could be proud of and count on when I had little else. I felt immense gratitude to have a job that required my full attention, so that I was forced to set my personal heartbreak aside, even if only for the duration of filming.
It was the same summer of my divorce that the show received its first Emmy nominations. It hadn’t really occurred to me that that might happen; it wasn’t even on my radar. But in some important way, our show being taken seriously by the Television Academy made me take myself more seriously, made me sit up and take notice of my own work. Until that point in my career, I had mostly waited for the phone to ring, for someone to give me an assignment, whether it was modeling, writing, acting, or hosting. Awards aren’t the reason you do things, or important in themselves, but the Emmy nominations were a turning point—I went from hoping things would work out to seeing that they were working out. I am actually doing this, I thought. Maybe I’m not just flying by the seat of my pants. I didn’t want to be passive anymore, personally or professionally. In that moment, I came into being as my real and present professional self.
Top Chef and its success gave me the courage to think proactively about shaping my career, and I began to explore what I wanted it to look like. For the first time, I began to consider my goals and my interests in a clearer and more pragmatic light. Until then, I had chased every lead because those were the only opportunities I could see. I had to publish two cookbooks and host three different food shows before I finally took my culinary hobby seriously and gained a modicum of true professional confidence. It had taken me well into my middle thirties to begin to come into my own, but no matter. I now had a direction to point myself in. I began to think about other work I would find rewarding that I could pursue when Top Chef wasn’t filming. The greatest gift that Top Chef gave me was the blessing of living intentionally, with agency, and doing what I really loved.
chapter 9
I met the man who would change my life on an accidental date. Rick Schwartz (a movie-producer friend) and I had hatched a plan to turn Jhumpa Lahiri’s Pulitzer Prize–winning collection of short stories, Interpreter of Maladies, into a movie. Rick set up a meeting with Teddy Forstmann, the chairman and CEO of IMG, the global sports and media company, who had deep enough pockets to fund several movies. I suppose to a different sort of person, his name would have at least rung a bell. Not to me. I didn’t know anything about the world of private equity, mergers, and buyouts. If I’d owned a bird then, I’d have used the New York Times Business section to line its cage.
I didn’t want to go to the meeting. I didn’t feel I belonged there. After all, Rick was the brains behind the operation. He was the producer, the guy who understood deals and investment and distribution. But Rick insisted. Mr. Forstmann might wonder why a Jewish guy from New York wanted to do a film about Indian immigrants. I’d be there to preempt the question.
This was in early May 2007. Although my and Salman’s attempt at reconciling had failed for good and we had decided—for the second time—to divorce, we were still living under the same roof and trying our best to be civil to each other. So I was actually in a cab with Salman when I called Mr. Forstmann’s office to set up the meeting. Salman gave me a look when he heard me ask for “Mr. Forstmann.” “Teddy Forstmann?” he mouthed, all arched eyebrows.
Salman’s reaction made me feel like I should’ve known about this guy, Teddy. Later, Google filled me in. He had pioneered the leveraged buyout, borrowing money to buy companies, then refurbishing and selling them. He and his partners at Forstmann Little made a fortune doing it, and he owned a production company and had recently acquired the legendary talent agency IMG. He had dated Princess Diana. All of which sounded good to me, because we were trying to finance a movie.
The next day, I got a call from Teddy. We spent a while chitchatting. I remember thinking, He can’t be such a big deal if he’s able to spend twenty minutes talking to me. He was available to meet Sunday for dinner, which I thought was an odd day and time for a business meeting. “I’ll pick you up,” he said. I told him I could probably get there myself, thank you very much. “Were she alive, my mother would be upset if I didn’t pick you up,” he told me.
Whatever, I thought. He’s eccentric. I’d just meet him and Rick at whatever restaurant Teddy chose. But two days before the meeting, I got a call from Rick. He had to be in Chicago for a movie he was producing with Tim Robbins. He couldn’t make it back in time.
“No problem,” I told him. “I’m sure we can reschedule.”
“No way,” said Rick. “Teddy Forstmann isn’t an easy man to pin down.”
“Then does it have to be dinner?”
“If he wants dinner, have dinner.”
From Rick’s urgency, you would’ve thought this Forstmann guy was the pope. I called his office to tell him Rick would be unable to attend the meeting. Unlike the few big businessmen I’d had brushes with before, whose secretaries handled all logistical negotiations, when I called Teddy’s office, I got Teddy. I launched into my best impression of an important movie producer.
“Mr. Forstmann,” I said. “My partner is stuck on another production. On Sunday, it will just be me.”
“Great,” he said. “Where should I pick you up?”
Dinner was mostly a blur. We went to Il Cantinori, a quiet, candlelit Italian restaurant in the East Village. Nervous and tasked with convincing this guy to back us, I managed to inhale my scaloppine while talking a mile a minute about the movie. With every sentence that spilled out, it became clearer to me that the man to whom I was hawking this niche film was the type who’d sooner fund a Spielberg blockbuster. There was nothing about Teddy that read “indie” or “niche.” He used the word “neat” a lot. He seemed to me to be the epitome of the Establishment, the very white, very male majority who run corporations, the government, and the world. He wore a sapphire and gold pinkie ring with a crest engraved on the stone on the same hand as a Jaeger-LeCoultre watch.
Halfway through the main course, the conversation took a strange turn. “That house you live in, I only saw one doorbell,” he asked. “Do you live there all by yourself?”
“No,” I said, “I live there with my husband and stepson.” I still had my wedding ring on, not yet ready to accept failure publicly. What’s more, I had no designs on Teddy—dating any man was the last thing on my mind—and I did not want him to know that my personal life was anything but normal and happy.
“I thought you were separated,” he said.
He
had read a snatch of gossip about my marriage in a tabloid, a small dose of schadenfreude for the casual reader but thoroughly gutting to me. Apparently someone at the Waverly Inn had overheard a conversation about my relationship with Salman being over. As Teddy spoke, my stomach dropped. Not only was I being reminded about my unraveling marriage, but the very private fact was also being delivered by someone I barely knew. Then, after a moment, I understood: I was on a date.
“I thought this was a business meeting,” I said.
“I thought it was odd that you were wearing your wedding ring on a date.”
“Date? I’m pitching you a movie!”
“My dear, it’s not that you aren’t bright and quite a talker,” he said. “But this is slightly below my pay-grade.”
I felt like a fool. I hadn’t understood the difference between an executive at IMG and the guy who bought IMG. Of course Teddy wouldn’t have met with me about my little project. “I’ll tell you what,” he said, sensing my embarrassment. “You should meet with Rob Dalton, the creative director of IMG, before he goes back to L.A.” The only chance I’d have to do so, he said, would be a few days later, when Teddy and Rob would be at Teddy’s “box” at Sotheby’s auction house. “I’ll be selling some paintings,” he mentioned offhandedly, as if he were telling me to drop by his stoop sale.
Love, Loss, and What We Ate Page 18