ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Your daughter Krishna is 11.
Why do a picture book now?
It was a story that I told Krishna when she was smaller.
Credit: Stephanie Diani/Bravo
Her original story was much more elaborate and had a squirrel family in it as well.
Why are you asking me for pomegranates?"
That’s kind of what spurred the story.
‘Tomatoes for Neela’ by Padma Lakshmi.amazon
There’s nothing to me that screams summer more than tomatoes.
I think tomatoes, to me, just seem like a juicy, sexy fruit.
So, it’s not a whole season 2.
We’re calling it a “special holiday edition.”
We’re filming now for Thanksgiving.
We wanted to bust some myths about Thanksgiving.
We go and spend Hanukkah with some Ashkenazi New York Jewish people.
We do Miami Christmas Eve with Cubans.
And we do Korean New Year in Los Angeles K-Town.
I only was able to safely go back and film a month or two ago.
Is that something you ever personally experienced?
I want her not to be ashamed of it.
She was not making me these pretty sandwiches with crust cut off.
I wound up going to school with smelly brown stews and curries over rice.
It was always a nail-biting experience opening that Tupperware.
Has Krishna raised any concerns with you over the past year’s crimes against AAPI?
She presents very much as East Asian.
I said, “This is your knife.
It lives in this sleeve.
And whenever she got to take the knife out, it became an event.
