On How To Proceed: An Interview With Laurie Woolever

It's funny, I have always been fascinated by Anthony Bourdain, and had processed his life and death with the same detachment I would most celebrities, but I was surprised by the grief I felt while reading your book. I found most of the anecdotes and memories from his closest people made me think that his biggest defect was loneliness. Maybe that's a more romanticized way of saying he was depressed, but that also feels too limiting. Were you surprised by how many of his friends and colleagues saw that side of him?

Tony surrounded himself with bright, empathetic people, so, no, it didn't surprise me that so many of the people I interviewed for the book picked up on his tendency toward darkness, and his increasing exhaustion and loneliness in the later years. He made so many throwaway suicide jokes, in writing and on TV and in conversation, that it became a schtick. But of course, there's so much painful second-guessing that happens in the wake of a suicide; specifically, how could I have let this happen? People who worked closely with Tony for years, cared deeply about him, but they—we—became and remained part of a trusted inner circle because we understood his boundaries. He called the shots, and he didn't want to be fussed over.

He fell in love a lot. Do you think that was one of his defects/addictions?

Tony was absolutely a romantic. In the book, one of his ex-girlfriends said that he really loved, like old-school love, and some of the people I spoke with for the book shared very similar, sometimes troubling observations about the obsessive nature of his romantic relationships. Again, I am hesitant to make any kind of declaration about his addictions and defects. When he was alive and talking about being passionately in love, I believed that he was really happy and fulfilled. Within the context of my job as his assistant, I wanted him to get what he wanted. With a few years' perspective and sobriety, and knowing what I know now, I recognize that I myself was treating sex and romance like a drug in those last few years of Tony's life; I had only the faintest idea that this was addict behavior.

Despite all his internal struggles, why do you think he was so good at connecting as a performer? Like, he seems universally revered, which is rare. When did you notice that he was good at being Anthony Bourdain?

In speaking with people who knew Tony as a younger man, people who cooked with him in the 80s and 90s, it's clear that he had always been a really good storyteller, naturally funny, and with excellent timing. Having a captive audience of restaurant co-workers gave him a chance to hone that skill on a daily basis. Knowing that, it's not at all surprising that he could successfully square whatever depression and anxiety and addictive tendencies he might have had, against this extraordinary capacity to entertain. The thing that surprised me more was how shy and slightly awkward he could be. I first met him in 2002, before he hired me to help with his first cookbook. I had just read Kitchen Confidential, and I was still working for Mario Batali at the time, so I was half-expecting to be dick-slapped, but he was really polite and soft-spoken and didn't really make much eye contact, which was fine with me, because that's my default, too.

The reverence thing—I think that comes from the combination of street cred, of having worked a physically hard job for nearly 30 years and really understanding grease traps and animal guts and mop heads and all the unglamorous shit that goes into restaurant life, and then being a good-looking, articulate, wildly smart and funny guy whose job it was to seek out pleasure, be a good listener, and not take himself all that seriously. And for the record, as the person who opened his fan mail at the production office, he was a well-loved public figure, but not universally revered. For every ten love letters, there would be one bitching about his politics or foul language or the fact that he killed and ate animals. Someone once took the time to rip a paperback copy of Kitchen Confidential into tiny shreds and mail it to the office.

Did he ever ask for help?

Personally speaking, no, Tony never came to me and said, "I am struggling; can you please help me?"

In that last week before he died, I was one of many people who offered support when it was clear he was going through something painful. I wish he had taken me, or someone, up on that offer, but he didn't.

Did he have rage issues?

I've heard some stories of rage in the field, and I've seen some pretty nuclear emails, but in the context of my work with him, I can think of only one time when he got really angry. It was a righteous rage; there had been a major scheduling error, with two really high-stakes events happening at the same time, and in trying to cover their own ass, the person responsible for it had thrown me under the bus. Tony asked me to make very sure that it hadn't in fact been my fault, and made it safe for me to admit if I had been the one who screwed up. Once it was clear that the fault wasn't mine, he unleashed some fury on the guilty party. And actually, I can think of a few other instances in which he laid into someone who had pissed him off, but it was always with a scathing and inevitably hilarious email. I never witnessed him losing his temper in person.

Did you ever see him cry?

I never saw him cry, no.

Because you're in recovery yourself, do you think you reframed any of his story with the same courtesy and humanity that one alcoholic gives to another?

I don't think I did any conscious reframing, but I did try to treat his whole story with as much courtesy and humanity as possible. The question of “Tony as addict” is really a delicate and specific thing. There are a few people in the book who say, straight up, that Tony was an addict, and on its face, that seems like a fair enough assessment. He wrote freely about his adventures and his struggles. He kicked narcotics and used methadone for a while, but he wasn't a program guy, and he wasn't sober, and never claimed to be sober. When I told him that I had quit drinking and started attending meetings, he was actually really dismissive.

The best guidance I got on how to treat this question of “Tony as addict” was actually through a series of rejections. There were a few sober writer friends of Tony's, people he liked and respected, all of whom declined to be interviewed for the book because they didn't want to go on record taking his inventory (to use some 12-step language). I was disappointed not to get a chance to talk with them about Tony, but it was also a really useful reminder about how to proceed.

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Laurie Woolever writer, editor, and public speaker, and for nearly a decade, worked as the lieutenant to the late Anthony Bourdain. Her most recent book, Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography, was recently released in paperback.