The ‘Barefoot Contessa’ Premiere ‘Shocked’ Ina Garten
TL;DR:
- Ina Garten’s cooking show, Barefoot Contessa, premiered in 2002.
- In 2023, she recalled seeing footage during filming of the premiere and thinking it wasn’t “as bad” as she’d “feared.”
- “It’s still terrifying” for Ina Garten to film a cooking show.
The first-ever episode of Barefoot Contessa “shocked” Ina Garten. But not in a bad way. How the cookbook author reacted to seeing footage from the show’s premiere, plus how she feels now, 20 years later, about hosting cooking shows.
Ina Garten reluctantly agreed to host her own Food Network show
The Barefoot Contessa didn’t want to enter the world of TV. When executives from the Food Network approached her in the early 2000s about hosting her own show, she had three words for them: “Lose my number,” (via HBO Max).
“I didn’t know what they saw,” she said during Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace? on HBO Max and CNN. “And I don’t know. I just couldn’t. I’ve never done TV. And I just didn’t, couldn’t imagine that.”
“I mean, it was the era of Nigella,” she continued. “Nigella Lawson was on TV, and she was so sexy, and, you know, the spaghetti. I just thought that’s not who I am. But they just they were very persistent. “
A grand gesture from Food Network and one long phone conversation later, a film crew arrived at Garten’s home in East Hampton, New York, to shoot the first episodes of Barefoot Contessa.
Ina Garten thought she did ‘OK’ in the ‘Barefoot Contessa’ premiere
Garten, 74, revisited the premiere episode of Barefoot Contessa, watching a clip with host Chris Wallace. “How would you rate yourself as a TV professional, or maybe cook, back then?” Wallace asked.
The Go-To Dinners author shared she’d actually done better than she anticipated. “I remember when I saw that first show. And we were still filming,” Garten recalled. “They showed it to me. And I said, it’s actually not as bad as I’d feared. I mean, it was like, was OK, which shocked me.”
Garten continued, saying the Barefoot Contessa director told her something that still holds true today.
“I said to my director, just think when I get good at this, it’ll be much better,” she recalled. “And she said, not necessarily. She said it’s that kind of anxiety, that … that fear that really fuels the energy that you really show up. And she was right. She was so right. And here I am. 20 years later, it’s still terrifying. It terrifies me.”
Ina Garten doesn’t like watching herself on TV or care about being famous
Garten didn’t want to host her own cooking show, and today, she doesn’t watch herself on TV.
“I sometimes watch it for content but it’s just painful!” she told HuffPost in 2018. “It’s just painful. I couldn’t even tell you what I’m most self-critical about. It’s everything! I just keep thinking, What were you thinking when you said that?’ or You forgot to say this!”
Garten spends only weeks filming and the rest of her time focusing on cookbooks. She also improvises the dialogue save for introductions or transitions.
Additionally, she’s not interested in fame. Instead, she appreciates fans telling her on the street how much they love her cookbooks.
