Paula Deen may be all about Southern hospitality, but she reportedly couldn’t muster anything nice to say about her late critic Anthony Bourdain in her new documentary.
“Canceled: The Paula Deen Story” largely follows the celebrity chef’s fall from grace after she admitted to using the N-word while under oath during 2013 legal proceedings, but the film also touches on Deen’s feud with globetrotting chef and television personality Bourdain, who died by suicide in 2018.
“God rest his soul. I felt like he didn’t like anybody. Not even himself, maybe,” she says in the documentary, which Entertainment Weekly covered after it premiered at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival on Saturday.
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The origin of the two chefs’ public squabble largely plays out through archival footage featured in the film.
In one vintage clip, Bourdain slams Deen’s decadent, deep-fried cooking style, saying, “This is not Southern food she’s been selling. Her brand has been, all these years, novelty food,” EW reports.
Another shows 2011-era news clips of journalists describing how Bourdain called Deen the “worst, most dangerous person in America” because of her undeniably unhealthy cuisine.
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In response, Deen knocked the famously adventurous dishes showcased on Bourdain’s shows “No Reservations” and “Parts Unknown.”
“Let me tell you something, girlfriend,” the Southern chef says in a clip from an old appearance on “The Joy Behar Show.” “Maybe [my food] is bad for you, but I don’t go around eating or serving unwashed anuses of wildebeests.”
Years later, Deen apparently hasn’t changed her tune.
In the documentary, she reportedly says, “I don’t know what he was off in these foreign countries eating. Bat brains, or something like that. I think I’ll just stick with my fried chicken.”
Prior to his death, Bourdain seemed to shrug off Deen’s disses while suggesting there was nothing genuine about her reputation as a Southern charmer.
An old piece of footage included in the documentary shows him saying, “I like the quote [of hers,] it was, ‘Well, he has had his demons, I hope he had them under control.’ He’s probably still shooting dope, is probably what she’s saying in a nice kind of Southern way.”
