She is back on our screens with Top Chef, but there is much more to the former supermodel than her successful TV career. She discusses scars, sexual assault, endometriosis – and the healing power of food
wish I did more on purpose. I wish I could tell you that it was all premeditated and choreographed; it’s not.” Padma Lakshmi is talking to me by video call from her office in New York about what is now the 20th season of Top Chef, which she has been hosting since 2006. It’s like a cross between MasterChef and Bake Off, except with chefs, not regular people. It has this distinctive sense of mischief, sometimes in the prankish tasks, other times just burning off Lakshmi’s quizzical eyebrows.
In 1972, when Lakshmi was two, she moved from south India to the US with her mother. “She was in an arranged marriage with my father, who’s very difficult. It was a very turbulent marriage, to say the least. She divorced even though she knew that she’d be ostracised. It was such a taboo.
five years ago. In it, she also disclosed that she’d been molested when she was seven by a relative of her then-stepfather’s. That assault shemention, with the result that her parents sent her to live with her grandparents for a year, during which time, she wrote in the Times, she internalised the message that: “If you speak up, you will be cast out.”
Lakshmi also had an 18cm scar on her arm, the legacy of a car accident when she was 14, which she calls drily “an additional impediment”. These were the days before retouching, and she was very self-conscious about it until Helmut Newton did a groundbreaking shoot in which he didn’t try to camouflage it. “It taught me at a very young age how arbitrary beauty standards are.
During this whole period – indeed, since she was 13 years old – Lakshmi had been suffering from the condition, which went undiagnosed for 23 years. “Every month, being in bed for a week, trying everything, and nothing helping. My body turned against me. I’d see college roommates, friends of mine, pop two ibuprofen and go back to basketball practice.
Now she campaigns for the American Civil Liberties Union, for migrant rights, she’s a UN Goodwill Ambassador, a vehement supporter of reproductive rights: “The country became incredibly polarised and is still polarised to this day, on every issue. It’s not just economics. It’s also the woman’s right to choose. It’s also gun control. It’s also voting rights, it’s all of these things that come in a package.
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