“It’s too simplistic to blame Bourdain’s death for love issues,” says assistant Laurie Woolever

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Even four years later, the hole that the sudden death of Anthony Bourdain left in the lives of food and travel enthusiasts refuses to be filled. In a new book called Bourdain in Stories, Laurie Woolever, his assistant for nearly a decade and co-author of two books, gives a behind-the-scenes look at the very charismatic but vulnerable man. Sunday Times spoke to Woolever about his life and legacy

In the book, Nigella Lawson says everyone felt like they knew Anthony Bourdain. Did you discover new sides of it while writing the book?

Nigellas’ commentary was so artful and really reflected the way people spoke of Tony and why he was so popular with readers and viewers; he had a way of appearing very approachable, of sharing just enough about his heart and mind, his misadventures and his immediate reactions to things, that people felt like they really knew him. I knew parts of him, sure, because we were in regular daily contact, and I knew what he was doing every day, and his plans for the future. However, Tony was also quite private and careful with his messages, and not necessarily in touch with his own motives or feelings at all times, so there were certainly a lot of aspects to his complicated personality that I didn’t know until then. that I begin to interview his friends, family and some of our colleagues.

Tell us a positive and a negative about working for him?

On the positive side, Tony wanted the people working for him to be successful and to benefit from the fame and opportunities that were presented to him. In my case, that meant having the opportunity to co-write two books (Appetites: A Cookbook and World Travel: An Ireverent Guide) with him, and be introduced to editors and others who could help me win. from the field as a writer. On the negative side, Tony could be so charismatic and convincing that it was sometimes difficult to see the truth about what was happening to him. His choice to kill himself came as a huge shock to me, and I will always regret not having seen more clearly that he was struggling.

The conversations you had with his loved ones reveal how handcuffed he was to the glamorous TV character he created. If he hated it so much, why didn’t he give it his all?

I think Tony was deeply in conflict with being on TV. He loved the creative freedom it gave him and he suffered from the loneliness inherent in a life on the road. I think he also suffered from a leadership burden, which is addressed directly in the book. He had expressed to his agent and others a deep sense of obligation to the people who had worked with him for nearly 20 years. Many of these people had remained loyal to him and his productions, despite the possibility of making more money elsewhere.

His producer Tom Vitale talks about his extreme social anxiety. Is that why life in the spotlight weighed so heavily on him?

Social anxiety was one of the factors in his ambivalence about being a public figure, even though he was a good enough performer that he could reasonably pretend to go in and out of most places. situations. In the first chapters of the books, Tony’s first wife, Nancy, and his first book editor, Karen Rinaldi, along with Tonys TV production partners Chris Collins and Lydia Tenaglia discuss Tony’s reluctance to move on to the television. He found television wacky and made fun of other chefs who had become famous as television stars. In agreeing to be on television, he had to face his own hypocrisy. Moreover, he saw himself as an impostor, someone who had fooled the public and the powers that be into believing that he was smarter or funnier or better than him, even though of course he was smart and funny. and hey, and people wanted to hear what he had to say. I remember being backstage with him at a conference in 2016, at the end of a series of very successful appearances, and he said: It’s mortifying to think that people have paid dearly to hear. what i have to say. I feel like an impostor.

Most of his fans will read the book in the hopes that it will explain why he committed suicide. Are there any answers? Did the turbulence of her romantic relationship with Italian actor Asia Argento have something to do with it?

Tony made the decision to end his own life during an extremely turbulent time in what had been, by everyone’s opinion, an extremely turbulent romantic relationship, but I believe the cause of his death is more complicated than just the simple one. fact that he had love problems. . In the book, a number of his associates recall being concerned about the nature of the relationship and its effect on him, and Tony himself allegedly admitted that he knew the relationship would end badly, but that he was willing to take that risk. . There’s a long arc of gravity to high-risk, high-reward situations in his life, and there are plenty of trivia about his extreme ups and downs. At the time of her death, I think a number of things in her life were unstable, including her love life.

If he had been alive during the pandemic, how do you think Tony would have handled the idea of ​​not traveling?

Tony was pretty unpredictable so it’s hard to tell. Perhaps it was a huge relief to have an enduring reason to stay in one place, having been on the move for so long. It is possible that he established a few bases of operations within driving range of each other, so that he could still feel the momentum of the journey, without boarding a plane. I would like to think that perhaps the travel restrictions gave him the time and space to write new writing. And I know he would have used his platform to advocate for workers in the restaurant and hospitality industry, whose livelihoods and health have been hit hard by the pandemic.

A quote from Tony that you liked?

I have a soft spot for the brief epigraph that begins the book: An ounce of sauce covers a multitude of sins. This is a testament to the public / private divide that Tony has handled so skillfully. He shared so much about himself in his writing and in his television work, but he remained a rather mysterious person, hidden from plain view.

The book also reveals some unusual aspects of her personality such as her love for a tan. Can you share something?

Although he had traveled more than almost anyone, Tony could be a distracted traveler, no different from anyone affected by jet lag or distracted by something bright. In March 2016, I joined Tony and the crew in Kanazawa, Japan, for a shoot that touched several Japanese cities. He and I took a shinkansen (bullet train) from Kanazawa to Tokyo one afternoon, while the rest of the team climbed into vans with all camera and sound gear. This was my first time traveling alone with Tony, and as we stepped onto the train platform he noticed a typical Japanese coffee vending machine and walked up to him, oblivious to the fact that he had just come from. drop his irreplaceable train ticket worth hundreds of dollars because he wanted to get a can of hot coffee from a machine. It was a rookie travel mistake I could never have expected from a seasoned vet like him. Although he is known for eating local specialties wherever he goes, and for eating without fear or prejudice, I was again surprised on a 2017 trip to Sri Lanka. We took a train from Colombo to Jaffna, and Tony was recovering from stomach problems. He rejected the sandwiches that our Colombo hotel had packed and was not interested in the samosas and other short dishes that many vendors offered for sale on the train; what he wanted the most, and ultimately got, was a very bland pizza from a Pizza Hut kiosk operating on a whistle stop platform.

It’s been four years since his death, but no one has even come close to replacing him. Why has it had such an effect on people?

Tony embodied a specific combination of charm and charisma; he was terribly funny and had such a powerful vocabulary, and a deep knowledge of literature, cinema and history, from which he could easily draw on to make many clever and incisive references; he had a documented labor history that made him accessible to everyone in a way that many of his TV colleagues weren’t; he was ready to tell uncomfortable truths and admit he was wrong or that he just didn’t know something; and he was a champion of the underdog and the little guy, ready to speak the truth in power.

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