ROLE MODEL
Author, producer Padma Lakshmi on representation, food and comedy
Padma Lakshmi has been a model, host of “Top Chef ” and producer and host of Hulu series “Taste the Nation.” Now as she pursues new avenues, the recipient of Gold House’s inaugural Gold Legend Award, which will be given to her on May at a celebration in Los Angeles, says she is pleased by the honor from an organization that does so much good.
Lakshmi will not just accept the honor, she has also designed the gala menu and is excited for guests to try out the food from her home state of Tamilnadu, India, by chef Vijay Kumar of Semma in New York.
“I just wanted to showcase how diverse Indian food is, and we don’t see a lot of these dishes so we’re doing a fully South Asian menu,” she says.
Gold House is a nonprofit with bases in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York and Singapore that promotes the Asian Pacific Islander community through newsletters, mentorships and job placements.
There was no such organization when Lakshmi started out. “People come up to me and say that I was the only Indian person that they grew up watching on TV,” she says. “It would have helped to just visualize a career and to more concretely pursue a goal that I inadvertently wound up achieving. But it wasn’t like I had any maps. It would have been beneficial to me. I think Gold House is a great organization not only because of its public-facing aspects but also because they do a lot of mentorships, they do a lot of promotions and championing of Asian artists, they also put Asian artists with businesspeople. Having someone to support this community is a big deal.”
With the Asian continent being so large, that’s a huge group of people seeking representation in the U.S., but Lakshmi points out that there is a varying group of cultures in India, let alone across the Asian continent. “The thing that Gold House has succeeded in is supporting, championing Asians who are in many fields,” she says.
She takes her visibility seriously and has been mentoring a few people, not all of whom are Asian.
“When I grew up, I had ambitions that were just like anybody else. I didn’t want to make it and ‘do well’ for an Indian person or an Asian person, or an immigrant person or a woman,” she says. “I just wanted to do well. I saw myself competing with everybody. I didn’t think I could only play roles that were specifically designed for South Asians. In my role at ‘Top Chef,’ ethnicity is irrelevant except as it relates to my knowledge and experience in my work. So I come with a body of information because of where I am from, but it has nothing to do with me being right for the job.”
Lakshmi wants to show the younger generation of Asian Americans how to pursue their goals: “Seeing what is possible as an example is the best education there is.”
Being in positions of authority also means she can hire more minorities, such as the Indian producers on “Taste the Nation.” “Any time I can help people along I try to because I never had that help. I never had that mentorship. It would have been a game changer for me had I had someone I could call in the entertainment business. You know little stuff like having a lawyer look at your contracts, not just the agent. Trying to find out what the industry standard is, knowing what other people on set are asking for, those kinds of things I had to learn the hard way.”
She encourages younger creatives to try and write their own stories. “As long as that story is being told from a compelling point of view it will be a valid story,” Lakshmi says.
As for the next chapter in her life, Lakshmi just submitted a manuscript for an anthology on food and travel writing that she edited, and is working on a cookbook. She had a cameo on “Saturday Night Live” and is also trying out stand-up comedy. She has hosted benefit comedy shows in the past.
“We had amazing top-level comedians from Chris Rock to Mike Birbiglia,” she says. “I just organized it and I would just get up and say, ‘thank you for coming’ and that was it. But this year I wanted to try [stand-up]. One of the reasons I left ‘Top Chef ’ was I wanted to clear space for new work and new creative endeavors to come. I knew no one was going to hand me a comedy to do on a silver platter. So I took a small bite, and I did four minutes in the first set and in the second show I did six or seven minutes. It was exhilarating, it was fun, it was really nice. If I did it again — I plan to — I would want to work on jokes. I didn’t really write jokes; I just sort of had a bullet point of the narrative arc of my little standup set. It was very well-received.”