She was cooked.
Giada De Laurentiis, 53, is revealing why she walked away from Food Network after 21 years as its star, citing burnout as a reason.
“I would switch gears without knowing it every seven years,” the TV host and chef said on the recent episode of Rebecca Minkoff’s Superwomen podcast.
“So I did ‘Everyday Italian’ for seven years, then I got pregnant, and I was like, ‘Okay, I can’t do that show anymore.’ I got to do a reincarnation of the show because I’m now pregnant. I’m a different person,” she said, referring to her 16 year-old daughter, Jade, that she had with her ex-husband, Todd Thompson, in 2008.
“I was lucky enough to be at a period of time at Food Network where that was okay and they were open to those kinds of suggestions because the landscape hadn’t really been fully discovered yet, and so I think they were just more open to the talent,” she said.
De Laurentiis first joined the network in 2002 with “Everyday Italian,” which earned her a Daytime Emmy win for Outstanding Lifestyle Host. She also had the shows “Giada’s Weekend Getaways,” “Giada at Home,” “Giada Entertains,” “Giada’s Holiday Handbook,” and “Giada in Italy,” and she was a judge and mentor on “Food Network Star.”
Walking away after over two decades wasn’t easy, the A-list chef added.
“It took a while for me to make this decision because I was very fearful of leaving Food Network,” she said. “Because when you’re a big fish in that pond and then you get out, who knows what’s gonna happen next? But I really started to become interested in the entrepreneurial sort of journey. And I realized I couldn’t do both.”
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Juggling her 2015 divorce, raising her daughter, and her busy work schedule “felt like the world was crumbling around me,” De Laurentiis said.
“So about two and a half years ago, I finally was like, okay, I’m gonna make the jump, and I’m gonna put my energy in [her lifestyle brand] Giadzy. I’ll still do TV. I have a deal with Amazon, so I still do a little bit of that, but it’s definitely not the schedule I used to keep. Definitely not.”
When asked if she missed it at all, De Laurentiis said, “No. I know, I should say yes. I think it’s because I got burnt out. I really worked so hard for so long. I got burnt out and I couldn’t see a path that was exciting anymore. I need excitement. And if I’m getting bored, my viewers are getting bored.”