Beyond Bourdain's Assistant - NYTimes Best Seller Comes Clean

What’s it like to be the right hand to two of the most iconic and complicated chefs of our time? Laurie Woolever dishes on life behind the scenes with Anthony Bourdain and Mario Batali, revealing the chaos, contradictions, and quiet moments that shaped her memoir, the New York Times Bestselling Care and Feeding.

From a small town in upstate New York to the kitchens and offices of culinary giants, Woolever's journey is raw, riveting, and deeply personal. She opens up about toxic kitchens, battling addiction in a booze-soaked industry, and the long road to sobriety and self-worth.

This isn’t just a peek behind the celebrity curtain; it’s a powerful story of resilience, reinvention, and claiming your own spotlight.

Purchase her book:

Care and Feeding a Memoir by Laurie Woolever

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Transcript

Meeting Lori Wollever

Janette 0:00

Hi Rachel , hey , Jeanette , we just had the interview with Lori Wollever . The book is Care and Feeding and we just talked to her about it . She used to be the assistant to Anthony Bourdain and Mario Batali . Batali , and she has written this book . That isn't necessarily about them but it does .

Rachel 0:18

It's a memoir , it's about her . She goes into depth about what it was like to work for them and also in those environments , but it really does take the reader through her journey in the food industry as a writer , as a chef , as a cookbook editor , co-creator , and also her marriage and being a mother . And she's very vulnerable on the page .

Janette 0:42

Yeah , it's a revealing look at her life and the struggles that she had with substance abuse and also how she navigated working in such a chaotic industry as the food industry , and it's a fascinating read . She's an excellent writer and there's something interesting in it , I think , for everyone . Enjoy , welcome , lori . Welcome to Lost in Jersey .

Laurie Woolever 1:12

Thank you Very excited to be here .

Janette 1:14

We like to , when we get started , tell how we know you . I was just looking for a good book to read and I was skimming the New York Times new release books and top ones and I think your book came out at number eight or something like that , right at the kick . And I must have been just there simultaneously and I was like you know , this is something I usually wouldn't read . I think I'm going to read this and I got into it right away . Great , I love to hear that . And you know , the funny thing was is , as I was reading , I was like , okay , there's got to be a New Jersey connection in here .

Laurie Woolever 1:43

And then there it was yeah , yeah , there are a couple of points of Jersey in there for sure . I am from a small village in upstate New York , outside of Syracuse , called Chittenango . It's population just under 5,000 . And it's a real , I guess . It's a suburb of Syracuse and I grew up there . I went to college at Cornell University in Ithaca , new York , which is maybe an hour or so from where I grew up , and then I moved to New York City in 1996 when I graduated from college . So I was definitely from a very small town , had no connection to New York City really , until I was older , and I've been in New York ever since . My parents did live in New Jersey for five years right after I graduated college .

Janette 2:32

Well , when you're talking about your background , I'm curious because you have two different , really big career paths that you have had , which is writing and cooking . In your child and

Early Passion for Writing and Food

Janette 2:44

growing up , do you ever look back and think of how did those develop those particular interests ?

Laurie Woolever 2:50

Well , I always wanted to be a writer . This was something from my earliest memories . I remember sort of telling myself stories telling myself . I got to remember this because I'm going to write it down later . I'm going to tell this story . I was always interested in kind of collecting the details of the day . I was a big diary keeper from a very young age . Judy Blume my mother got me a Judy Blume diary when I was eight years old . Ooh , lucky . Yeah , I can see it in my mind now . I think I got rid of it a long time ago . But yeah , I was always telling stories and I really excelled in English and creative writing in school and writing little plays and performing . So that was just kind of inherent to who I was .

Laurie Woolever 3:32

And then , when it came to school projects , I would always gravitate toward the food . You had an option you can make a poster of the living cell or you can make a cake or something to do with food . So I was always like I'm going to make the mitochondria cake or whatever it was . So it was something that I was just interested in . I mean , I like to eat , you know , and I like novelty foods and junk food and TV commercials about cereal and all of that stuff was just really captured my imagination , and we made a lot of cakes and a lot of baked goods . That was like a way to spend time with my mom as a kid .

Laurie Woolever 4:07

As a college student I started learning how to cook for myself just out of necessity , and then I realized it was something that I really enjoyed . That was very soothing , and I went to a very competitive , intense college and I needed ways to kind of unwind . So I found that I really enjoyed putting on some music and opening up a cookbook and working my way through a recipe . And I thought when I graduated well , I still want to be a writer , but I know that I have to earn money somehow . I have to have a skill and I have to know something . I have to have a body of knowledge to write about . That's more than just me and my thoughts . And so I thought well , why don't I go to cooking ? A body of knowledge to write about , that's more than just me and my thoughts . And so I thought , well , why don't I go to cooking school , learn how to cook ?

Laurie Woolever 4:52

I had this sort of delusional idea that I would cook and it wouldn't take up that much of my time or energy and then I could really focus on being a writer . Of course , being a professional cook is very intense and all encompassing and it's not really something you can just do casually , which I learned . But I was able to take the cooking side of things and the skills that I learned in culinary school and combine that with the writing and started a career as a food writer and editor . So they kind of came together in that way and now they've diverged a little bit . I did write this memoir , which certainly has a lot of food and food experiences in it . The older I get and the more I write . Now the writing that really moves me is more personal and more historical and less about food , but I also have . I certainly am continuing to support myself co-editing or co-authoring cookbooks and doing restaurant reviews and whatever I can do to keep my name out there .

Rachel 5:46

I found it so interesting when you write about in the book how you were in culinary school and knew you had that feeling immediately like I don't want to be a chef .

Rachel 5:57

I thought that was so interesting because I would feel that if you're really passionate about food and you're going to culinary school , that that would

Struggling with Failure and Addiction

Rachel 6:04

be what you would assume would be the path . But there is already that fear of sort of knowing what it could be like . But then yet you were fully thrown in to . You know , especially with Batali , like that intense bro environment during that bad boy chef era of the not just the intensity of a kitchen , it's like that times a million because of who you were working with .

Laurie Woolever 6:31

Yeah , yeah , I , um , I wish that I had had more self-confidence and more sort of vision as a culinary student . I wish that I had been able to stick with it a little bit longer and try and be a line cook . Uh , at the same time , if I hadn't sort of opted out of that path , I wouldn't have taken the job with Mario and I , you know , arguably everything would have turned out different in my life . But I had such a such a kind of I don't know . I've heard it attributed to this sort of gifted and talented kids , you know , who were put into these advanced programs in elementary school and high school and sort of told that they were special and gifted and you know , things came easily to me . And then for the rest of my life they really didn't . You know , because I was just I'm just a normal person and just because I did well in you know , elementary school , math or whatever didn't mean that all of life was going to be easy for me . But it kind of set me up to to be very uncomfortable with anything that was challenging or didn't come immediately easy to me . And it doesn't . I don't think anybody starts culinary school and is instantly very good at it . It's just a skill you have to develop like any other skill or craft .

Laurie Woolever 7:38

So I was just very uncomfortable with the idea that I was not good at it , that I was going to have to work hard and that I was going to have to earn my dues .

Laurie Woolever 7:46

And I and I , just I didn't like people being upset with me failure . I mean not that anybody loves these things , but I just had such a low tolerance for that feeling of being mediocre , of failing , of having to do something over and over again , of somebody kind of , you know , riding me like I just I just wanted nothing to do with it , and that's a lot of what it is to be a young cook . So yeah , and then , you know , for all of my ways of trying to avoid that life , I ended up getting , you know , thrown into the kitchen . When I were early on in my time working as Mario Batali's assistant , there was an instance where someone just didn't show up and the restaurant was about to open and they hadn't . You know , they needed somebody to come in and fill in in the kitchen , and so I , I did it and I loved reading about that , that getting thrown in at Babbo .

Janette 8:33

I mean , yeah , you know what's really interesting about that too , is that I was looking back over it and it was kind of accidental that you got that job . It it was like a , wasn't it like a temp agency or something ?

Laurie Woolever 8:46

Not exactly , but the woman who ran the careers program at the culinary school . She said you've got to go work in a restaurant kitchen . You can't just , you know , opt out of it because no one's going to take you seriously . But then I did . I did get a job in a kitchen . I lasted for four days . I was hired as the , as the guard manger , which is like the salad station , and then somebody got fired and I got moved up to pastry chef , where I had no business .

Rachel 9:11

Yeah , that was terrifying .

Laurie Woolever 9:12

Yeah . So then she said , all right , well , I'll send you on this interview with Mario Batali . So then it worked out . There was another maybe you're thinking of earlier in the book I did before I went to cooking school . I worked for two years as a cook for a family and that was through an agency I had interviewed . They hired someone who had professional training and she only lasted a few weeks because she was so committed to the idea that in order for food to taste good , it has to have butter in it , it has to have salt , it has to be fried and all the things that we add to food to make it really delicious . And she wasn't willing to follow their dictates . We want fat free , steamed , no salt , no flavor , no flavor .

Rachel 9:53

Yeah .

Laurie Woolever 9:53

So they , they fired her and they hired me and I was like great , you know , I barely know what I'm doing as a cook . So you want me to steam vegetables and make you know plain pasta , like OK . So you want me to steam vegetables and make you know plain pasta , like okay . So yeah , it was just . You know , my career has been a series of these sort of switchbacks and unlikely right place at the right time . And you know a lot of luck and a lot of just . You know , I think the more , the better you are at something and the more you're able to show up and be indispensable , the better your luck gets . But I know at the beginning it was just really good timing that I ended up working for Mario and then Mario introduced me to Tony right at the right time for the next stage in my career , Before we get into the middle part of your career before you talk a lot about the struggle you had after college and the jobs that you had and the behavior that you were displaying .

Janette 10:47

You know that started before it got even worse and worse and worse . And I'm also curious like did you have any of that displaying early on ? Because you were talking about how , when you were young , you were very good at many things that you did . But were you , were you finding yourself at an early age trying to cope with failure or problems like that ? Or did it start in high school , for example , with the bad behavior like drinking too much or smoking pot ? If we want to call it bad behavior coping mechanisms , sure yeah .

Laurie Woolever 11:16

Yeah , I would say all of that started for me in high school , I think . Up until adolescence I was a rule follower and , you know , afraid of getting in trouble and all of that sort of all of the anti-drug campaigns of the of the 1980s really like made a big impact on me . It's like great , I don't . I never want to feel that way . It totally worked on me until it didn't , but even even I think it's . I was very afraid to smoke pot . I had a boyfriend who smoked pot and I was like crying , like you're gonna ruin your life . And then one day it was like a switch flipped and I was like , all right , give me that , let me try it . And then it was like I like this , this is working . Yeah , and this , you know the same with true .

Laurie Woolever 12:00

I mean , drinking started a little bit earlier , but yeah , I was sort of a typical teenager , experimenting with drugs and alcohol but still making incredible grades . All the clubs , all the music , everything I needed to do to have a great college application . I became a very skilled liar . Sometimes I got caught , but mostly I didn't . I was crossing state lines with my friends to go see concerts and stay overnight and telling my mom . I was at a friend's house and I think I had built up all this sort of goodwill . I think about it a lot now because I have a 16-year-old and I'm like , what are his moves For now ? He's , I think , a terrible liar , so I've been able to kind of figure out what he's doing .

Laurie Woolever 12:42

But yeah , I'd say it was a teenage years and I don't know that I had a name for what I felt . I think I was anxious and probably a little prone to depression , but I definitely used drugs and alcohol as a coping mechanism all through college . And then , once college was over , it was like well , now I have all this much more freedom and I have an income and I don't have the pressure of having to write papers and study for exams . All I have to do is show up to work , and that's actually much easier than college . So here we go .

Laurie Woolever 13:10

My feeling about it was no one really identified as a problem drinker or a drug addict , because it was what everybody was doing , or at least what everyone all of my friends were doing . It was just room tone . And then when I was in restaurants , that's what all my colleagues were doing and my boss . So I just I self-selected people who were going to just make me feel like what I was doing was totally normal , and it wasn't until much later that it was like not everybody chooses this coping mechanism , or not everyone gets so drunk that they do regrettable things every time . It took me a very long time , but it definitely was the slow boil . I mean , at some point I write about , you know , one of my colleagues , the two of us being like the frogs in the pot and we have no idea because we're just you know we're just getting drunk at work .

Rachel 13:57

Yeah , yeah , it is a definitely a specific time in our culture and also the restaurant industry with the intensity . You could see how that could easily happen to somebody . But you did reach out for help , you know , by finding a therapist , which I thought was so interesting , that you there was something , I mean you tell us but that seemed like you were aware . You were aware of some of your behaviors that you weren't happy with . That wasn't making you happier . Yeah , it's funny ?

Laurie Woolever 14:33

I don't think I ever , for it took me a very long time and probably not till I got sober to ever frame it as my behaviors . It was really my feelings , my sort of , you know . I'm just like why am I so unhappy ? Why am I so depressed ? Why can't I figure out what to do ? You know , I have a very good friend whose mother was a therapist and I was close with her whole family and spent a lot of time with them . So I was really .

Laurie Woolever 14:55

It was through spending time with that family that I started to warm up to the idea of therapy and see it as , because I grew up , you know , my family and the culture that I grew up in was very much like what do you mean ? Therapy ? What's wrong with you ? You know , kind of just much more working class , kind of like Irish , catholic , italian , polish people that just are like we don't have the money for therapy and even if we did , that's for crazy people , you know , or like what's your problem ? I'll give you something to cry about .

Laurie Woolever 15:23

So it wasn't until I met people that had a different outlook , that it was like oh , this is something that I could probably benefit from and , and you know it's , it's okay , it's not shameful and it's not , you know , wildly self-indulgent to see a therapist . So I am really I'm grateful that that my mind was expanded a little bit at that point . Yeah , and I just I just wanted to figure it out , figure out how to , how to feel better . And it took me a very long time to even recognize that . You know all the drinking that I was doing , you know alcohol is a depressant , and the idea that I was somebody who had been diagnosed as depressive and I was taking medication and it somehow it didn't really occur to me that like you're just pouring a Right . So yeah , it just to me . Now it's . It all seems very obvious what I was doing , but it I wasn't really open to it , to the critique of anything , any of the ways that I chose to cope .

Janette 16:19

Right .

Janette 16:19

Well , your life also during that .

Janette 16:21

The way the book runs is that you know you take us through the journey of you , your career progression , and there's a lot of drinking and smoking pot , but then you find yourself really in the just the heart , the pinnacle of the food industry , which

Navigating the Food Industry's Dark Side

Janette 16:37

kind of promotes that behavior as well .

Janette 16:39

And I think what's interesting in the book is that it's a raw look at it all of your relationship in trying to get in a relationship and then being married and the struggles you're having in your own relationship . But we're rooting for you . You know throughout the whole story that you're gonna have an epiphany or the right turn is going to happen , and it does happen for you . You know it does happen in your life that you do find sobriety . So it's kind of in a way , a happy you know happy turn of events that you find this awareness . But along the way we do see the food industry and also you navigating it so interestingly , with you working for Batali and then getting introduced , as you mentioned earlier , through him to Anthony Bourdain and then becoming his assistant or however you want to put it , and having to experience all of that .

Janette 17:34

In reflection of that , I know that Rachel was looking at that a lot with the Vitella . She worked in the food industry herself .

Rachel 17:41

She worked for Rachel Ray I found so many quotes from what you wrote that just really brought it home and I think reading it I was re-angered . I graduated in 94 and went off to work at a very corporate before I made the move over there very corporate management consulting and when you had that person at the temp agency say something like you know , you have to get a gym membership and you have to do this , and I was told I couldn't wear pantsuits , I had to wear skirts and I had to wear sheer pantyhose . It was all men I was in engineering at the time , so it was definitely all men and me but that they were wanting me to look a certain way and then yet walk into a meeting and they would ask me to get their coffee . It is like a relentless feeling of insecurity , obviously , but also this like furious rage underneath it . And then how do you cope with that ? Like where do you put that ?

Rachel 18:40

So when you were saying I think you said there was like fear , surrounded by men , and how you need to dress and behave and you're playing a part in a play , but you don't know the lines I was like that's exactly it . It's like you were cast in this part and there's all these things you need to do to keep the part . But you don't know them and the way they're taught to you is through bullying and aggression and sexual misconduct . And someone else you quoted said it was like that kind of dirty uncle that you kind of have to be nice to because he might slip you $100 .

Laurie Woolever 19:15

Yeah , and the power dynamic is absolutely tilted . You're just kind of at the whim of does my boss think I'm attractive ? Which is horrible . Why do you even think of that ? Yeah , yeah . And then , even if my boss does think I'm attractive , well , that's gross too . No , don't touch me .

Janette 19:33

But isn't there also the strange dichotomy of that Like , for example , with me ? I hung out with a lot of guys in college and afterwards and we just all partied , we all got drunk . I was part of it . It was like we were all misbehaving yeah no-transcript .

Rachel 20:12

how ? Because we all know about , obviously , the Me Too movement and what happened to Mario after that , but that he was a bully , but he was also generous . I mean there are two sides to that . It doesn't mean that excuses him at all , but that people are many things but that people are many things .

Laurie Woolever 20:38

Yeah , I wanted to really write with some nuance about that because maybe in part to assuage my own sense of was I complicit in this .

Laurie Woolever 20:43

I laughed at the jokes and I hung out with the guys and I definitely perpetuated this kind of raunchy culture because that's my sense of humor , and I thought , like isn't it cool that I can go to work and make these jokes and drink with the guys and you know it's whatever . So I wanted to , you know , just write with a little nuance and say that . And also the fact that working for Mario , which was difficult in some ways , really set me up for a lot of success , and you know he was very savvy about seeing what was it that was going to motivate me and what could he . He certainly wasn't going to pay me a lot of money and he wasn't going to treat me with a tremendous amount of respect , but what he could do to keep me loyal was to connect me to people that could help me with my writing career , and he was getting all kinds of things , the amount of stuff that rich people and famous people and successful people get for free is just amazing .

Rachel 21:36

It's insane .

Laurie Woolever 21:38

So it'd be like oh , you want hockey tickets , you want here , I've got these Willie Nelson tickets . I don't want them . You know , here's a bottle of this , bottle of that . You know some CDs , yeah , concert .

Rachel 21:47

Yeah , so , and I you know I was young enough and definitely you know some CDs , yeah , concert .

Laurie Woolever 21:49

Yeah , so , and I , you know , I was young enough and definitely , you know , poor enough , and I was like this is great , look at my job , is so cool , you know . So I wanted to just , you know , share all of that , just to try and explain , you know why it was , because I think a lot of people go why didn't you quit ? Why didn't you say something ? Why didn't you fight back ? It's like , well , a because I had no power and B because I was young and I was like , totally , you know , blinded by all of the sort of you know , the and the fun and the free drinks and the dinners out , and you know , that was , for better or worse , like that was really that kept me in place .

Janette 22:25

But what's interesting is that the way that you talk about Anthony Bourdain is that he didn't do any of that .

Laurie Woolever 22:32

Yeah , I think his persona might've led people to think it . I certainly . Before I met him in person for the first time I thought , oh , this is going to be like just another version of Mario . But he's tall and thin and has a French name . But he was nothing like that , because I had read his book and I had read the piece in New Yorker . He was shy and a little bit socially awkward and didn't really make eye contact . He was just a very , very different kind of guy .

Laurie Woolever 22:59

Now I will say also there are jokes that he would make and lines of inquiry , especially early on in his television career , that I don't think have aged very well , and there are a lot of dead hooker jokes and jokes at the expense of the Britney Spears and the Paris Hiltons of the world that I think in their time were very au courant jokes .

Laurie Woolever 23:23

I don't want to tarnish his memory at all but just to say , just in the spirit of fairness , he also could lean into that boys will be boys kind of misogyny for humor . But as a person , in his personal conduct , in his , you know , in the way that he dealt with with employees and others , was always very I mean , respectful , to the point of almost being fearful . You know , I think he was sort of afraid of women in a way . That was like great , you know , be afraid . I think it's's just , they were just fundamentally very different people , even though I think they mario and tony had a lot of similarities , both from new jersey . Yeah , oh , actually that's not true I don't know , it's totally tony mario went to rutgers , so I , so that's his jersey association um .

Laurie Woolever 24:05

And his brother went to princeton , but um , but so that he did have a jersey . His jersey ties . But tony know , born and raised in New Jersey .

Janette 24:12

Well , okay , on that point of New Jersey and in the career transition , before you started working for Anthony Bourdain , you had a stint in New Jersey . You went and worked in magazine , yes , so tell us a little bit about this . And it's also it's interesting because you talk about it's like right between right before websites and Instagram and everything took over , and so it's kind of this transition period .

Laurie Woolever 24:37

Yeah , I applied for a job editing a magazine called Art Culinare , which at the time was based in Morristown , new Jersey , and it was owned by a gentleman who has since sold it . So I want to make that clear , because it is still a viable magazine , but now it's based in Northern California and the people who publish it are lovely and they have nothing to do with this . The person who I worked for yeah .

Laurie Woolever 25:02

But so this former chef had . He bought a beautiful schoolhouse building in Morristown and he lived in it . And they also ran the office of the magazine out of the schoolhouse . And it's this beautiful , full color , gigantic photographs of chefs , beautiful plated dishes , with recipes and interviews , and it was a dream job in a lot of ways . I had never been an editor before and then suddenly I was the executive editor and , as it turned out , it was an extreme . There was no other .

Rachel 25:34

I didn't have any editors below me , so I was , I was the editorial staff , the executive , the assistant , the editor , all the way down , I was the internal . Yeah , you're all of it .

Laurie Woolever 25:45

Yeah , was living in the East Village of Manhattan at the time , so it was a not insignificant commute .

Rachel 25:51

No , that's horrible .

Laurie Woolever 25:53

Yeah , but because it was going in the opposite direction . I always got a seat on the train in both directions , but it was like a good close to four hours a day just getting back and forth . That's a lot . You know , I wasn't married yet I didn't have a kid . You know I had a lot of time on my hands and I would read the paper or I would do work on the train or I would get stoned and stare out the window at the end of the day , sometimes at the beginning of the day too . And so , yeah , that was my Jersey , my experience .

Laurie Woolever 26:23

The magazine was in a difficult place . Like you said , I started in 2004 . They were very late adopters . We had only a very rudimentary website . Everything was . None of the content that we made was available online , and that was a , you know , a ploy to get people to continue to subscribe , but they just the numbers really plummeted during my time there . I don't think I had anything to do with it , I think I kept it . It was hard to tell from editor to editor . You know many changes , but I think people were just discovering like , oh , I don't have to pay all this money to get this hardcover thing . That , then is taking up room in my house . I can just go online . So after a few years at Urquhlan Air , I was ready to leave and I wanted to stay in magazines . So I ended up getting hired at Wine Spectator magazine and it was great to be back in Manhattan . I could walk to work .

Rachel 27:12

They had great events . My sister-in-law worked there in the events . She worked at Bon Appetit and then at Wine Spectator and she invited us to the Marriott Marquis event with all the wine booths everywhere . It was so cool .

Laurie Woolever 27:26

Yeah , the wine experience . I think they still do that . It's wild . So I did that for a few years .

Laurie Woolever 27:33

In that time period I got engaged , I got married and I had a baby and there was a point where it started to feel really arduous to put the baby in daycare . By that point I had moved to Queens . So then , rushing to Manhattan , get to work on time , do my job , get back to the daycare and pick the baby up before six o'clock and I just was ready for a change . I had had a little bit of a part time arrangement or a four day a week arrangement , and then Wine Spectator I'll tell the story because I'm still bitter about it . They said it was , it was fine with them . And then someone else was about to have a baby and said I'd like to do what Lori's doing and they said no , you can't do it . And we're going to pull the plug on her arrangement too , because this is not a family friendly company , which was tough , tough to take , especially because the publisher's daughters were coming and going as they please doing whatever they wanted , anyway , yeah , so .

Laurie Woolever 28:28

So at that point I started looking for some other kind of job , just reached out to everyone I knew and said I'm looking for part time work or something I can do from home , something that's flexible . You know , I think one of the only people that wrote back to me very quickly was Tony Bourdain and said you know , my assistant is actually on her way out . Do you think that that is that something you'd ever want to do ? And it again , it was just a matter of you know , it was like the right , the right week for me to to make that move .

Janette 29:00

You ended up traveling the world and you know going within them , all these different locations and seeing . I know there's one story in the book about your Sri Lanka .

Rachel 29:05

I was so stressed out for you .

Janette 29:07

And I think you were newly sober at that time too , yeah , during that , and so I think the whole time I was like , oh my God , she keeps going into that liquor store , she's going to drink , she's going to , and you didn't . So which it was really impressive that you made it through that crazy journey , and I also kind of felt like , oh , there's good people everywhere .

Laurie Woolever 29:25

Yeah , yeah , I think I mean , the only person who I think had bad intentions was the guy that was following me . Yeah , but everyone else that I encountered , I think , was , you know , there was a , there was a communication barrier and there was . You know , I was kind of stressed out of my mind but yeah it , you know . Fortunately everything ended well and yes .

Rachel 29:43

Yeah , I mean speaking of that , and then you were sober there . I think one of the things I was just wondering while I was reading

Working with Bourdain vs. Batali

Rachel 29:49

. I appreciate the honesty and the vulnerability you're willing to put on the page . It's almost reads factual like . This is what I did and this is what was happening . Like Jeanette said , we were rooting for you and hoping that you would get to a place where you would feel strong enough to make the commitment to yourself to find a better way and a better life for you , and whatever that would look like . How do you feel that that finally built up and happened for you ? Well , there were a series of changes .

Laurie Woolever 30:22

The first one was deciding to stop drinking , and that made it easier to see more clearly what my life was and where I was at and how to make more changes . I mean , so it took me another 18 months to stop smoking pot . It's just that I was just really , you know , I was like , well , all right , well , I can give up the booze , but , man , I need the pot to manage my anxiety . And what I didn't really realize is that it was actually just exacerbating my anxiety . It wasn't making anything better , it was making things harder for me . But until I gave it up for real , I couldn't really see that .

Laurie Woolever 30:56

And then there was a , you know , there was sort of a series of unfortunate events where my marriage blew up and a few weeks later Tony died and I knew that my marriage needed to end . But I didn't expect it to end the way that it did , and in some ways it was a blessing , because it just sort of ripped the bandaid off , yeah , whereas I was trying to kind of , you know , slowly take out the stitches with no pain .

Rachel 31:20

Well , cause you were as you said earlier . You didn't like to make anyone unhappy . Yeah , be confrontational .

Laurie Woolever 31:26

I was trying to sort of get away with it without , you know , causing any damage . It's not the way it turned out . I can't say that my life is at all better because Tony's not around . Certainly the opposite is true . I wish every day that he were still around and I know my career and my life would be different . I arguably wouldn't have written the book that I wrote , but I know that I would have continued to do great projects with him and probably would have done something slightly different on my own . But I'd say if there's any sort of thin silver lining to any of that is that I did start to take the idea of mental health a little more seriously . I was in therapy for 20 years but I sort of kept my substance abuse stuff very separate from my mental health stuff and I started to realize that it's all of a piece . It all happens inside your brain and your body and things are different for me now than they were last year or the year before that , and I think I'm in a different place than when I started writing my book , versus now that the book is out in the world .

Laurie Woolever 32:30

I mean , I think it's one of the wonderful things about the 12-step programs are that you continue to kind of . I mean , that's one of the tenets , is you ? You know you're willing to grow along spiritual lines and when I first heard that I was like , oh God , what you know , I just want to stop drinking . I don't want any of this spiritual lines crap . But after day you keep going back and you hear people tell their stories and you think about your own life and you do realize that it's like , well , just because I'm a certain age , there's no reason I can't keep growing up and maturing and learning more about myself and learning how to be a slightly better person in the world . So I'm really grateful for all of that . I mean , I almost feel lucky to have to have gotten to the place where I needed to be in a 12 step program , because I don't know that I would have found my way to spiritual growth . I'm doing air quotes , but I you know .

Janette 33:21

But I do mean it . Yeah , a little bit of sarcasm , but a little bit of love for it as well , yeah . But well , to that point is that you know , along the tenets of program there are people that you're telling that have to , like your son and your husband . Have you had any fallout from that ? That ? You know that you talked about someone in this book and that you've had to have to sit down or make an amends or say I'm sorry , prevent that in the whole process .

Laurie Woolever 33:50

I tried to proceed with caution before I even started so that I wouldn't have to make amends . Mary Carr , her book , the Art of Memoirs super , super useful as a blueprint for how to proceed with sensitivity . So I tried to do that and really just keep the focus on telling my own story . With respect to my son , I changed his name and really didn't write much about him after the age of , I think , eight or nine . I mean , that's kind of you know . The book ends a few years later . But I thought about him a lot , like what is he going to think about this book ? As I said , he's 16 . He could not care less about what I'm doing and my career . He's not interested in reading the book . I have offered it to him and I've said if you want to read it , we could talk about it . Couldn't be less interested and I think that's totally appropriate and I'm thrilled .

Rachel 34:37

That is age appropriate .

Janette 34:39

Yeah , we have teenagers are so caring about their parents at all .

Laurie Woolever 34:42

Yeah , and I think , god , if I were his age , or even if I were my own age , and my mother wrote a book about her feelings , I'd be like , oh God , no , you know I had would have no interest in it At some point . He'll probably read it when he's older , maybe , and we'll talk about it . And then , as far as my ex husband you know , I also really tried to treat that whole situation with as much sensitivity and respect as I could and just really again keep the focus on me , my behavior , my decisions , my feelings , and not use it as a place to relitigate any conflict . Obviously , it takes two to make a marriage work or fail . But whatever feelings I had around his participation and the failure of our marriage , I didn't think it was .

Laurie Woolever 35:22

This is not the place for that and I think it's clear from reading it that I'm the one who did the damage , I'm the one who behaved badly . So I let him know that I was writing it and I offered to , I gave him an advanced copy and , you know , marked up the places where he was mentioned so that he wouldn't have to read the whole thing if he didn't want to . And we have not spoken about it since then and we , you know we speak regularly because we're co-parenting our son , but he has not said to me I read it and I want to talk about it , or I've got a conflict with this or that he may not have read it , I don't know .

Janette 35:53

But with respect to the book and your career , I know that when Anthony Bourdain passed away , there was a lot about you being part of his last text that he had texted you the night before . I believe it was , and I think he what was the quote exactly ?

Laurie Woolever 36:09

He said we'll survive and I'll live . And by we'll survive he meant , you know , he and his , his girlfriend , who were having trouble in their relationship . So we'll survive and I'll live .

Rachel 36:19

That is just when I read that . It's really hard to . I can't even imagine what you were thinking .

Laurie Woolever 36:24

I mean yeah yeah , it's just really . It was really just like man , you said you would live , you know , it was like the one thing you said you were going to do and I think when he , when he wrote that to me , he meant it . You know , and I think you know things took a turn for him a few hours later , 12 hours later , whatever it was . But I don't think and this is my you know , we will never know right , because you just you never know . You only have the evidence that's left behind . But my strong belief is that he wasn't sitting around waiting until everyone left him alone so that he could end his life .

Laurie Woolever 36:56

I really think it was a very spontaneous decision , made in a moment of extreme pain and anguish and humiliation and anger , and unfortunately , it was a decision that there's no going back from . I mean , at what point ? Because I know that you are kind of considered an authority on him and writing on him . How did you make that decision to go ahead , had this good way of working together and it was just meant to be another in a series . So we were not very far into that process , but I felt the obligation to finish it , not least in part because I had already gotten my advance and needed it to support myself and I didn't want to have to give it back and I , you know , it was really that one was a great way to kind of dive into all of his work and watch a lot of his shows again and reread the things he'd written and really just sort of .

Laurie Woolever 38:06

You know it was part of the grieving process was to sort of spend time with him on the page and on the screen and at the same time , you know , a few weeks after he died , his publisher came to me with the idea for the oral biography and asked me if I would want to do it and you know I didn't even think about saying no . I thought here's another way to sort of spend time with him , to get to know him , to spend time with all of these people who knew him and loved him in different ways at different points in his life . Really , at the end of that process I really understood him a lot better . I thought I knew everything about him because of my job and I talked to probably over 90 people and every single one of them I learned some a new story or a new fact or a new facet of his life , that that I hadn't known before .

Rachel 38:42

I like how you quote so many people and it's the way of seeing him through other people's eyes not just your own , but the and the fact that you said in an interview I read how you were interviewed yourself for the book but because you were the editor and the creator , it already had your point of view or perspective , so you didn't feel you needed to need to have your own quote voice in there . But I had copied down that Nigella Lawson quote . She said Tony had a way of talking about himself honestly

Journey to Sobriety and New Beginnings

Rachel 39:16

without revealing himself really . She said I mean everything you read about him . He's not telling lies , he's hiding in plain sight , and I thought that really summed it up for why .

Laurie Woolever 39:28

Also , everyone was confused after his death why , also , everyone was confused after his death ? Yeah , and he was , you know , he shared what he needed to share and I think he did sometimes really love his life and love that he was getting to go all these places and meet people and do all of these things , and sometimes he would sort of say I'm tired , I'm burnt out . It was much , much more complicated than I think the public persona would lead a person to believe .

Rachel 39:53

And do you think writing that book ? It's not a memoir , it's like an oral history . But did that prepare you or excite you or ignite you to want to write your own memoir and your own words ?

Laurie Woolever 40:05

Yeah , it was . I mean , it was a great exercise . Both of those books were a great exercise in knowing that I can start with just a pile of raw data or start with nothing and make a book , that I'm capable of doing that , that I have the focus and the ability to do it . I think that I have always wanted to write the memoir . Long before , even before I started working for Tony , I always thought , well , I'm having all these experiences , I'm writing things down , I've got journals and I've got emails and I've got , you know , great memory , despite how much abuse I've , you know , given to my brain over the years with drugs and alcohol . So it's something that I've long wanted to do .

Laurie Woolever 40:48

But I think I had to sort of clear the desk and get those two projects done and then feel , you know both that I was sort of a viable commodity in the publishing world and also that , okay , I've told those stories . And now I think , yeah , I wanted to come out from the shadow a little bit . And I think that you know people like Mario and Tony . They cast such long shadows that I don't think you ever fully get out from under them if you've been associated with them professionally . But I thought well , let me at least take this opportunity now to tell more of my story and what things were like from my perspective , and things that are maybe a little bit more relatable . And what I've found in the feedback that I've gotten to my memoir is that it's like everyone else the 99 , you know , the 99% of us that are behind the scenes right , there's so many people behind the scenes .

Rachel 41:37

Having known that , working on Rachel Ray's website and her cooking her food magazine , every day with Rachel Ray , I mean , you see the swirling vortex that is the assistants , the producers , pr people , everybody who needs a piece of them . It's really , it's frightening at times , yeah , and it's everyone feels , at least from my experience .

Laurie Woolever 42:02

We all felt like ownership and care and wanting to make the best , whatever TV show , book , movie , but it's , you know , you're when it , when it's out there , it's just like oh , that's Tony show , that's Rachel's magazine . Right , there's , there's . I want to shine a little bit of light on the rest of us who care a lot and who work really hard .

Janette 42:22

Yeah , I think that every I mean most people want to tell their story . Even if it seems as if they're just a mom down the road , they have a story to be told . I mean , they had a childhood , they went through things . It's like you know , with your friends you were like you wanna tell people the struggles that you have and what you've overcome and what you've done , and it's just , I mean , I think if you've done anything , it is kind of an amazing accomplishment to write your own autobiography you know to say this is what I went through , because I think we all want to do that .

Janette 42:55

I'm sure you've left out some stories or your editor made you cut quite a few things for for a variety of reasons , but I really am happy , you know , when people do do this and I'm happy for you that you had this opportunity to to get it all out . You know , and also had the vehicle of this other interest that people will listen because of these long shadow figures , people . There's like a breadcrumb in there that you're like . I kind of know a little bit about this woman , but what more do I need to know ? And it's a fascinating story .

Laurie Woolever 43:25

Well , thank you .

Janette 43:26

It's a fascinating story . I really enjoyed reading it and I think people should read it . It's got a lot of you've got such a great skill for writing and telling stories . And there's these scenes you know about the whipped cream scenes that really stand out . You really paint vivid vignettes Trying to lose weight . You know the self-destructive behavior . There's a piece of all of us in your story and we can relate in some ways or another .

Janette 43:50

So I recommend it and I'm so glad that we got a chance to talk with you . We usually close these interviews by asking you to say something that you love about New Jersey .

Laurie Woolever 44:01

Yeah Well , so my ex-husband was from New Jersey and his family . A lot of them are still there , so we'd spend a lot of time . And the thing that I really loved , especially at this time of year , is going to the beach . I mean just the beaches . The New York beaches have nothing on New Jersey . So we would go , depending on who we were with and where we were . We would go to Bradley Beach because we had a place , a friend's house , we could park at , so that was a big deal . Or when our son was of a certain age , we would go to Point Pleasant or to Seaside and do the boardwalk fun stuff . We love Sandy Hook . Take the ferry from Manhattan to Sandy Hook and go to the part where everyone keeps their clothes on . We went to Brigantine one summer and spent a week there . I think people have no idea . If you don't know , if you've never been , it's like you can't believe how clean and cold the ocean is , beautiful , wide sandy beaches . I mean it's just extraordinary .

Janette 44:54

What's really funny about that ? I think you've gone to more beaches than both Rachel and I combined .

Rachel 45:00

Totally .

Janette 45:01

And you don't even listen when .

Rachel 45:03

I replay and edit this . I'll write those down . Yeah , I don't know .

Janette 45:07

Well , thank you so much for joining us on Lost in Jersey .

Laurie Woolever 45:10

Thank you both so much .

Rachel 45:15

This podcast was produced by Rachel Martens and Jeanette Afsharian . You can find us on Spotify , iTunes and Buzzsprout . Thanks for listening . See you next week .