Paula Deen Biography

Paula Ann Hiers Deen (born January 19, 1947) is an American celebrity chef, cooking show host, restaurateur, author, actress, Emmy Award-winning television personality. Deen resides in Savannah, Georgia, where she owns and operates The Lady & Sons restaurant with her sons, Jamie and Bobby Deen. She has published fourteen cookbooks. Though married in 2004 to Michael Groover, she uses the surname Deen, from her first marriage.

Early life

Deen was born Paula Ann Hiers in Albany, Georgia, the daughter of Corrie A. (born Paul) and Earl Wayne Hiers, Sr. She grew up Baptist, and is still deeply devoted to her faith. Her parents died before she was 23, and an early marriage ended in divorce. In her 20s, Deen suffered from panic attacks and agoraphobia. She then focused on cooking for her family as something she could do without leaving her house. Her grandmother Irene Paul had taught her the hand-me-down art of Southern cooking; one of the only places she felt safe was at her own stove, making thousands of pots of chicken and dumplings. She later moved to Savannah, Georgia, with her sons. In 1989, she divorced her husband, Jimmy Deen, to whom she had been married since 1965. She was left with only $200 and money was tight raising both her kids and her younger brother, Earl ("Bubba"). She tried hanging wallpaper, working as a bank teller, and selling real estate and insurance. She then started a catering service, making sandwiches and meals, which her sons Jamie and Bobby delivered.

Restaurants

Deen's home business, The Bag Lady, soon outgrew her kitchen. She first moved into the Best Western on Savannah's southside on Abercorn Street in 1991 with a restaurant called The Lady. In January 1996, Deen opened her restaurant, The Lady & Sons, in downtown Savannah, on West Congress Street. Within a few years, the restaurant moved to the old White Hardware building on Whitaker. USA Today named The Lady & Sons the "International Meal of the Year" in 1999. The specialty is a buffet of Southern "comfort foods." Every buffet meal includes a salad bar and one dessert. Her sons are also involved in managing the restaurant, which is popular with tourists visiting Savannah.

In 2008, Deen opened another restaurant, the Paula Deen Buffet, at Harrah's Tunica Casino in Tunica County, Mississippi. It has an entrance facade modeled on Deen's home in Savannah and features Southern cooking. As of June 2013, the Paula Deen Buffet does not appear on Harrah's Tunica Casino's website list of restaurants.

In September 2009, Deen announced a new dessert line to be sold at Walmart including signature pies Apple Crunch Top, Dark Rum Pecan, Old Fashioned Fudge and Gooey Butter Cake bars.

In addition to these, Deen currently co-owns Uncle Bubba's Oyster House in Savannah, Georgia.

Books and magazines

In 1997, Deen self-published The Lady & Sons Savannah Country Cooking and The Lady & Sons Savannah Country Cooking 2. Both cookbooks featured traditional Southern recipes. She has since published two more, written with Martha Nesbit. Deen has appeared on QVC and on The Oprah Winfrey Show (first in 2002, twice in 2007 and once in 2010). Her life story is featured in Extraordinary Comebacks: 201 Inspiring Stories of Courage, Triumph, and Success (2007, Sourcebooks).

In April 2007, Simon & Schuster published Deen's memoir, It Ain't All About the Cookin'. She launched a lifestyle magazine called Cooking with Paula Deen in November 2005, which claimed a circulation of 7.5 million in March 2009.

Food Network and other television

Deen's relationship with Food Network began in 1999, when her friend Erin Lewis introduced her to Gordon Elliott, who then introduced her to her then agent, Artist's Agency owner Barry Weiner. Elliott took her through the city for a series of Doorknock Dinners episodes. She also appeared on Ready, Set, Cook!. Deen was invited to shoot a pilot named Afternoon Tea in early 2001. The network liked it, and eventually gave Deen her own show, Paula's Home Cooking, which premiered in November 2002. Paula's Home Cooking was originally taped in Millbrook, New York at the home of Gordon Elliott, the show's executive producer. Deen mentioned on the March 13, 2006, edition of The Daily Buzz that the next batch of episodes of her show would be taped at her home in Savannah, Georgia. According to the first of those episodes, actual production at her new Savannah home began in November 2005.

Since then, Deen has been given two more Food Network shows, Paula's Party and Paula's Best Dishes. Paula's Party premiered on the Food Network in 2006 and Paula's Best Dishes debuted on June 8, 2008.

A televised biography of Deen was aired on an episode of the Food Network's Chefography program, in March 2006.

On June 21, 2013, due to a controversy regarding Deen's admission, during a deposition for a lawsuit, that she had used racial slurs, The Food Network announced they will not renew her contract.

Personal life

In 2004, Deen married Michael Groover (born 1956), a tugboat captain in the Port of Savannah, Georgia. Deen has two children from a previous marriage. The wedding was featured in a Food Network show in 2004. Their wedding took place at Bethesda Academy in Savannah. Paula is a supporter of Bethesda Academy, and asked Old Savannah Tours to donate $1 to the organization for each ticket purchased for the Paula Deen Store ticket sale. In January 2012, she announced she has had type 2 diabetes for the last three years.

Other work

Deen made her film debut in Elizabethtown, starring Orlando Bloom and Kirsten Dunst in 2005. She played the aunt of Bloom's character, and her cooking was featured. A Food Network special, Paula Goes Hollywood, aired in conjunction with the film's premiere.

Awards and honors

In June 2007, Deen won a Daytime Emmy Awards (Outstanding Lifestyle Host) for Paula's Home Cooking. In October 2010, she was selected as the Grand Marshal of the Tournament of Roses Parade, and presided over the 2011 Rose Parade before the Rose Bowl Game on January 1, 2011.

Criticism

High fat, salt, sugar recipes and diabetes

Deen has faced extensive criticism for the high amounts of fat, salt, and sugar in her recipes. She faced particularly strong objections with the release of Lunch-Box Set, a cookbook aimed at children, with Barbara Walters saying of the book, "You tell kids to have cheesecake for breakfast. You tell them to have chocolate cake and meatloaf for lunch. And french fries. Doesn't it bother you that you're adding to this?" Celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain commented in 2011 that he "would think twice before telling an already obese nation that it's OK to eat food that is killing us."

On January 17, 2012, Deen announced that she had been diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes three years before. It was also disclosed that Deen is a paid spokesperson for the Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk, the main export of which is insulin. She was called a hypocrite for continuing to promote her high-fat and sugar diet while disclosing her medical condition only when it benefited her in representing the drug company to market their diabetes management program.

Racial epithet controversy

Lisa Jackson, a former employee of restaurants owned by Deen and her brother, Earl "Bubba" Hiers, filed a lawsuit alleging racial and sexual discrimination. Jackson, who is white, is alleging that Deen made derogatory remarks regarding African Americans which were personally offensive because her nieces are bi-racial with an African-American father.

In a story reported in June 2013, by the National Enquirer, Deen stated in her deposition that she has used the "N-word" at times, saying "Yes, of course. But that's just not a word that we use. I don't " I don't know. As time has gone on things have changed since the 60's in the south." Deen said she employed the term when telling her husband about an incident "when a black man burst into the bank that I was working at and put a gun to my head. I didn't feel real favorable towards him", Deen said of the bank robber.

Deen also admitted she was sure that she had used the word since that incident. Jackson's attorney responded by asking Deen to explain how the N-word might be used in a "non-mean way". Deen said she probably used the word while repeating a conversation between blacks. She said that her family, including Hiers, do not discriminate against any race and object to the N word "being used in any cruel or mean behavior". Jackson alleged that Deen also mused about wedding plans for her brother with a "true Southern plantation-style theme" with black male servers but rejected the plans "because the media would be on me about that", and denied having used the "N-word" when discussing the wedding waitstaff.

As a result, Food Network announced that it would not renew her contract when it expired at the end of June 2013. On June 24, 2013, Smithfield Foods dropped her as a spokeswoman. In addition, Walmart, Target, QVC, Caesars Entertainment, Home Depot, diabetes drug company Novo Nordisk, J.C. Penney, Sears, and KMart have terminated or suspended endorsement deals with Deen. However, several companies have expressed their intent to continue their endorsement deals with Deen. Former President Jimmy Carter urged that Deen be forgiven, stating, "I think she has been punished, perhaps overly severely, for her honesty in admitting it and for the use of the word in the distant past. She's apologized profusely."

One week after she issued a public apology, her new book Paula Deen's New Testament: 250 Favorite Recipes, All Lightened Up surged to the top spot on Amazon's best-sellers list, after charting in the 1500s earlier in the week. However, Deen's publisher Ballantine Books decided to cancel the deal to publish five of her books including this one which was to be released in October 2013. In response, Deen's literary agent, Janis Donnaud, expressed her confidence that these books will be released by another publisher. Deen announced on July 4, 2013, that she had left her agent of more than ten years, Barry Weiner. One week later, Deen fired her legal team of the firm Oliver Maner and hired Grace Speights, a Washington, D.C.-based partner in Morgan Lewis's Labor and Employment practice.

On August 12, 2013, a federal judge dismissed the claims of racial discrimination that were brought by Lisa Jackson, who helped manage one of Deen's restaurants in Savannah, Georgia. The judge ruled that Jackson cannot claim to be a victim of racial discrimination targeting African-American workers as she is white and that she is just a "an accidental victim of the alleged racial discrimination." The ruling though does not have any effect on the sexual harassment allegations, that are focused on the conduct of Earl "Bubba" Hiers, who is Deen's brother. Later, both sides agreed to dismiss the lawsuit "without any award of costs or fees to any party." No other settlement details were released. On August 23, 2013, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Georgia Southern Division dismissed the discrimination lawsuit levied against Deen and her brother as well. Because the case was dismissed without prejudice, Jackson cannot refile. Both sides agreed to drop the lawsuit "without any award of costs or fees to any party".

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Filmography

Year	Title	Role
2002"2013	Paula's Home Cooking (television)	Host
2005	Elizabethtown	Aunt Dora
2006"2008	Paula's Party (television)	Host
2006	Chefography (television)	Subject
2008"2013	Paula's Best Dishes (television)	Host
2009	Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List (television)	Guest star
2009	Extreme Makeover: Home Edition (television)	Guest star
2011	Top Chef (television)	Guest judge
2012	Oprah's Next Chapter	Subject
2012	Who Do You Think You Are? (television)	Subject
2012-2013	MasterChef (television)	Guest judge