Whether you consider yourself a casual cook or you're a self-proclaimed foodie,
chances are, you're familiar with celebrity chef Giada De Laurentiis.
The chef is often referred to as the Queen of Italian Cuisine and it's easy to see why.
Giada De Laurentiis is the real deal when it comes to Italian cooking.
Not only does the Food Network star come from an Italian family,
she actually grew up in Italy, too. On the Eater Upsell podcast, she revealed that she was only
seven years old when she moved to America. As De Laurentiis explained to Insider, the move
to the States didn't necessarily mean that her upbringing was any less Italian. She recalled:
"My family takes their culture very seriously, so even when we moved to the U.S.,
we still lived very Italian lives. We spoke Italian at home, we only ate Italian food."
While her Italian heritage gives her a solid understanding of the
country's cuisine and culture, it wasn't always easy for the ambitious young cook.
De Laurentiis explained to Architectural Digest:
"My grandfather, who's from Naples, is especially Old World: When women get married, they have
children, they don't work. And if they do work, they don't work in a professional kitchen."
And because of that, De Laurentiis had to really
forge her own path in the early days of her career.
As a young Italian girl, Giada De Laurentiis initially struggled to acclimate to American life.
She told Insider that her family continued to speak Italian at home
and that it took her a bit to understand and speak English.
"Well because when you go to grade school, grammar school in the states, you end up assimilating."
De Laurentiis explained to Redbook that this led to a lot of bullying. She recalled:
"The kids at school tormented me. Truly, it was horrifying the names they called me,
and the teachers never really did a thing to stop it."
Her experiences of being bullied is what initially got her interested in cooking. She explained:
"It helped me build my ego and even start to get acceptance at school."
She went on to recall that she'd bring in food she'd made at home and said:
"My classmates were like, 'Wow. This is amazing, and that girl with the funny name cooked it!'"
Giada De Laurentiis' passion for cooking came pretty early on.
The Food Network chef told Time in 2006 that:
"Food was always a big part of my life. My grandfather was one of 14 kids, and
his parents had a pasta factory, so as a kid, he and his siblings would sell pasta door to door."
He later became a movie producer but also opened De Laurentiis Food Stores in America,
and De Laurentiis explains that:
"It was a gourmet grocery store that also had a kitchen and served food."
She went on to explain that she frequently spent time in the store's kitchen after school.
She remembers fondly that she:
"Loved being in the kitchen."
Sadly, her grandfather closed the store but as De Laurentiis put it:
"For me, they left an imprint."
After graduating from high school, Giada De Laurentiis decided not to pursue her passion
of cooking initially. She explained to Eater that she was the first of her family to go to college.
At the time, her parents weren't thinking about her college career. De Laurentiis said:
"[Italian families] only care about boys […] it's just the way our culture was."
So De Laurentiis paid her own way through school and in 1996,
she graduated with a degree in anthropology from UCLA.
In 2009, De Laurentiis spoke to the Department of Anthropology as their commencement speaker.
She told the graduating students:
"I know that this university has definitely given you the
tools to go out into the world and make a success of yourself."
Even though she followed a career in cooking, her time spent in school
wasn't wasted. Marriage
It was during her time at UCLA that Giada De Laurentiis first met Todd Thompson, the man who
would become her husband. And food was a big part of their relationship. She explained to Redbook:
"I didn't have any money because I was in college."
So instead of buying him presents or meals out, she would cook for him. De Laurentiis
also admitted that she won him over by treating him like royalty. She said:
"All men want to be treated like kings in a relationship, and I think if women don't indulge
that sometimes, their men are likely to stray and look for someone who can give that to them."
While her approach to relationships may sound a little archaic to some,
it's clear that at the time, the dynamic worked for the couple.
After graduating from UCLA, Giada De Laurentiis took a step that shocked
her family by moving to Paris to study at the famous Le Cordon Bleu cooking school.
Her time in Paris proved to be a bit of a shock. It was her first time living alone
and she'd never even done her own laundry before. Her intensive program took up six days a week,
and on Sundays, she would head to the laundromat. As she recalled to Eater:
"I would lug all my sacks of stinky, dirty chef clothes that reeked and reeked."
De Laurentiis explained that the entire course load was extremely stressful.
And due to the intense pressure, the young chef lost ten pounds overseas. She explained:
"I couldn't eat, sleep, I was so [...]I didn't speak French, the classes were in French."
At the time, she worried that she'd made the wrong decision, stating:
"I don't know what I was thinking."
Luckily we know that things eventually worked out in her favor.
After finishing up at the Cordon Bleu,
Giada De Laurentiis returned to the States. She worked for various chefs for several years
in restaurant kitchens and told Eater that the first years were pretty difficult. She explained:
"My family was like, 'Okay, you're making five dollars an hour,
you're working seven days a week, fifteen hours a day.'"
When her big break finally came, it wasn't what she'd expected. She told Food & Wine:
"I wasn't looking to get into TV."
And it apparently all happened by chance. She had been helping a friend style food for a photoshoot
when the magazine asked to do a story on the De Laurentiis family. But she said
that her Italian family wasn't completely hip to the idea of a cooking show, saying:
"We have a very respectable name. Are you going to just trash it by
doing food television? What is that? At the time, it wasn't what it is today."
De Laurentiis explains She provided recipes for the piece and a producer from the Food
Network saw the article and asked De Laurentiis for a demo tape. She said:
"Nine months later I did it, and Everyday Italian was born."
Shortly after Everyday Italian began, Giada De Laurentiis and her then-husband Todd Thompson
welcomed a new baby girl into their family. She explained to Redbook that it
wasn't exactly planned and the couple had decided against having children, saying:
"But then Jade came along, and I was very afraid, and so was Todd."
She was worried that their life of freedom would have to change,
but she's managed to maintain most of her freedom to travel while gaining a daughter.
She told Today that not only did she gain a daughter, she also gained a quote,
"partner in the kitchen." Jade has been hanging out with her mom while
she cooks since she was born. De Laurentiis said:
"It warms [my] heart like nothing else."
Having kids is life changing and for De Laurentiis, it was no different. She explained:
"When you don't have kids, you live for yourself."
For Giada De Laurentiis, cooking and sexual appeal have always been intertwined with her success.
And while she freely admits that now, it wasn't always easy for her to accept her
sexuality as a public personality. She explained to Redbook in 2011:
"I developed breasts when I was nine years old, and I was the only one in my class."
She went on to recall sitting in specific ways to hide her body while she was growing up.
According to De Laurentiis, that feeling of embarrassment never completely went away.
She wanted to be known for her cooking, not her looks. As she put it:
"I didn't want to be known as the sexy cook."
But in 2006 she began to embrace her sex appeal. As she explained,
the change came from growing older and trying to get in touch with that side
of her career for her daughter's sake. De Laurentiis explained:
"I felt like I had to show Jade that her mom is proud of who she is."
After a two-decade-long relationship between Giada De Laurentiis and Todd Thompson,
the pair called it quits in 2014. The news of their divorce was released
on De Laurentiis' Facebook page, which read:
"After an amicable separation since July, Todd and I have decided to end our marriage."
She explained that though it was sad news, the couple remained committed to their daughter.
While De Laurentiis said the split was amicable, she opened up about
the divorce in an interview with Dr. Oz The Good Life. The star chef explained:
"We had been together since I was 19; I'm now 45. That's a lifetime with someone."
And further stated that while the decision was ultimately very difficult, she said simply:
"I don't have the answers; I'm figuring them out as I go."
And De Laurentiis had to make a range of adjustments after her split with Thompson.
She had to learn about things like hooking up a TV and turning off house alarms
but added that the challenges of indepent living made her stronger. She confirmed:
"I can do those things now [...] That's what it's about: believing in yourself."
In 2014, Giada De Laurentiis opened her first restaurant, GIADA,
in Las Vegas. She told Ask Men that owning her own restaurant had always been a dream of hers,
ever since her early days in cooking.
In an interview with Elle, De Laurentiis was asked about being the first woman to
have a restaurant with her own name on the marquee. She put it plainly that:
"It's so funny because, for the longest time, I never saw myself
as a female chef versus a male chef. I just saw myself like everybody else."
But she said that over the years,
she began to notice that there was a gender gap in the industry, stating:
"I've started to think about it a little bit more and realize that if I'm going
to actually make a difference and I'm going to put my own stamp on things,
I have to kind of fall back a little bit on my femininity."
Explaining that she's learned to appreciate that her femininity actually means she has
something different to offer over her male peers.
In 2018, Giada De Laurentiis confirmed that
she had found love for a second time after her difficult divorce.
She told People she's been in a relationship with TV producer Shane Farley for two and a half years.
The Everyday Italian star opened up about the trajectory of their relationship, saying:
"After I got divorced, I spent about a year and a half alone, not dating, just figuring things out."
She told Meredith Vieira about her experience of being single again by:
"Taking a year to figure out, ok, where's my life going? Who am I now?"
Because she'd been with her ex for so long, she needed time to adjust to life alone.
But when she was ready, she reconnected with Farley,
an old acquaintance, and romance quickly blossomed. The TV star confessed:
"I felt like a kid again."
And the entire extended family has an incredibly healthy relationship,
with Thompson and De Laurentiis remaining close friends while their daughter,
Jade, has positive relationships with both of them. For Farley, this means he can,
quote, "be a part of her life without any pressure."
According to She Knows, De Laurentiis and her
daughter Jade have made a splash on the social media platform Tik Tok,
with adorable videos of the mother-daughter duo dancing and getting their nails done.
And she's also announced a new series called Bobby and Giada in Italy,
which will be coming to Discovery+ in early 2021.
According to People, the show will see De Laurentiis and old friend Bobby Flay, as they:
"Cook and eat their way through De Laurentiis' home country."
And even the 2020 lockdown couldn't get the star down. In an appearance on TMZ Live,
she explained that while her cooking had changed during the pandemic,
she had been creating delicious recipes for canned foods. And she and her partner Shane
Farley are still going strong, as they've been spotted walking their dog in L.A. By all accounts,
things are looking up for this cooking sensation — and we can't wait to see what she serves up next!
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