Joe Rogan Opens Up About Close Friendship with Anthony Bourdain and His Passing
Joe Rogan got candid about his close friendship with beloved chef Anthony Bourdain during a recent episode of his podcast.
On the Wednesday edition of The Joe Rogan Experience, Rogan was joined by comedian Sam Morril.
At some point during their conversation, they began to discuss traveling as comedians and Morril praised Bourdain’s ability to fall in love with wherever he was traveling.
Rogan agreed and eventually said that the chef’s passing hit him particularly hard.
“When he died, I was fucked up for a while,” Rogan revealed.
“You guys were close,” Morril replied.
“He’s just like a guy that I was so excited that he was my friend. You know, like when I, first met him, I said, ‘My wife says you’re my boyfriend.’ And he was like, ‘Okay,'” Rogan recalled laughing.
He detailed that the pair bonded over a shared love of UFC.
“The only thing that saved me, I think was that I met him at a UFC and he was a giant UFC fan. And this was actually before he had gotten into jujitsu, his wife was into jujitsu and then he started getting into the UFC and then he started coming to the shows and then he started coming to my standup and then we started hanging out and then, you know, went to dinner with him a bunch of times,” he recalled.
Rogan compared going to dinner with Bourdain to “showing up at a rock show with Mick Jagger.”
“It’s like, you were with Bourdain. The chefs would all come out and they would, you know, they would insist on like, just like off the menu. ‘Let us cook for you.’ Yeah, it was incredible,” Rogan said.
As the conversation continued, Rogan recalled Bourdain being just a phone call or text away for travel advice.
“I used to be able to text him and say like, ‘Hey, I’m going to Tokyo. Where should I eat?’ It was the best. He would tell you, like, ‘You gotta go to this sushi place. You gotta go to this place.’ And he would like give you a detailed rundown of all the places to go to,” he said.
“I have an old phone that — I change my number all the time and I keep this number because I have text messages from him. I’m just like, I’m not getting rid of that number. I’m just gonna keep that number just for that. Just to go over the text messages and see pictures and shit he would send me,” Rogan said emotionally.
“Damn, I’m sorry,” Merril replied.
“There’s a lot of photos of him and stuff around the studio that remind me,” Rogan said, holding back tears. “But yeah, it sucks when you think you could have helped. That’s what sucks the most, you know, when a friend takes their own life and you’re like, God dammit, I wish I was there. I think if I was there, I could have helped.”
Listen above via The Joe Rogan Experience.
