Paula Deen is speaking ill of the dead.
Deen, 78, took shots at fellow celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain — who died by suicide at age 61 in 2018 — in her new documentary, “Canceled: The Paula Deen Story,” that premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on Saturday.
“Anthony Bourdain did call me the most dangerous woman in America,” Deen said in the doc, according to Entertainment Weekly, as there were flashes of archival news clips from 2011 showing journalists stating that Bourdain called Deen the “worst, most dangerous person in America.”
The doc showed more past footage from the pair’s feud, including an old clip of Bourdain saying, “This is not Southern food she’s been selling. Her brand has been all these years, novelty food.”
Meanwhile, Deen is shown shading Bourdain during a time she was on “The Joy Behar Show,” quipping, “Let me tell you something, girlfriend. Maybe [my food] is bad for you, but I don’t go around eating or serving unwashed anuses of wildebeests.”
In her present-day interview in the doc, Deen said of Bourdain, “I don’t know what he was off in these foreign countries eating. Bat brains or something like that. I think I’ll just stick with my fried chicken.”
“God rest his soul,” Deen added about the late travel documentarian. “I felt like he didn’t like anybody. Not even himself, maybe.”
The documentary then played an old clip of Bourdain discussing one of Deen’s critical comments about him.
“I like the quote, it was, ‘Well, he has had his demons, I hope he had them under control.’ He’s probably still shooting dope, is probably what she’s saying in a nice kind of Southern way,” Bourdain said.
Deen, while speaking to the camera crew, stated, “He started something with me, and I’d never even met him,” as archival footage showed Deen publicly asking Bourdain to come to her house for a home-cooked meal.
At the end of the segment, Bourdain, in old footage, told a journalist it would take “nuclear war” for him to agree to eat Deen’s cooking.
Deen’s new documentary also highlights her infamous 2013 racism scandal that tarnished her career. At the time, Deen was being sued by a former employee and it was revealed she had used the N-word in the transcript of her legal deposition.
In “Canceled,” Deen’s lawyer, Bill Glass, said that people “should not take any issue” with her using the racial slur in context.
“Yes, of course I’ve used that word,” Deen said in the doc.
