Giada De Laurentiis left the Food Network after 21 years and is not missing her old work schedule.
In a new interview, De Laurentiis reflects on what led her to leave the cable network after so long and focus on her lifestyle brand.
“I would switch gears without knowing it every seven years. So I did Everyday Italian for seven years. Then I got pregnant, and I was like ‘OK I can’t do that show anymore. I got to do a reincarnation of the show because I’m now pregnant. I’m a different person,’” De Laurentiis said on Rebecca Minkoff’s podcast Superwomen.
De Laurentiis was one of the most recognizable faces on the Food Network and “was lucky enough to be at a period of time” at the network where she was able to make suggestions about her next projects.
“The landscape hadn’t really been fully discovered yet, and so I think they were just more open to the talent,” she added.
After multiple projects at the network, she decided to take a leap of faith in a new direction, a decision she didn’t take lightly.
“I just decided that at a certain point, and it took awhile for me to make this decision because I was very fearful of leaving Food Network,” she said. “Because when you’re a big fish in that pond and then you get out, who knows what’s going to happen next. But I really started to become interested in the entrepreneurial journey and I realized I couldn’t do both.”
De Laurentiis recalled that it was about two and a half years ago that she finally decided “to make the jump” and focus on her lifestyle brand Giadzy, adding, “I’ll still do TV. I have a deal with Amazon, so I still do a little bit of that, but it’s definitely not the schedule I used to keep.”
The TV personality said she doesn’t miss Food Network, noting, “I should say yes, but it’s not. I think it’s because I got burnt out. I really worked so hard for so long, I got burnt out. I need excitement. I get bored, and if I’m getting bored, my viewers are getting bored.”
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