Rachael Ray
Written, Produced & Directed by Jason Goodman
Rachael Ray was the first “Biography” I did for the Biography Channel. I also have to admit that until I got the gig – I barely knew who she was. So I had a lot of information to assimilate quickly in order to get the rhythm of her story right.
The Bio was produced right at the beginning of Rachael’s talk show, and along with her endless amount of other enterprises, she was as stretched as far a human can be. And yet she was always kind and her team attentive to details, and I really liked the people who loved her. Most of all, I was impressed at her ability to adjust to stardom with such ease – after all, less than five years earlier, she was cooking to go dinners at an Albany gourmet supermarket.
Click here to watch my favorite act.
> Biography: Rachael Ray • My Favorite Act • Written, Produced & Directed by Jason Goodman
This show also includes on interview with King World’s Roger King, who died a few months later. The first time I met Roger was in 1984 at a NAPTE Convention, where he was syndicating episodes of The Little Rascals. A friend introduced us, and the first thing he said to me was asking me if I knew where to score coke. He may have been a billionaire by the time I met up with him in 2007, but he was still a politically incorrect SOB and we had a really great time during the interview. His was a life very well lived.
Rachael likes to present a very upbeat profile to the public, and she’s clearly very good at that. But there was one pivotal moment in Rachael’s life that was anything but positive – two brutal muggings that sent her first to the hospital, and then back to her upstate New York country life with the intention of never setting foot in New York again. The story of how she managed to find success anyway showed me a lot about the complex woman underneath that powerful brand.
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[watch the whole show].
Biography: Rachael Ray • Written, Produced & Directed by Jason Goodman
Biography shows are supposed to have a shelf life of five years, but everyone understands they can become out of date very quickly. While we were making Rachael’s Bio, there were rumors swirling on the front pages of every tabloid about her “failing” marriage. Things were bad enough that her husband John even agreed to do an interview, which is not something he likes to do. Happy to report that two years later, Rachael and John still are married and that the tabloids in this case, were totally wrong.
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