Paula Deen Speaks Ill of Late Anthony Bourdain: ‘Didn’t Like Anybody, Not Even Himself’

When it comes to the late Anthony Bourdain, Paula Deen still has an ax to grind, apparently. Deen dissed her fellow celebrity chef in the new documentary Canceled: The Paula Deen Story.

The doc, which premiered on Saturday at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival, covers the rise and fall of Deen’s career and includes coverage of her war of words with Bourdain, who died by suicide in 2018.

“God rest his soul,” Deen says in the film, per Entertainment Weekly. “I felt like he didn’t like anybody. Not even himself, maybe.”

In her interview in the film, the Southern chef also revisits Bourdain calling her “the worst, most dangerous” person in America.

“The worst, most dangerous person to America is clearly Paula Deen,” he told TV Guide Magazine in 2011. “She revels in unholy connections with evil corporations, and she’s proud of the fact that her food is f***ing bad for you.”

In that same interview, Bourdain also said Deen’s food “sucks,” and in the documentary, Deen’s son Bobby dismisses those two assertions. “I think both are inaccurate,” he says.

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Canceled also sees Deen criticizing Bourdain’s culinary adventures around the world in TV shows like Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations and Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown.

“I don’t know what he was off in these foreign countries eating. Bat brains or something like that,” she says. “I think I’ll just stick with my fried chicken.”

Deen spoke along similar lines during a 2011 appearance on The Joy Behar Show, per EW: “Let me tell you something, girlfriend,” she said then. “Maybe [my food] is bad for you, but I don’t go around eating or serving unwashed anuses of wildebeests.”

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There’s no record of Bourdain consuming bat brains or wildebeest anuses, though he did eat warthog anus as he traveled with indigenous Namibians in a No Reservation episode, per Chowhound. “Lesson one as a traveler: Food given as a gesture of hospitality is always gratefully accepted, always,” he said in that episode. “Because no matter how weird or horrible it may seem to you, for someone else, it’s their means of subsistence.”

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According to EW, Deen expresses regret over the feud with Bourdain in the documentary. “He started something with me, and I’d never even met him,” she says.

Canceled: The Paula Deen Story is the work of documentary filmmaker Billy Corben (Cocaine Cowboys) and tracks Deen’s career from her beginnings as a Georgia caterer and chef to her fame as a Food Network star to her cancellation amid a racial-slur scandal.

“You may think you know the story of Paula Deen, but Corben uncovers perspectives and gradations that complicate anyone’s hot take,” Thom Powers, lead documentary programmer at the Toronto International Film Festival, writes in a blurb about Canceled. “Twelve years after Deen’s downfall, this film explores what it means when we build up celebrities and then tear them down.”