Padma Lakshmi Opens Up About Her Past Sexual Assault on Today Show: ‘Don’t Want That Rape to Define Me’
Top Chef host and ACLU ambassador Padma Lakshmi appeared on the Today show this morning to give a gripping, emotional account on her decision to come forward and write about her own experience as a rape victim.
In September of this year, the rest of the country watched recently appointed Supreme Court justice Brett Kavanaugh face misconduct allegations amid his confirmation battle, Lakshmi penned an op-ed for the New York Times detailing her assault.
“I don’t know if I would have written that piece if President Trump hadn’t tweeted that Friday night of, you know, if it was so bad or whatever he said, ‘Why didn’t she report it? Why didn’t her loving parents report it?’ Well, a lot of us don’t report it,” Lakshmi said on NBC this morning. “There’s no upside to reporting it, there was no upside for Dr. Ford, clearly, but she’s a hero to many of us.”
She went on to explain that originally she had just tweeted about her experience, since the #whyididntreport hashtag was going around, but then realized “it deserves more than a hashtag.”
“At one point I said, I’m not going to do this, and I couldn’t sleep,” Lakshmi added. “Then, I thought, how am I going to feel if [Kavanaugh] gets confirmed and I didn’t say something. I’m going to regret that for the rest of my life.”
She then advised other victims of rape to not confront their pain like she did, as the writing process for her Times piece didn’t allow her to “stop to think about my own personal well-being.”
“I don’t want that rape or what happened to me to define me, I have to move on and let the good things in my life define me,” Lakshmi said. “And I’ve had so many great things happen to me.”
She continued on this point:
“I don’t want to be known as the girl from that cooking show who was raped. You know? And I think women feel that way. They feel like they have an invisible scarlet letter that this happened to them. I think we have to stop thinking about these people that it happens to. There’s millions of us. Millions. I know more women who its happened to than it hasn’t happened to, in some form or another. We have to stop thinking about them as victims and think of them as survivors.”
When asked what she does want to be known for, Lakshmi brought up her work for the ACLU on behalf of immigrants.
“I was reading about the teargassing of children on the border, and it’s devastating. You know, I am an immigrant and I really identify with those people. my mother literally came to this country with $100 in her pocket,” she explained. “Then someone leaves their home and everything they know and belong to, to go to another country, it’s because they have little other choice, and we forget that.”
Lakshmi concluded the segment by reminding viewers that America has “plenty to share” and is a great country because of immigrants.
As for her passion for advocacy work, the star chef said “I wouldn’t have even said I’m a very political person, but I seem to have found myself speaking out on a variety of issues, just because I think, when you get older, you have a power that you didn’t have when you were young. You feel able to speak out.”
Watch the full interview above, via NBC.
[image via screengrab]
