Padma Lakshmi Transcript
Kerry Diamond:
Hi, everybody. It's Kerry Diamond. Today's show is a special re-broadcast of my interview with the one and only Padma Lakshmi. It's one of Radio Cherry Bombe's most popular episodes of the year so far. Have fun listening to our chat and wishing all of you a happy and safe holiday.
Hi, everyone. You are listening to Radio Cherry Bombe. I'm your host, Kerry Diamond, coming to you from Newsstand Studios at Rockefeller Center in the heart of New York City. I'm the founder and editor of Cherry Bombe Magazine, and each week, I talk to the most interesting women and culinary creatives in and around the world of food.
Today's guest is Padma Lakshmi. Padma is a force of nature and a good friend, and I am so happy she's joining us today. She is brilliant, beautiful, and fearless. All of you know Padma as the host of “Top Chef.” The 20th season of the show is airing right now, and Padma has been part of the program for 19 consecutive seasons. She also has her own show on Hulu. It's called “Taste the Nation with Padma Lakshmi.” In it, she examines America's foodways and the history behind them. “Taste the Nation” season two just dropped the other week. “Taste the Nation with Padma Lakshmi” is smart, sexy, and thoughtful, and you all need to watch it. Wait, there's more. She was on the recent Time 100 list, and she has a spread in the new Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, yes, the issue with Martha Stewart on the cover. I'm happy to see our foodie friends getting their time in the sun literally. Stay tuned for my chat with the one and only Padma Lakshmi.
The Cherry Bombe online shop is temporarily closed because we're switching warehouses. If you are looking for the newest issue of Cherry Bombe, be sure to visit one of our amazing stockists. Cherry Bombe is carried by great bookstores, cafes, magazine shops, and culinary boutiques across the country and abroad. Places like Stella's Fine Market in Beacon, New York, Matriarch in Newport, Rhode Island, and Good Egg in Toronto. Visit cherrybombe.com for a stockist near you.
Now, let's check in with today's guest. Padma Lakshmi, welcome to Radio Cherry Bombe.
Padma Lakshmi:
Thank you. I'm excited to be here.
Kerry Diamond:
I know everyone is asking you this, but Time 100, Sports Illustrated, “Top Chef” season 20, and season two of your Hulu show, “Taste the Nation with Padma Lakshmi” all happening in the same time period. How do you even process a pile up of incredible achievements like that?
Padma Lakshmi:
It's surreal. The “Top Chef” thing, I've been doing that for a long time, so that is a machine or a circus that runs itself so to speak. I'm glad we're still around, but Taste the Nation is always a white-knuckle race to get as much as we can with our budget, and in the time we have, we always want to keep tinkering, so at some point, you have to give birth. I could have never ever, ever predicted the Time 100. I wish my grandparents were alive, because that I think would've really impressed my grandfather. I don't know. Being a model or an actor or even a host on TV, he was like, "Okay, great," but I think he would've loved to see me on that most influential list.
I've written for the magazine several times, and so I have been to that event, and to me, it's the best party of the year. It's smart people's prom or cool people's prom, and it's great because it's not just entertainment people. It's astronauts and scholars and world leaders and everything. It's a wonderful list, and you can't ever plan for anything like that. That really feels like a pinnacle at least so far. I'm hoping that this isn't the high point that I keep doing things that are interesting. The Sports Illustrated, I mean, I'm very flattered to be in it. That's also not something you can plan. I had been fantasizing in my 20s and 30s about being a Sports Illustrated model.
Of course, it changes a model's career as far as bookings and stuff, but it never happened. I literally thought that ship had sailed, but I think I got on the magazine this year because of my accomplishments, which is a great thing not only for me but for Sports Illustrated, if I may say. With Martha on the cover, I've been looking up to her all my life, so why should this be any different? It gives me a lot of hope, and that cover of her is so beautiful. The Sports Illustrated is really interesting. It's good for Instagram followers. I'm not going to lie. It's a nice extra talking point, but I try to downplay it at home a little bit.
Kerry Diamond:
Would grandpa have been as excited about Sports Illustrated?
Padma Lakshmi:
Absolutely not. I mean, there are some of those pictures that when you're doing them, you don't realize how, I don't want to say graphic, but how in your face they kind of are. When I saw them, and I thought... When you see them all together, I thought, "Oh my God, that's a lot. That's a of skin. Do I really need to be on my knees in that water?" I actually said I'm glad my grandparents aren't alive, but I mean, they're beautiful. I do feel much more relaxed and confident about my body. I'm not afraid to stand up straight, and feel in my skin, if that makes sense.
I feel much less ashamed of things that I would have in my 20s, and I am happy to express my own sensuality in that way. I think the female form is one of the most beautiful things in nature, and I think we should appreciate it. We either objectify it or shame it or whatever. I mean, I can't tell you how many people get upset when they see the outline of my nipples through my blouse. Even when I'm wearing a bra, I have nipples of steel. I don't know what to tell you, I'm sorry. Every mammal has nipples, and you see them on men through their shirts all the time too.
I think it doesn't obviously raise the eye or eyebrows or whatever conversation to any level. I think it's because a woman's body does have power in our culture, and therefore it's also something to be feared.
Kerry Diamond:
They never stop commenting on your body. I saw your Instagram post yesterday about your arms.
Padma Lakshmi:
You can't win.
Kerry Diamond:
You can't win. Well, you're winning.
Padma Lakshmi:
Thank you.
Kerry Diamond:
As far as we're concerned, you are winning. Ali Wong wrote your entry for Time 100, and she called you iconic. I know you don't look in the mirror, and say, "Good morning, icon," but what does the word icon mean to you or iconic mean to you, or is it just too absurd or too abstract to even process?
Padma Lakshmi:
It feels weird. I know what the word means to me, and I know who I would think of iconic. I think Grace Jones is iconic. I think Rihanna is iconic. To me, there are a lot of people who are iconic for different things. Michael Jordan, Muhammad Ali, all those people to me are iconic, Mother Teresa. When I look in the mirror, I'm just like, "Oh, I need to drink more water, and get more sleep. I need to probably dye my roots, because my gray is coming in." I don't think iconic, and if I do think of myself as anything that younger women look to, it's not when I look in the mirror. It's when I'm thinking about my writing, or thinking about what I want to say.
I write the voiceover, and I write the show along with a post-production supervisor on “Taste the Nation.” I think about it then, but I don't think about it when I look in the mirror. All I'm thinking about is, "Okay, how do we patch this together?"
Kerry Diamond:
Speaking of your activism, the things that you look in the mirror and you are super proud for, a lot of famous folks do not stir the pot. You don't know their politics. They don't say anything controversial. They stay low profile. You are the opposite. Have you always been that way?
Padma Lakshmi:
No. For a long time in my 20s and 30s, I spent a lot of time smiling silently at dinners, and listening to other people talk, and that was fine. I think when you're young, you should do a lot of listening, and I never really said anything. As an actor, I auditioned, and I was always so busy trying to be the thing that I thought they wanted so that they would hire me, and I could do my work. At some point, I just got tired of that, and I hated living in Los Angeles. I was very lonely there. I moved back to New York, where I had really grown up. I just started talking about things, and one of the first things I talked about even before I started the Endometriosis Foundation of America was when Iman actually roped me in to talk about AIDS in India with Keep a Child Alive, which was this new organization that Alicia Keys at that time had just started.
She said, "I'm doing it for Africa, but I think you should come on for India." That was the birth or the seedlings of any activism I had done, so I guess I have Iman to thank for that too. Then I started speaking about it, and I started realizing like, "Just because of a twist of fate, my mother who had a very turbulent marriage, and ended it at a time when it was very taboo in South India, it was a twist of fate that I was born into a middle class family to a mother who had an education, and had something that America wanted, so she could get a visa and come here," but I could have been one of those kids in the slums. I could have been born to a mother who had AIDS as a sex worker or whatever. So, I started thinking about those things, and I think everything I've been involved in as it relates to my advocacy is because I have some personal connection to it.
That's only because I'm sure I can speak intelligently about it. I think when young women specifically, but young people in general, ask me how they can do something, because it's hard to feel like you have any power as a young person. I always say find out what you're interested in, and learn about it, and get involved that way.
Kerry Diamond:
I was thinking about just all the incredible things happening to you right now, and trying to pinpoint that time when things just really started to take off for you. The one thing that came back to me was you are such a truth teller, and I was wondering how much of that is connected to all the success you're having these days.
Padma Lakshmi:
I hope it's connected to that. I realized that keeping quiet or trying to be what everyone wanted of me, which was a pretty woman who was articulate when she was asked to be, was just not enough. It was not enough for me intellectually, first and foremost. It was not gratifying, and I got bored, and so I started first with... I had a syndicated column in the New York Times, which wasn't an opinion column. It was just about food or fashion. I wrote for Harper's Bazaar, and I started sneaking in little things under the nose of Glenda Bailey who was pretty supportive.
Kerry Diamond:
My old boss.
Padma Lakshmi:
Yes, and I think things started really changing for me when I got that Cherry Bombe cover. I think really, I think-
Kerry Diamond:
Stop.
Padma Lakshmi:
That profile that you wrote of me was one of the most intelligent, deeply thought out, and researched pieces that anyone had taken the trouble to do on me. Usually, I'd had little profiles here and there, but it was always, "Oh, she has beautiful hair, and her dresses are like this or whatever," and I'm not doing my hair or my dresses. There are people who put that stuff on me. That's why on “Taste the Nation,” I look completely different. I looked how I look if you were going out to dinner with me, or going to grab brunch or something.
That was a very concerted effort on my part to just be comfortable, and I didn't want the focus to be on my appearance, which is ironic because now, I'm on press tour for “Taste the Nation,” and all anyone wants to talk about is the sports illustrator.
Kerry Diamond:
Oh, yes. Well, I can understand that.
Padma Lakshmi:
But my body at 52 is something that is definitely self-made. I work at it. I lift a lot of weights, because I'm Asian, and I have to to build muscle mass. I box. I jump rope. I do stairs. I do anything and everything I can to balance out well, gravity, perimenopause, and everything I eat.
Kerry Diamond:
I can attest to how much you work out. You've tried to drag me along a few times, and I think I've said no each time, maybe one of these days. Thank you for saying the kind words about the Cherry Bombe cover. It was definitely deeply researched, and I was shocked at what I uncovered. I really, really was. I couldn't believe how cruel journalists had been to you in the past, including the New York Times, so cruel. They had to apologize at the end of the year in one of their year-end stories.
Padma Lakshmi:
That was shocking. Of course, nobody reads those, but it was something, not one but two columnists. I think it's just that again is the patriarchal mindset. They just see through a particular lens, and they come by it somewhat honestly, because they were raised to think that way as we all were. So, if you haven't gone through something, it's really hard to understand it. I talk to my daughter, Krishna, who's 13, about it. I'm very frank with her, and we're very close. So, she has seen me recently been very upset about what I see as something that's unfair or unequal in a professional setting.
She has said, "I just don't get it, mom." It's a sad truth, but it's hard to imagine. But once you start noticing it over years and years, there becomes no other explanation. I think that was also part of me keeping silent. I tried to be smart, and I tried to be docile. I tried to be all of those things that women try on when they're young anyway, when they're learning about who they are and trying to find an identity. I think that's why young women also go through different styles of dress, because the way you dress is a costume, and it is telegraphing something or the other to everyone who sees you immediately.
I think part of that is also finding who you are inside, and you can get duped by what they tell you or what you see, and it happens in a million insidious ways every day. It's in the literal air we breathe and the water we drink. It's crazy. I noticed that even with my daughter, I was hyper aware of it now in a way that I wasn't a decade ago because of her.
Kerry Diamond:
Let's take a quick break, and we'll be right back.
Jessie Sheehan:
Hi, peeps. My name is Jessie Sheehan. I'm the host of She's My Cherry Pie, the baking podcast from The Cherry Bombe Podcast Network, and the number one baking pod in the U.S. Each week, I interview the top bakers and pastry chefs around, and do a deep dive into one of their signature bakes. We go through their recipes, and discover the tips, tricks, ingredients, and tools that make all the difference. Pros like Claire Saffitz, Claudia Fleming, Joanne Chang, Dorie Greenspan, and Amanda Mack chat with me about tarts, pieto, hand pies, sticky buns, cream puffs and more. Give a listen wherever you get your podcasts, and get ready for some delicious inspiration. New episodes drop on Saturdays. You can also sign up for the She's My Cherry Pie Newsletter at cherrybombe.com. Get the details on our latest episodes, news from the bakery and pastry world, and our cake of the week.
Kerry Diamond:
Now, back to our guest. You represent so many things to so many different people. You are important to women of color, to women of a certain age, immigrants, the Indian diaspora, those with endometriosis even. I was curious, how does that impact decisions you make personally and professionally?
Padma Lakshmi:
I started the foundation with my surgeon in 2009, EndoFound or Endometriosis Foundation of America. I'm really proud of the work we've done. Then after eight years, I took myself off the board, because I was just burned out and so tired. Frankly, I was tired of speaking about my own experience. I thought other women should now come forward, and we've helped facilitate that. They're doing great, but when I get asked to do certain things, and I don't have time, I try to still make time, because whether it's just a little video for my Instagram, or lending a quote, or I get asked a lot to blurb books, and I'm very conscientious about who I blurb for.
I try to do things that I know I'll regret if I don't do them. Honestly, most of my regrets are not what I've done, thankfully, but they are what I haven't done. It does influence my decisions a little bit. At the same time, sometimes I don't want to be a role model. Sometimes, I just want to curse all the time, and sometimes I want to say things that I know that I will not get away with but a comedian would get away with. So, it's largely a very, very prestigious thing, and I'm very humbled by it, but sometimes I'm like, "Oh, I wish I could just not be me."
Kerry Diamond:
Let's talk about Sports Illustrated a little bit before we talk about the new season of your show, because I know people are very curious. How does something like that even come about? Do they email you? Do they call you?
Padma Lakshmi:
I think they called my publicist, but I got a text from the photographer, Yu Tsai, who also said, "Hey, I pitched you for this." It wasn't a total surprise, but it was still like 98% surprise. People pitched me for all kinds of things-
Kerry Diamond:
And things fall through all the time.
Padma Lakshmi:
Yeah, it never happens. It was just an offhanded DM that he said that to me. So Christina, my publicist called me, and she said, "Are you sitting down?" I said, "No, I'm standing up, and I'm about to go to the gym. What is it?" She said, "Wait, I want Gary, her colleague." She said, "I want... Gary wants to be on before I tell you this." I'm like, "Oh God, what is it?" I was sort of... Anytime she says that, and it's early in the morning, I'm always bracing myself for something in the Daily Mail or the New York Post or something, but nothing interesting or remotely gossip worthy has happened in my life for so long that I didn't know what it could be.
She couldn't get Gary or whatever, and she just said, "Okay, I'm just going to tell you. Sports Illustrated called, and they're really interested. They want you to do the swimsuit issue." Immediately, my brain went to panic, because I had literally come home from filming the finale of “Top Chef” in Paris, and before that, I ate my way through London for six weeks. I was already home for a month, so I had pretty much gone back to my normal diet, which is mostly vegetarian, not completely. I was already working out a ton, because I had missed working out for two months because of filming and before that.
I basically last year was on the road from February to October, and so all I could think of was, "Okay, I need to go to the gym even more. I need to have lymphatic drainage massages. I need to have a facial. I need to do scrubs, all the things." I didn't lose weight for it, but I just wanted to get firm. I wanted to be tone, and the only way to do that is to exercise like a beast. That's the only way I know.
Kerry Diamond:
I think you like exercising like a beast.
Padma Lakshmi:
I do. I really love exercising. I came to it late, because I had a car accident when I was 14, and so I basically got a doctor's note getting me out of PE for the rest of high school, and I never learned to work out and so I only started working out when I was 27, but since I have started working out, I've been boxing for over 20 years. I love it because whatever it's given me physically, it's given me much more mentally. I used to be picked on a lot as a young girl, and it made me feel much more confident and grounded and in my body. I can't explain it. I feel heavier in a good way.
I feel solid I guess, and that I wouldn't have predicted. Also, I like the mental focus that it provides. When someone is swinging at you, there's not much room to daydream. I hate wearing the headgear. I just can't breathe in it. I love it. That's why I want to get you to come because-
Kerry Diamond:
I know. I know. That's probably why you're so centered and serene.
Padma Lakshmi:
I mean, I think it's all the working out, but also, I've always been like that.
Kerry Diamond:
You have?
Padma Lakshmi:
Yeah, even as a child, I was mischievous, but very quiet, not somebody you're going to see yelling.
Kerry Diamond:
Okay, back to the shoot. How many days?
Padma Lakshmi:
It was just one day.
Kerry Diamond:
No.
Padma Lakshmi:
Yes. All those pictures that you see on their website, I think there's like 40 of them. We must've done 10 bikinis. From my catalog days, I know how to hustle. I know from doing all that lingerie catalog in Germany. I know how to do it. It was just one day. It was in Dominica, which is not the Dominican Republic. It's three hours south of Miami by plane. I'd never been there. It's a little island. The country only has about 70,000 residents. It's beautiful, and we had more people on that shoot than I have on my Taste Nation shoot.
On Taste Nation, we're in three pass vans and my SUV that we rent in every city, so it was beautiful. Yu Tsai did wind up shooting it, and I'm so happy he did. He made me feel so beautiful, so confident. He worked with me. He's a very expressive photographer, so he is very good at communicating what he wanted. I felt very safe and protected. We had one fitting at my home where they brought all these bikinis, and then they rated my dressing room for all the jewelry that they wanted. I have a lot of different ethnic jewelry, and I was like, "Yeah, sure. I'm happy to see it get worn."
I was there for two days. One day was the shoot, and one day was just the EPK or the electronic press kit, where they interview you to do little videos and all of that stuff. That took just as long to film, but I had a great time. What I love about the Sports Illustrated photos is that my skin color looks like it is. For all those years when I did do a lot of swimsuit and lingerie, they would always stick me out in direct sunlight. I would always have trouble opening my eyes, and your skin gets so bleached out, because they really don't know what to do with dark skin, and so all they can think of is shine a lot of light on it, which is true.
Brown folk need more light on their skin, but I was just happy that the pictures and in some of them that we shot at the end of the day at sunset around these rocks, where I'm just lying on the shore, my skin looks really dark like it does at the end of summer. That was the first time I had seen that on purpose in a photo shoot, and I loved it. I was so happy that young brown girls all over would be able to see that.
Kerry Diamond:
I'm so glad to hear that. I read a lot of the commentary about Sports Illustrated about you and about Martha. Of course, a lot of people brought up the male gaze and why do women have to do this just to please men? I thought to myself, "You know what? That's not true anymore." Maybe that was true back in the day when women would do the Sports Illustrated issue, but I was like, "Padma did it for the Padma Gaze. I don't think she did it to please anyone except herself."
Padma Lakshmi:
I did. I did it just to cross it off my bucket list. I mean it wasn't on my bucket list anymore to be honest. I hadn't even... I'm being truthful when I said I didn't think about it, but it was on my younger self's bucket list, so I wanted to do it for her. If you had told me at 25 that I would still be in a magazine in a bikini at all, I wouldn't have believed you. I mean, when I was 25, 50 seemed ancient to me. It seemed like one step away from being a senior citizen, and so I did it for her. Honestly, I also... I think we have a tendency in our culture to also categorize people, especially women.
You can either be the brainiac or the bombshell. You can either be silly or serious. You can either be the nice one or the mean, bitchy one. I disagree with that. All of us, all human beings are different versions of ourselves depending on what we're presented with and where and whom we are with. I'm different with my mom than I am with you, or than I would be with a lover or than I would be in a professional situation or with my child. So, I'm hoping that the one thing I can do is be an example to young women that you can not only... You can have it all, maybe not at the same time, but you can be it all. You can be smart and silly.
You can be off color and very respectful, because that's what being human is. Human beings are complex, and I think people who live themselves as their full selves are more interesting.
Kerry Diamond:
Let's talk “Taste the Nation with Padma Lakshmi.” Season two just debuted in early May. What is this show all about?
Padma Lakshmi:
“Taste the Nation” is about traveling through our country, and looking at different communities who have often not been explored in the same mainstream high-caliber way that Euro-Americans and their stories get put up in the media. We do have white people on our show as well in Appalachia and the German American episode and the Italian American episode, of course, but the whole ethos of Taste Nation is to give my platform to people who have, in my opinion, very interesting stories, but do not get that platform, and it's allowing them to tell their own story. I'm an immigrant. I came to this country when I was four from India, and I know what it feels like to be exoticized and to be othered in a way that feels if not maligned, misinformed.
There was so much rhetoric coming out of the 2016 election with Steve Bannon and Steve Miller and Trump. I've really became incensed, because I've grown up in immigrant communities in both coast, New York and California, and that was not my experience, not only in my Indian community. I'm talking about in my Filipino community, in my Mexican community where I lived. It was just not my lived experience, and so I started working with the ACOU. I first did a telethon or something that Tom Hanks actually pulled me into. I was like, "I don't know what to say." They say, "Well, what do you feel like?" I just spoke off the cuff.
That's really how my advocacy with them for immigrant rights started. Then after doing that for three or four years, I wanted to do something creative in my professional life, something artistic where I wasn't getting on my soapbox overtly, and speechifying or writing an op-ed in the Times, which I also have done, but I wanted to show, I guess, rather than tell, and do it in a positive way that wouldn't be finger wagging. “Taste the Nation” is actually created for people who are afraid of immigrants, and afraid of giving African Americans and Native Americans equal quarter. I want it to be welcoming. I hope that it makes all Americans curious about each other.
Of course, I do it through food. I mean, food is just the gateway drug on my show. I think our food looks beautiful, and I hope it's informative about the foods of these cultures, but it's also how I process the world. I think it's also the language that people are used to hearing me speak. So, it made sense, because sometimes, people won't talk to you about their religion or their politics, but they will talk to you about their grandmother's lasagna, and so it's a great icebreaker.
Kerry Diamond:
You and the food are the Trojan horse in this respect.
Padma Lakshmi:
Yes. Exactly.
Kerry Diamond:
How does season two build on what you did in season one?
Padma Lakshmi:
One of the things that was a happy surprise, and I don't know why I didn't think of it, is that now we have season one under our belt to show our participants so they know what they're getting into. I'm hugely indebted to all our participants, but especially the ones who share their lives and stories with us in season one, because they had nothing to go on. They didn't know what they were getting themselves into.
Kerry Diamond:
It was a more fraught time.
Padma Lakshmi:
It was also a very fraught time. It still is, but yes, it was very fraught. Now, it's easier because people can look to the 14 episodes that already exist before the season. It's also, I think, we are bolder now. We know that the model works. It was so difficult to get the show made that for a while, I thought, "Well, maybe I'm the only one interested in this stuff."
Kerry Diamond:
Let's talk about that, because we did the screening the other week for that, which was so much fun.
Padma Lakshmi:
Oh, thank you for that.
Kerry Diamond:
Thank you. Thank you to our friends at Glossier for doing that as well.
Padma Lakshmi:
Yes.
Kerry Diamond:
You mentioned during the Q&A with Kwame [Onwuachi] that you had a hard time finding a home for the show. When I was out in the lobby with some of the members from the bombe squad, they couldn't believe it. They were like, "How did Padma have a hard time finding someone to make this show? She's the most famous woman in food."
Padma Lakshmi:
I mean, I can only tell you what happened to me, and I thought that it wasn't, let's say, a high-concept show, but I actually felt it was a great concept. I felt it was different. I don't know what to tell you. I mean, I do know that Hollywood is very tight with their purse strings, and they want to hit, and they had never had this kind of show be done by a woman, I think. That's why I wanted to do it. I wanted to be my full self. Again, I think on “Top Chef”, you see a very thin slice of who I am, because it's such a formatted show, and that's what is required frankly to be a good host sometimes, a lot of times.
I had seen so many of these types of shows with these swashbuckling white male chefs who were like a fish out of water, but telling you what was cool or what was icky, and I didn't want to do that. They were talking about food and culture, but they were never talking about families or children or anything, the home life. Those are things that are really important to me, and are important to a lot of men too, by the way. So, I wanted this to be a very female-driven show, because it's my point of view. “Taste the Nation,” I try to be as balanced and as accurate. The research on this show is so deep and immense.
That's what we spend most of the time on, because I want to get it right, and because it obviously is important for me to have credibility, and the show to have credibility, but it's not a journalistic show. It's one person's opinion, mine. I'm just showing you rather than telling you outright what my opinion is so that you hopefully come to whatever your conclusion is. There was one network, which even wrote me a very long email about why they thought it was derivative and not original. I just knew I could see it so clearly in my mind what I wanted, because I wanted to watch a show like that.
Kerry Diamond:
Derivative of what? There was nothing like it.
Padma Lakshmi:
I mean, I guess they thought it was derivative of Andrew Zimmer or Bourdain. I loved to travel. I wouldn't be able to do what I do. I would never have the career as a writer that I do if I didn't get the opportunity as a model to travel the world. I wouldn't have had the resources as a young person to do that. Whenever I go to a new city, the first thing I do is check out their foods, and I ask the cab drivers. I don't look at... I don't ask the hotel concierge. I wanted to have the locals show me their city or their community. That's why I thought our show was different other than the Time 100, which has fell out of the sky.
It has been the pinnacle of my career. Other than my memoir, it has been the most gratifying thing I have ever accomplished.
Kerry Diamond:
I have learned so much from the show. It's all this history you never learned in school.
Padma Lakshmi:
Well, that's the thing. I mean, I learn so much every day when I do the research and when I talk to these people, and I am a product of the American public school system, and I should have. You should have learned all these things about Puerto Rico, about what a boundary is versus a reservation for a Native American, all that stuff. I think it's super cool and interesting, and I don't think that we should be afraid of our collective past historically in this country. I know that it's painful. History is painful in general. Go to any period in history. It is not pretty. But I do think that looking our history squarely in the eye, and especially the ugly parts, can help us not repeat those same mistakes.
We weren't alive then, so all that we can do is acknowledge and try to learn from that. If we really want to make this country the best country, and or keep it being the best country in the world, then when I look at something or when I look at a piece of footage or a speech I've given or even an interview, I look at it, and I go, "Okay, that was good. That was good." I say, "Okay, there, I could have been more articulate and succinct there." I try to remember that so that in a future interview, I don't do the same thing. Why should it be any different for a society?
Kerry Diamond:
You connect the history so beautifully to the food. That to me is what's so special about the show.
Padma Lakshmi:
Because that's how my brain works naturally. I process the world through food. It's not always easy. It doesn't happen. We don't always get lucky and tied in a bow like in Puerto Rico, ketchup versus no ketchup on the pasteles. The whole episode is about sovereignty. In my opinion, Puerto Rico is the last colony of America, and it's technically a territory, but its fate is decided by people in Congress who Puerto Ricans have not voted in. Some people want statehood. Some people want to remain a territory, and some people want to be an independent country. So, pasteles, which is this very traditional dish that everybody loves, some people like the ketchup, and some people don't.
As Maria Grove says in the show, it's literally colonization on a plate, and so there, it worked beautifully. In the Ukrainian episode, it works as well with Borscht. The first time I had Borscht was at the Russian Tea Room, and I didn't ever know it was Ukrainian. I mean, there are hundreds of recipes for Borscht all over Eastern Europe and Poland and other places, but the Borscht that is known internationally, the Beet Borscht, which is a beautiful magenta color, that is Ukrainian. That's not Russian.
Kerry Diamond:
I love that you went to Veselka to shoot that. I've been eating there since I was 16, a long time
Padma Lakshmi:
Well, because-
Kerry Diamond:
The food hasn't changed.
Padma Lakshmi:
No, which I love.
Kerry Diamond:
You just mentioned two episodes. I think if you can only watch one, but you should really watch the whole season. It's the Puerto Rico episode. I mean, that just blew my mind. Because I know you put your heart into every episode, I don't want you to pick one, but was there a particularly poignant moment on screen that you can share?
Padma Lakshmi:
There are so many. I mean, for me, the most moving episodes, at least when I was filming it, and also when I was editing it, because there's a lot of post-production that happens to cut down five days into a 30-minute episode is ridiculous, but we're lucky to have that many shoot days. I would say the Cambodian episode and the Afghan episode. The Cambodian episode is really interesting. That is my answer to people who say, "We shouldn't allow refugees or asylum seekers or immigrants into the country." Here is a town, very Tawny, New England town of Lowell, Massachusetts, and like many New England towns, when the factory or steel mill went bust, the town did too. I remember Lowell, because I went to school in Massachusetts.
Kerry Diamond:
I was going to say Massachusetts. People might not realize you went to college there.
Padma Lakshmi:
In the '80s and '90s, it was not a happy place, and so property values went down. Storefronts were all boarded up, and Cambodians came there because it was so cheap. Unlike other immigrant communities, they didn't have advanced degrees, a lot of them. They didn't have even the language. They had the clothes on their back. Within a generation, not only did they pull themselves up into this thriving community, they also revitalized Lowell. One in four Lowellians is Cambodian now, and I talked to this husband and wife who owns Simply Khmer, which is a wonderful mom and pop restaurant in Lowell. If you're ever there, please go. Tell them I sent you.
This man talks about how he learned how to cook in a refugee camp, and that he would hunt frogs and other creatures, and cook with whatever he had, and that one day as a little boy, he came home and he saw the Khmer Rouge take away his father. He said, "I barely remember what he looks like. They never sent him back. I can barely remember. I don't even know what he looks like. I don't know anything." He said, "Even today when I think about that, I'm a thriving businessman. I can't believe it happened, but it did." What people don't realize too is that Pol Pot did not just spring from the mountains with power. He was given that power by Nixon and Kissinger, and they secretly bombed Cambodia.
It's the same in our Afghan episode. That little country, its future and past has been so heavily influenced by American foreign policy. We talked to four different generations of Afghan immigrants who all left a different Afghanistan. We talked to this beautiful young woman who, like me, had a show on Afghan TV named Tobani, and she had to flee when the fall of Kabul happened. A couple summers ago, she was on one of those big cargo planes we saw people hanging off of, because she was on TV without a hijab, and they were looking for her. Luckily, she was whisked away, and now she's living in D.C.
She and her sister were able to get out, and are living with this lovely NPR producer who had her two daughters go off to college, and so she had their bones free, and it's just a win-win. She's still understandably shell shocked, but it's amazing to uncover this stuff because I love Afghan food, but I never thought about everything. Each grain of that Kabuli Pilau, each grain of rice contains a multitude. I really believe that everybody has a fascinating story. You just have to be willing to listen. I love that about my job. I love that I get to meet all these people. I mean, I spent a lot of time on TV eating super fancy food by very lauded chefs, and I'm very lucky to have been able to do that, but that's not how most of the world eats.
I always thought it was weird that the food industry is so male dominated. The only thing more male dominated in our culture is probably the military still. I mean, it's getting better, but still, and obviously, Cherry Bombe is one of the reasons it's getting better, but most of the food in the world is made by women. So, the hands that are making that food are important, and the lives that are shaping that food, to me, those lives are super interesting. I think I'm having the most fun out of everybody when it comes to “Taste the Nation,” because-
Kerry Diamond:
You can tell.
Padma Lakshmi:
... doing exactly what I want to be doing.
Kerry Diamond:
Well, I hope for all you listeners out there, it's clear how passionate Padma has been about this project, and that you have to watch the show. How much fun was it to see it on the big screen?
Padma Lakshmi:
It was so great. I've only-
Kerry Diamond:
It's so beautifully filmed.
Padma Lakshmi:
I've only ever watched it on a little screen in our editing room or in color correction. I usually give edit notes. I have to turn in about four or five edits of each episode to the network for notes, and so I'm usually watching it on my laptop, and it was glorious. I didn't tell you this, but I was nervous because I didn't know how it would look on a big movie screen.
Kerry Diamond:
It looked gorgeous. You were part of a recent PEN World Voices event with author Mayukh Sen, who we love. He's been on Radio Cherry Bombe, and Bon Appetit editor-in-chief, Dawn Davis. During the Q&A, your daughter Krishna asked what you want her generation to take away from “Taste the Nation.” I thought that was such an interesting question.
Padma Lakshmi:
Yes, and totally unprompted. Krishna is a ham, so she just had to get her question in there, but I thought it was a very thoughtful question.
Kerry Diamond:
Is she Gen Z, Gen Alpha?
Padma Lakshmi:
I don't know. She's born in 2010, so I don't know what that makes her.
Kerry Diamond:
What was your answer?
Padma Lakshmi:
My answer was this, "I want young people who watch “Taste the Nation” to be curious and warm towards their neighbors and people that aren't like them, because that is really the spirit of this country, and that is the foundation of this country. It's your job as a citizen of this society to develop that further, and to push that ethos, that philosophy forward, because those people who are different than you have something to teach you." More importantly, you also have something to teach them, and that exchange is what the human experience is really about. So, I hope it makes the younger generation of viewers more open, more curious, and more welcoming.
Kerry Diamond:
We are running out of time, which breaks my heart. I could have you on the show forever. I want to jump ahead to food, your love language. Folks know you're an enthusiastic eater from all your time on “Top Chef.”
Padma Lakshmi:
Yes.
Kerry Diamond:
They do not realize you are a great home cook. I know you wouldn't call yourself a great home cook, but you are a great home cook.
Padma Lakshmi:
I think I'm a really good cook. I learned from all the women in my family. I learned it from my grandmother and my aunties, and I also learned it from my mom. I had a very bifurcated childhood. I was a latchkey kid here in New York City. My mother was a nurse. I would help her with dinner very quickly. In India, my grandmother cooked for 10 people. We were eight to 10 people at any given time in a two-bedroom apartment, and she only had two burners. My grandmother didn't get a fridge until she was in her 30s when my mom came back from America, and bought her one in the late '70s. So, she didn't really know what to do with the fridge except keep ice water in it, and so we always cooked fresh food, and there was always something cooking. We were always on the floor.
We all sat in a semicircle on the floor. I would break the ends off beans. I would peel potatoes, and there was a real hierarchy to my grandmother's kitchen. You weren't allowed to touch anything until you really knew what the heck you were doing. So, cooking seemed like a privilege, and all of the mysteries of life, all of the power, all of the decisions were made on that kitchen floor. So, between my two very different existences, I learned how to cook. I learned the principles of spices, how everything should go in at a certain time into the pot, which is also a great metaphor for life. From my mom, I learned how to whip up anything within half an hour or less.
My mom was famous for that in our family, because she didn't have a lot of time to plan. She went to the hospital at 7:30, and there's seven in the morning. Her shift started at 7:30, and she often didn't come home until 6:30. So, she was exhausted. I remember there was a show called Alice, which was about a single mom who's a waitress.
Kerry Diamond:
Oh, sure.
Padma Lakshmi:
I remember in the opening act…
Kerry Diamond:
Flo, the waitress.
Padma Lakshmi:
Yes, that the son of Alice would heat water in a kettle for her feet, because it would hurt her. I got the idea to do that for my mom because my mom, even with her nurse's shoes, was always exhausted and always wanted to put her feet up. So when she's putting her feet up, I would try to help her and do those things that I was able to do. Even before I was able to turn on the stove, I could bake things. I used to open cans of refried beans and salsa and shred cheese with a box shredder, and make enchiladas in the oven for her. I could make a salad. That's really how I started cooking. It was necessity cooking.
Kerry Diamond:
Tell me a comfort food dish you make at home.
Padma Lakshmi:
For me, it's always dal and rice. We make a hundred million varieties of dal and rice, but the simple yellow dal are orange lentils or masoor lentils, which turn yellow once you boil them, and rice is a comfort food, yogurt rice. I mean, I can't go three days without eating rice. That's just... I can leave pasta and bread, although I love those things, but rice is so viscerally connected to my existence that it would have to be something with rice.
Kerry Diamond:
We're going to jump to the speed round.
Padma Lakshmi:
Okay.
Kerry Diamond:
Coffee or tea?
Padma Lakshmi:
Tea.
Kerry Diamond:
How do you take it?
Padma Lakshmi:
With milk and my own honey.
Kerry Diamond:
Black tea, or store bought is fine?
Padma Lakshmi:
Yes. Yes, definitely, darjeeling tea or any black tea.
Kerry Diamond:
A treasured cookbook or book on food.
Padma Lakshmi:
The Art of Eating by M.F.K. Fisher.
Kerry Diamond:
What are you streaming right now?
Padma Lakshmi:
I'm streaming The Great on Hulu, which is fantastic. It is a highly fictionalized version of Catherine the Great. It's with Nicholas Hoult and Elle Fanning. They just came out with a new season, and I'm already done with it.
Kerry Diamond:
Snack food of choice.
Padma Lakshmi:
Spiced cashews.
Kerry Diamond:
Favorite food as a kid.
Padma Lakshmi:
Green chili pickle.
Kerry Diamond:
Most used kitchen implement.
Padma Lakshmi:
My wooden spoon.
Kerry Diamond:
Song that makes you smile.
Padma Lakshmi:
Summer Breeze by the Isley Brothers.
Kerry Diamond:
I love that song. I'm going to preface this next question. I don't even know if you know this by saying that we have been asking this question for years, and you and Ina Garten are always the most popular response. If you had to be trapped on a desert island with one food celebrity, who would it be and why?
Padma Lakshmi:
Oh, really?
Kerry Diamond:
Yep, you and Ina without... I can always guess.
Padma Lakshmi:
I'm so flattered. That is the most flattering thing I've heard all month. Really?
Kerry Diamond:
I swear.
Padma Lakshmi:
Melissa King, I think she makes anything taste good.
Kerry Diamond:
You'd have to spend time with her.
Padma Lakshmi:
Yes, exactly.
Kerry Diamond:
Does that a factor into it as well?
Padma Lakshmi:
I love spending time with her. But Melissa King, yeah.
Kerry Diamond:
Oh, I love that. She's on our cover. She is such a sweetheart.
Padma Lakshmi:
She is, and she's really... It's wonderful. I've been doing “Top Chef” so long. It's joyful for me, especially with the women on the show, to see them evolve, and to see their cooking styles evolve. I mean, I've eaten so much of her food, and in so many situations, where she hasn't obviously had control of her ingredients. It is a joy to watch her come into her full bloom.
Kerry Diamond:
My question, by the way, was inspired by the great BBC Radio show, Desert Island Discs. You probably would've guessed that, but I don't think I've ever told the listeners that. So listeners, now you know. Since so many people answer you, would you be a good person to be trapped on a desert island with?
Padma Lakshmi:
I'm not very outdoorsy. I've always lived in cities. I think I'd be good company. I don't know if I'd be that good at building shelter, and I can't swim, so I won't be able to fish.
Kerry Diamond:
Wait, you can't swim.
Padma Lakshmi:
No.
Kerry Diamond:
You're in Sports Illustrated.
Padma Lakshmi:
Right? Isn't that funny?
Kerry Diamond:
It's sports edition, and you can't swim.
Padma Lakshmi:
I cannot swim. I think I'm scared, because I grew up a four-minute walk from the Indian Ocean. I could see the ocean from the roof of my grandfather's house, but we weren't allowed to go to the beach unless we went in the evening, and we were only allowed to go in fully clothed, because it's such a conservative culture in South India. My grandfather would never let me on the beach in it. So, when was I going to learn how to swim? In New York City, my mom was a nurse. We didn't have access to a pool. We had access to the John Jay Pool on the Upper East Side. I did go to that a couple times, but that was so full that you couldn't swim.
Kerry Diamond:
Well, folks, we've discovered the one thing that Padma Lakshmi can't do, swim.
Padma Lakshmi:
I can doggy-paddle. That's it.
Kerry Diamond:
As we learned, you can pretty much do everything else. Padma, you are amazing. You're such an inspiration. You've been such a good friend to me and to Cherry Bombe over the years. I can't thank you enough.
Padma Lakshmi:
Thank you. It is my favorite magazine of all time, and I can't wait to see it flourish in its next phase of development. I'm so happy, and I'm just your biggest fan.
Kerry Diamond:
Oh, from the bottom of my heart, you are the Bombe.
Padma Lakshmi:
Thank you.
Kerry Diamond:
That's it for today's show. If you are a longtime listener or maybe a new listener, and you enjoy this interview, subscribe to Radio Cherry Bombe on your favorite podcast platform, and don't miss an episode. If you're on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, wherever you listen, just click the little subscribe button, and don't miss a single future episode, and thank you in advance. Our theme song is by the band Tralala. Joseph Hazan is the studio engineer for Newsstand Studios. Our producer is Catherine Baker, and our associate producer is Jenna Sadhu. Thanks to you for listening. You are the Bombe.