With Padma out, I started telling all my friends, and probably some random passersby on the street, that we were looking for a host of what was going to be an amazing new show. Full disclosure: At this point, I don’t know if I believed that, but I know I lost more sleep every time Lauren e-mailed me saying, “Who is our host and don’t we start shooting in a few days?”
With (near-literal) moments to spare, I got a call from a publicist at Sony Music who’d represented Billy Joel for years. She said she heard through Marcy Blum, Padma’s wedding planner (go figure), that I was looking for a host. She begged me to meet Billy Joel’s wife, Katie Lee. (Blum planned the Joels’ wedding as well.) “She’s a total foodie, she’s gorgeous, she loves food. She’s kind of green and this would be a huge break for her, but she’s a lovely person and you will have a positive experience with her. Can we bring her in?” Katie Lee Joel was as advertised. We hired her.
We learned a lot, and fast, in the first days of Top Chef in San Francisco. On the night of the first elimination challenge, the chefs had completed their dishes and were ready to serve the judges—but we needed to get a shot of the finished plates for the “food porn” footage that we show before the entrees are dissected by the judges. While we were taking our time and making sure we had the shots we needed, Tom stormed back to the “video village,” our makeshift control room where producers watch the action. “What’s going on?” he demanded. “The dishes are getting cold! This is completely unfair to the chefs.”
It seemed like a bad harbinger. I turned to Jane Lipsitz and said, “Is this show going to be a total bomb?” The show’s rules were amended that night, and to this day, chefs are required to prepare two dishes—one for the judges and one for the food porn. That night, like so many spent on the set of Top Chef, stretched on into the next morning and Katie Lee Joel sat waiting to say Top Chef’s now-famous dismissal line—“Pack your knives and go”—to the first chef eliminated from the competition, poor Ken Lee. As is still our custom today, the judges and chefs faced off and essentially stared each other down before Katie Lee was to deliver the line. As the director let the chefs “marinate” in the moment, we heard a loud thumping noise coming from the set. Nobody could figure out what it was. Was someone pounding on a door somewhere? Was a piece of equipment failing? Finally the audio guy realized what he was hearing. “That’s Katie’s heart!” he screamed. I love a host with a big heart, and Katie Lee felt so bad about having to send anyone home that hers was pounding hard enough to be heard in the sound mix.
The show was a hit, but sadly, viewers didn’t connect with Katie. She was beautiful and incredibly nice, but she was also very young and at the time not directly associated with food, which hurt her credibility as far as viewers were concerned. And, possibly to overcompensate for her youth and sweet Southern accent, we had directed her to appear stern, detached, and robotic on-camera—Klumesque, shall we say. As much as we try to act like we know what we’re doing in TV, everything we ever do is basically an experiment. This one didn’t work.
By Season 2 of Top Chef we’d parted ways—amicably—with Katie, and Padma was back in the fold, having completed that so-called miniseries in India, which, with every passing minute, I become more convinced never even existed. Seriously, Padma, if you’re reading this, I’ve checked YouTube and I can’t find even one clip of this “Indian miniseries.”
Q: What’s been your biggest flop at Bravo?
A: When I started at Bravo in 2004, I inherited some great shows, such as Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, Celebrity Poker, Blow Out, and Show Biz Moms and Dads. Project Runway was just in postproduction and I loved it right away. I was also enamored with a new show that would become the first I’d supervise and shepherd from birth at Bravo: Battle of the Network Reality Stars. And can I just say to everyone at Bravo: Thank you for giving me another chance.
The show combined two things I adore, a nostalgic (and personal favorite) brand plus reality stars. We hired Bob “The Bachelor” Guiney, notorious Apprentice baddie Omarosa, and party girl Trishelle from The Real World to be our sideline reporters. Then we cast alumni from reality’s greatest hits, including Survivor, The Amazing Race, Project Runway, American Idol, and Big Brother to compete. We even threw in someone from Showdog Moms and Dads to boost the kitsch factor. I absolutely could not envision a future in which this brilliant show could be anything other than a runaway smash. But my crystal clear vision was actually more like tunnel vision, because Frances didn’t share the passion Lauren and I had for the project. But I persisted. I mean, what’s not to love about Charla, a little person who had kicked ass on Amazing Race, going head to head against the surgically reconstructed winner of The Swan in a jousting duel? That happened,
