When Giada De Laurentiis published her first cookbook Everyday Italian, in 2005, she was ecstatic to have lined up a foreword from celebrity chef Mario Batali, who was already a “legend in the Italian space.”
But the submission was not what the former Food Network host expected.
“When I read it, I cried,” De Laurentiis said on a recent episode of Samah Dada’s YouTube show On the Menu, “because I realized, ‘Ah, he’s basically saying that I’ve gotten to where I’ve gotten, and I’ve had this little bit of success that I had, because I have big boobs, and that if he had boobs, he would even be much further.”
“Because I’m, like, a joke, right? To him, it was like a little bit of a joke.”
It wasn’t at all funny to her.
“And so I called my editor, and I was in tears,” De Laurentiis said. “I’m like, clearly I can’t use this. So now what do I do?”
Her editor replied that she would simply rewrite it and send it to him for approval.
“So we rewrote it, but I will never forget that,” De Laurentiis said. “That’s basically what a lot of people figured: cute girl with big boobs, and so that’s why they’re watching her.”
The words that were printed explicitly stated that she was not on the air “because she’s merely attractive; she’s a real Italian girl who can cook.”
EW has reached out to reps for Batali and De Laurentiis, who has since written 10 more cookbooks.
In the last few years, Batali has been less prominent on TV and in bookstores than he once was, following accusations of sexual misconduct.
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He was found not guilty of indecent assault and battery in May 2022. Three months later, he settled sexual misconduct lawsuits with two women who had accused him of grabbing them in Boston.
Batali had been fired from daytime talk show The Chew in December 2017 after several allegations against him surfaced in Eater New York during the #MeToo movement.
After that original report, Batali stepped away from his businesses and issued a statement that read in part: “I apologize to the people I have mistreated and hurt. Although the identities of most of the individuals mentioned in these stories have not been revealed to me, much of the behavior described does, in fact, match up with ways I have acted. That behavior was wrong and there are no excuses. I take full responsibility and am deeply sorry for any pain, humiliation or discomfort I have caused to my peers, employees, customers, friends and family.”
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