Paula Deen on InnerVIEWS with Ernie Manouse

she's a TV host and best-selling author who's taken country cooking to an all-time high but her life hasn't always been easy married right out of high school orphaned by age 23 and trapped for many years inside her own home while she battled with agoraphobia eventually she triumphed and became a restaurant and TV sensation hello i'm ernie manouse coming up on interviews our conversation with the queen of southern cooking Paula Deen in your wildest dreams could you have imagined this is the way your life no honey not in one trillion years never never never my imagination is not that good to start with no no what did you think your life would hold as a child growing up what did you think you would be you know it's funny as a channel growing up I wanted to be a wife and mommy like my mother I guess that's a lot of southern girls ambitions you know from the 50s and 60s you know it didn't seem that important for the girls to get an education I mean it was a bonus but you could certainly live without it and there was though awhile that in my senior year of high school that I really really wanted to be a model a model yes I just I did a little modeling and I loved being in beauty contests pageants and all that stuff so yeah but my daddy my daddy squelched that pretty quickly when I announced to him that I was going to Atlanta to Patricia Stevens modeling school and he said over my dead body will my daughter unattended go to that big city Atlanta Georgia and getting eaten up was there ever a time before all of this that's happened to you now happened that you ever thought back I thought I should have gone to him and I should have become that model no you know I really don't have any regrets at the time I graduated my mother and daddy had given me a gift for graduation and it was a trip to New York City well my daddy's baby brother was a model in New York City and he was he was um he worked a lot he he was on TV he was like the Salem man yeah you know it was before it was before celebrities realized that there was a lot of money in commercials and models were still doing this thing while I went up there and spent two weeks with Uncle Bob and I'm so fascinated so fascinated by at all and he said Paul an if you'll stay I'll help you get work but I was in love there was just there was this boy waiting on me and I'll Vinnie Georgia and that that desire was bigger than the modeling so that boy back home is that the one that became your first husband yes that was my first husband the father of my children how was life for you as a married woman at those days oh it's so it sucked I wanted a very good wife what because I was so devastated over the premature death of my father yeah in my mother you know it was it was a devastating time for us and the trip that I took with a agoraphobia at that time started kind of taking shape and I was oh it wasn't good for people who don't know your story house where were you in your relationship when your parents passed I was 19 years old when my daddy died and he was just 40 years old and he was just the light of our life he was this wonderful man that was never without a smile always laugh and and anybody that ever met him just fell in love with him and like I said he was on he was our anchor and for him to die at 40 years old it was unthinkable it was just unthinkable you know my world had been perfect and then all of a sudden at 19 what are we doing why are we having to deal with death you know at this early age I don't want to deal with this and so it's very very hard cuz I was a daddy's girl I mean let's face it there's something about a girl and her daddy and to make the situation even worse my mother my best friend this beautiful young woman died of bone cancer at 44 just four years after my daddy yeah and my world was truly robbed every better security I felt was gone it was just gone do you ever get over that you don't know that you ever get over losing somebody that you love but I think you do learn to deal with it and you learn to accept that dying is part of living and none of us are gonna get out alive we're all gonna go there and I was just too immature at the time how soon after then your mother passing did the agoraphobia begin and did it happen immediately or is it something that gradually comes on well it's funny because it really started with the death of my daddy I remember that first night my daddy died on a Friday morning and that night when it was time to go to bed naturally my husband and I was that my mother and daddys and when it was time to go to bed I said can I sleep in between you Jimmy and and you mama we all freeze laughing that bed that night with me in the middle scared to death I was scared to death and stinking thinking bad thoughts started creeping in my head I was raised Baptists and Baptists are talked that everything happens for a reason so I immediately started trying to figure out what the reason was what my daddy have to die so I came up with what I thought was a very reasonable answer that I shared with no one but to make a long story short at 19 I woke up everyday waiting to die really yes and that's just not a good way to live to play an armchair psychiatrist here is that why you play so much today do you think I think so I think so I was I always like to have a good time always and I loved being in the center of everything and just loved life yeah but yes that's that's one of the reasons why I day I don't take myself very seriously you know I really try to save it Ernie for the big things like divorce and death and sickness and you know things that war thinks that really really count but everyday life concerning Paulo no I don't take it too seriously take me back to the reason that you came up with why did you never tell anyone I was ashamed I was embarrassed and I felt like if I said the words then it would immediately happen you know so as long as I didn't speak it maybe just maybe it wouldn't happen when your mom passed away then how do you handle that Shack on top of the earlier shop yes it had been a few years but still it had been four years but I was still very much in shock from my father's death it was hard it was very very hard and one of the hardest things about the whole thing was I had a 16 year old brother that I had to try to finish with for my mother and daddy it was like the last thing I could do for them and not only that I had two babies under three years old and I had a husband that he and I disagreed on one big thing constantly every day in our life so it was a lot for a 23 year old when I see the 23 year olds today you know that they're still in good going to graduate school getting their masters you know not even not even thinking about you know the real life and what it can bring you out there so it was it was pretty it was a pretty good load for me to carry and was worrying about my impending death so then how did you start to realize that you were having a problem with the outside world and also how does that really start up within someone you'd said first when your mom died or your dad died that you wanted to stay in bed how does it build out how do you realize what's going on well I realized that my daddy's death that I should have been in counseling but because I didn't share all these thoughts with anybody nobody knew to have me in counseling I mean they knew that I was heartbroken in that I was crying a lot and that I was very very sad but they didn't know they were not privy to the thoughts going on in little Paula's had but I know I'm very very lucky in the fact that I know what triggered my agoraphobia and agoraphobia in my case developed over the years and in what ways did it did it play out for you well it got pretty rough I had lost my mother lost my daddy and my mother and daddy had not made their mark in life they were still young and so there was not a lot of money but the little bit that they did leave me I had given to my ex-husband to my husband at the time to help him open a Chrysler dealership in Dawson Georgia which was right down the street 16 miles outside of Albany and took exactly one year to lose everything that we had we opened it in 1977 lost everything came back home in the back of a peanut wagon a friend of my husband's was a peanut farmer there his name was Billy I'll never forget him he was so sweet and he came and offered to move us home using his peanut wagon and of course we had not one penny we had no cars we had all we had was each other and our sticks in our sticks being our furniture but I remember in that ride me getting in the back of that peanut wagon and wrapping my head up in a blanket so that I couldn't see I was not in my house because panic attacks were just terrible you know when you when I would experience a panic attack they were just awful because you knew that's truly that death was coming when you have a panic attack your heart will beat so hard and so fast that you're saying there is no way it's no way that that my heart can beat like this it's gonna have to stop you know your arm so go numb and and you just feel like everything's going out on you and I learned how to breathe in a paper bag a brown paper bag to help regulate your breathing and to steady your heartbeat so I never went anywhere without a brown paper bag in my purse eventually you feel okay enough to get back into the world and you get a job as a bank teller and then you're held up at gunpoint yeah it's like you couldn't write this stuff I know I couldn't make it up good I know for 20 years I rode the roller coaster that agoraphobia brings to one's life and but I have to say it hit it's absolutely peak after we lost everything so I knew there was reason that I should be insecure you know that validated it but many many often times over those 20 years I was what I considered a functioning agoraphobia sometimes I could function very very well yeah sometimes I couldn't function at all what did your kids think was going on during office you know I never told my children and I know that they knew something was wrong one of my lowest points was the day that I had to tell my oldest son Jamie and he was probably 13 13 and 14 and I had to say son I'm sorry but we're not gonna be able to take guitar lessons anymore I couldn't get him there it was a mile down the road and I couldn't get him there and that that hurt me so bad because I feel like you know my children were shortchanged well I think you've kind of made it up to him now I have tried so hard to make it up - I've tried so hard how did you finally build your way out of all of that well you know it's funny I was 40 years old and my husband comes home one day and says we're moving to Savannah so what the hell did you say he said we're moving to Savannah I've been offered a job well I was devastated I was devastated because I thought Savannah that's clear on the other side of the state I'm not gonna be able to get my car and come home because I was too frightened and am I ever gonna see what a little bit of family I have left or all my friends you know that I had been so close to over the years and we moved to Savannah I said forty years old being taken away from home and it was it was a very sad time for me went to Savannah we bought us a little house and I went to bed for two months yeah two months it's about two months and I only got up for two reasons and that was to eat and go to the bathroom what did your husband think was going on then well he knew I was nuts that what it was I mean he knew because he was the one person that I had to share these thoughts with because I had to have an enabler I had to have somebody that would help me lie just say oh we're busy tonight we'd love to join you for dinner but we have a prior engagement you know I had to have him to help me with this thing and so he knew he knew I was devastated but what finally ended the relationship well I felt our relationship you know getting weaker and weaker and we disagreed on one thing that was a major major problem as far as I was concerned for our family and that was alcohol and I fought like a tigress to change that and I couldn't do it and and I begged em I said please let's go get some help and let's address this problem while I still love you and because I was so in love with that man and but you know it just never happened and I just decided that I had spent 27 years fussing and fighting for what I felt my children and I needed and I was tired I was tired I realized that I could not change anyone else if it was it's impossible the only person I had control over was myself I could change me you know and I remember Ernie when I was 18 years old and and my husband asked my father for my hand in marriage and my parents were devastated you know they didn't want to see me get married at 18 years old and I remember my mother coming into my bedroom when I was 18 and sitting down with me and she had kind of a sad look in her eyes and she said paulien as your mother I have to tell you that if there's anything that you don't like about the person that you're planning on spending the rest of your life with you do not have the ability to change them and I look man I think my mother know that but of course at the time I felt like I knew much more than she did but you can't you cannot change people has to be something that they want to do and you know I just I didn't want to spend the next 27 years of my life should I be fortunate enough to live that long I didn't want to live it in turmoil and fighting every day for what I felt was right like this would peace and contentment at this point had you open the first restaurant yeah no so then all of this comes what kinda started I started the bag lady in 1989 and I was still married to my children's father in fact there was several things that he really helped me get started with with this big business he had a friend that owned a pool hall downtown Savannah and he asked his friend if he would mind if I met with the health department and what are they breaking in that kitchen in there he asked if he would be willing to let me meet with the health department in his pool hall so I could get a license and so he did he did a lot to help me but I ran the bag lady out of her house for a year and a half and then I went into a space in the Best Western that it was a turnkey operation all I had to have was my first and last month's rent and be able to find my groceries it had all the pots all the pans forks plates everything had a guarantee em three meals a day had to guarantee them three meals a day seven days a week and we were still operating the bag lady then that's the lady the lady becomes the lady and sons eventually this evolves into the TV show and rahzar now my uncle Bubba uncle Bubba so Oyster House a wonderful seafood restaurant that my brother together the amazing thing about all of this to me is I'm sure there are a lot of people who suffer from agoraphobia and a lot of them probably get over it but none of them are pushed out as far as you are now does ever any of that come back to you are there ever moments where you have even a little anxiety and you're on planes you're doing TV you're doing all this you know let me tell you the thing that turned me around and turned my thinking around as I told you my husband had moved us to Savannah when I was 40 and I went to bed for two months well one morning I got up out of the bed and I was standing in our bedroom and for some reason I don't know what reason the Serenity Prayer ran through my head really yes I'd heard it for years but that particular morning it went through my head and I understood it yeah I understood what I was supposed to be asking God for I was supposed to be asking me to help change the things that I could change except the things that I couldn't and the wisdom to know the difference between the two things there was nothing I could do about my mother and daddys death and I would sit around and I would fantasize that well maybe I was adopted and maybe my real parents I'm a 40 year old woman thinking this now so that morning that moment I accepted my mother and daddys death I said you know their data stammers it was just bad streak of luck that both of my parents died early but there they were dead do you wonder what the reaction would be to all of this today they would be so proud yeah they would be so proud in their little Paula okay real quick before we run out of time so yes now you're out in public we've established that through all that you've done and you take your wedding and put it on TV - is there anything you still keep to yourself not too much you know what if it's worth having and you can't share it why do you want to have it yeah you know Sharon is like the best part and I so wanted to share my wedding especially with the girls out there in America you know when you think it's hopeless I'll never meet anybody you know it can have it happened to me and it can happen to you okay last question what do you care more about sharing or butter because you do love your butter maybe butter thank you so much for taking your time to talk with us Ernie thank you thank you for wanting to talk with me quality you to order a DVD of this or any episode of interviews please visit Houston pbs.org

Channel: HoustonPBS

Views: 12,982

Rating: 4.8588233 out of 5

Keywords: KUHT, HoustonPBS, InnerVIEWS, with, Ernie, Manouse, Paula, Deen, southern, cooking, cuisine, culinary, television, author, cookbook, agoraphobia, the, lady, and, sons, food, network, emmy, winner

Id: TvXwKde554E

Length: 26min 49sec (1609 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 26 2009