For this Food Network favorite and new Today show regular, the ingredients are pretty simple: one part big, loving family; one part satisfying career; one part cool husband. Add in one very welcome surprise and presto! La dolce vita, Giada De Laurentiis style.
The lounge of the Peninsula New York Hotel is a hushed, discreet sort of place — that is, until Giada De Laurentiis arrives. The Food Network star chef, gorgeous in jeans and a simple gray H&M sweatshirt, bursts in, chatting away as if I'd known her forever.
"I'm starving," she announces, sliding into a chair and studying a menu. "Are you? Ooh, afternoon tea, that's what I'm having." She grabs my arm. "Hey," she says mischievously. "You know what I like to do? Take one bite of every pastry. Then if I like it, I eat the whole thing."
Giada's instant approachability is, in a nutshell, the key to her runaway popularity. Men harbor schoolboy crushes on her. Grandmas, in denial that she's happily married, want to set her up with their grandsons. Women throng her book signings by the hundreds and invite her to their dinner parties.
The 37-year-old's natural joie de vivre percolates through her shows Everyday Italian (now entering its 11th season), Giada's Weekend Getaways, and Behind the Bash (which gives behind-the-scenes scoop from high-end parties). She also has three best-selling cookbooks: Everyday Italian, Everyday Pasta, and Giada's Family Dinners, with another due out in the fall of 2008. And if all that weren't enough, she recently joined the Today show, making regular appearances as a coanchor during the new fourth hour.
Of course, Giada hasn't come this far on personality alone. She's a serious trained chef. Born in Rome, she grew up in Los Angeles in a large, food-obsessed Italian family headed by her grandfather, film producer Dino De Laurentiis. After graduating from UCLA, she attended the famed Le Cordon Bleu cooking school in France, then returned to L.A. to work at various restaurants before starting her own catering company. On the side, she styled food for magazines. When she wrote about her family for Food & Wine, her photo appeared in the pages, and the Food Network came calling.
These days, Giada jets back and forth from her L.A. home — which she shares with her husband, Todd Thompson, a clothing designer at Anthropologie — to New York City to tape Today. But it's a schedule that may have to change soon. Days after we met, Giada revealed to REDBOOK that she's pregnant. (She got on the phone with us for a second interview. For all the fun details, read on.) In April, she and Todd will welcome a baby girl.
But as for now, here she sits, fresh from a morning appearance on Today, cheerfully taking the top off a scone. "I only like the top," she confesses. One hour passes, then two. After three-and-a-half hours, dusk is falling, waiters are lighting candles, and still, Giada and I are chatting on....
Do you have a say in your wardrobe on the shows? You're the best-dressed chef on television.
I pick my own clothes. When I started with the Food Network, they said, "We want you to buy crisp button-down shirts, like Martha wears." I go, "Are you out of your mind? I have large breasts, those shirts are boxy, and I'm already short! And how do people move in them?" They were like, "Fine, wear whatever you want." I'm most comfortable in T-shirts, but they have to have some style to them. I need something easy to move in that's also sexy.
What are you looking forward to in 2008?
Maybe to travel less. In the last two years, I've traveled like a crazy person — with Giada's Weekend Getaways, I'm in a city for three days, then another city, and we usually do five or six shows, back-to-back. Todd and I have just built a new house, so I'm hoping I can start feeling like it's a home. As fun as the travel can be, it can get a little sad, like, Where are my roots? And I haven't had a vacation in two years. My poor husband, right? But he's very patient and supportive. We've been together for almost 18 years, since I was 19.
With so much traveling, how do you and your husband stay connected?
A lot of texting! A lot! The key is, whatever I'm doing, he loves to know: Who am I working with? Where am I staying? He needs to know that to feel connected to what I'm doing, even if he's not there every day. With the Today show, he'll come visit the set and meet everyone so that if I talk about somebody, he can feel like he's part of it. And I try, as much as he's comfortable, to allow him to be part of the shows. People stop me on the street and say, "How's Todd? Is he here too?" That makes us both feel good because it's not just about me but about us, together.
On camera, he's definitely shyer than you.
Todd's just not comfortable on camera, so I bribe him by offering to make dinner for him and his friends. I had to coax my brother too. But he got so many dates from doing the show that now he's like, "I'll do it anytime!"
It's clear that family is so important to you.
My family is really the reason why I started cooking, so not having them be a part of the shows wouldn't be right. And of course, food is so important to us. When I was a kid, for my birthday every year, my mother made me pasta béchamel, which is rigatoni with a white cream sauce. My mother and I, our favorite part of any baked pasta is the top, where the cheese gets crusty. And for my birthday, I got to pick the top off! Then my brother and sister would say, "This is disgusting, we don't want to eat it anymore."
Your family has always been in the film business, but you're the only one who ventured into food.
When I first wanted to do it, my grandfather thought I'd lost my mind. A female wanting to cook! He said, "You should just get married and have some kids. Don't you worry about a career." And I wasn't very good the first season. I was quiet. Talking to other people while you're cooking, it doesn't come naturally. You're chopping, the timing is tricky, and then you have to explain it all and tell stories and be up. I'd think, I suck, I'm walking away. But when season two came, and then season three, I got better and better. And now it's fun! Ten seasons in! [Laughs]
Was there a specific moment when you thought, I'm out of here?
There were many, many moments. You have a crew of 10 to 12, and nobody's laughing when you're talking — they're reading a sports page. So there's no feedback, and it bruises your ego big-time. Also, our days in the beginning lasted 22 hours for a 22-minute cooking show. And I was always nervous. It makes you feel like you're in kindergarten again with all the big kids, and you're the only loser. That's the way I feel now on the Today show! I'm 37 years old and I'm going back to being that fish out of water, that one kid in class who's trying desperately to fit in with the big kids! But what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.
After a rough day, what's your comfort food?
My chocolate chip-hazelnut cookies. I pull them out of the freezer and go to town. I microwave them for about three seconds, just to soften them so the chocolate oozes and melts. That's all it takes to make me feel better.
Is there anything you hate to cook?
I hate cooking turkey on Thanksgiving. It just takes so long, and I don't find it so appealing.
What was one of your biggest cooking mishaps?
My most traumatic moment was my first time on the Today show, four years ago. It was my first live television appearance, my first cookbook, and I'm nervous as hell. I make a grilled chicken breast with spinach pesto. Easy enough. At the end, Matt [Lauer] cuts into a piece of chicken with a fork, and I think, There's no way he could cut it with a fork; I hope that thing is cooked through. So he puts it in his mouth and realizes it's raw. It's basically just seared. The camera follows him into the kitchen, and he spits it out. And he comes back and says, "Are you trying to kill us here?" I almost died. What I wanted to say is, "I didn't cook the chicken, the food stylist did!" Then Katie [Couric] stepped in and said, "It's okay, it happens all the time, and Matt's a wimp, anyway." But I felt like the biggest jackass on the planet.
When are you happiest?
When I'm in the kitchen with my family and we're cooking together. It's also when I was happiest as a kid.
What change do you hope to see in yourself this year?
I'd like to enjoy the fruits of my labor more than I have in the last two years. There's really been no time to sit and relax and say, "Aah." And just step back and see what I've done. In the New Year, I'd like to do that.
"It's a girl! It's a girl! It's a girl!"
The thrilled mom-to-be tells us all about her news.
Did your pregnancy come as a surprise?
It was a complete surprise — not planned at all. It was never that we didn't want children; it was more like, "If we have them someday, great. If not, that's fine too." So when this happened I was shocked, and the first thing I said to my husband was, "How is this possible?" And he looked at me, laughing, and said, "You know how it's possible." Which I did — it was just that in almost 18 years together, we'd never run into this before.
Is your husband treating you like a queen?
Yes, it's so funny. We call the baby "the lemon." It started off as "the lima bean," but now we've moved to "the lemon," and pretty soon, it'll probably be "the melon." So he's constantly asking me, "How's the lemon today?" He's also been extra protective and worried about how I'm feeling, how I'm eating. And I'm like, "God help me."
I'm sure you just want a healthy baby, but do you have a preference for a girl or boy?
Of course you're right, a healthy baby is the most important thing, but I think it's just easier to tell you that it's definitely a girl. It's a girl, it's a girl, it's a girl!
How do you see your life changing once the baby arrives?
I'm taking a hard look at my calendar and realizing, Holy cow, how can I possibly do all these things? It's a huge life change. I'm going to ask every professional woman I know, "How in the hell do you do it all?"
Is there anything you're nervous about?
Oh, yes. Everything, in fact. How big will I get? Will it be an easy delivery? How is my child going to turn out? Will I be a good mom? Every single moment of the day I hope and pray I'm doing the right thing.
What's something your parents gave you that you want to pass on to your daughter?
I hope I can pass on the love of food to my child the way my family did to me. We spent a lot of warm, loving times in the kitchen. But watch, I will probably end up with a child who not only doesn't care about food but doesn't ever want to set foot in a kitchen! — Lori Berger
REDOOK photo director, Bruce Perez, wanted to use food as props in some of Giada's pictures, so we gathered up the best-looking bite-sized desserts we could find—a whole table full. Two of Giada's recipes were in the mix: her Chocolate Chip Biscotti and Espresso Brownies. "The brownies were delicious," said Bruce. After the shoot was over, we packed up boxes of the desserts for the crew and staff to take home. One of the tasty treats turned up on the "Contents" page of our January issue.
Miss Congeniality
The REDBOOK staff on set all agreed that Giada was a pleasure to work with. "She was a nice, very down to earth girl—very easy to talk to," said Barbara Chernetz, Food Editor. It's not at every shoot that our cover model makes sure we have all the shots we need—but, Giada's not your average cover model. "Giada was game for anything during the shoot, and at the end she asked if we needed anything else," said Bruce.
