Giada De Laurentiis is opening up about why she left the Food Network after serving as a popular television host for more than two decades. In a new interview on Rebecca Minkoff’s podcast “Superwomen,” De Laurentiis revealed what encouraged her to exit the network and focus on her lifestyle brand, Giadzy.
“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. She continued, saying she “was lucky enough to be at a period of time” at Food Network where she had control over her own projects. “The landscape hadn’t really been fully discovered yet, and so I think they were just more open to the talent,” she said of the network.
De Laurentiis ultimately decided to part ways with the Food Network after spending years working on several projects. The decision, she said, was not an easy one to make: “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. 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.”
It was about two and half years ago when De Laurentiis decided to “make the jump” and focus on Giadzy. “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,” she explained.
When asked if she misses the Food Network, De Laurentiis said she doesn’t: “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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