Paula Deen recounts two men forcing her to apologize after she admitted to using racial slurs in 2013. “What am I apologizing for?” the author and television personality recalls saying.
During an interview with the Hollywood Reporter in support of a new documentary called Canceled: The Paula Deen Story, the 78-year-old celebrity cook works to get her full story into the public discourse.
Instead, Deen says, only the story of the woman who sued her is remembered.
“They took this woman [the plaintiff], who is a known liar, they took her word and ran with it, and no one ever investigated any further,” Deen says. “I was not going to be happy until the world saw the truth.”
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- In 2013, Deen and her brother Bubba Hiers were sued by a former employee named Lisa Jackson on charges of racial discrimination and sexual harassment.
- The racial discrimination charge was tossed by a judge, but during a deposition, Deen admitted to using the N-word as recently as the 1980s.
- The controversy led to multiple sponsors dropping her and several of her television shows being paused or canceled.
Deen and sons Jamie and Bobby were interviewed by THR, and it’s clear from the start they disagree on several key points, including whether or not the documentary should have been filmed and released to begin with. It’s as much a Q&A as it is a familiar squabble between a mother and her two sons.
Her main reason for agreeing to let Billy Corben make this film was to clear her conscience and get her story out there.
“I kind of want my soul back,” she says.
It would appear the film helped her with that, as a Canceled: The Paula Deen Story review in the Hollywood Reporter criticized the project as being too sympathetic and offering more excuses than accountability.
During this interview, a question about her 2013 video apology gets interrupted.
Paula Deen with her sons Bobby and Jamie and filmmaker Billy Corben
“They made me,” Deen says. “They brought me to N.Y. The two men I couldn’t tell you who they were —“
At that point, her son Jamie interrupts to say she was not forced to apologize, after which Deen sets the scene of her with two men in a big New York City skyscraper.
“They took me upstairs and introduced me to these two men and they said, ‘You need to put out an apology.’ And I said, ‘What am I apologizing for? What am I supposed to be sorry about? I told the truth [at the deposition].'”
How To Watch the Paula Deen Documentary
Canceled: The Paula Deen Story debuted at the Toronto Film Festival last weekend. There is no trailer for the movie, and so far, it’s not been announced as picked up by a distributor.
Today, Deen says she understands why using the N-word is bad and says it makes her shiver to hear it. When asks if she’d do anything different, she quips that she’d choose a different lawyer, one with a tongue.
“They asked me a question … This group of attorneys from an established well-thought-of firm. They were horrible; they were horrible. The lawyer sitting there with me never opened his mouth. Not one time,” Deen recalls.
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