Anne Burrell’s final season of Worst Cooks in America has officially premiered on the Food Network, only weeks after her shocking death aged 55.
Days after Burrell was found dead in her home in Brooklyn, New York, in June, Food Network announced plans to pay tribute to her — including by airing her final season of Worst Cooks in America, with the 29th season titled: Worst Cooks in America: Talented and Terrible.
On the show, chefs and mentors step in to help transform amateur cooks into culinary experts. Season 29 will see Burrell and her co-host, chef Gabe Bertaccini, manage their teams of amateur chefs, with one contestant eliminated from each episode of the season. The last amateur cook standing will be the winner and get $25,000 in the season finale.
During Monday night’s premiere, Burrell said: “It’s one of my favorite things, to get a new co-host. It never gets old for me.”
The episode began without an acknowledgement of Burrell’s death, which some fans took issue with.
“How could you even start this show without even acknowledging Anne Burrell’s passing? I am shocked,” one viewer wrote on X.
“Sad that Anne Burrell’s ‘signature’ show was Worst Chefs. It’s a circus and not even watchable. She was an ACTUAL chef,” someone else wrote, adding, “To even televise this s*** is an insult.”
“Very demeaning. She deserved better,” another viewer agreed.
Following tonight’s season premiere, new episodes of the season will air every subsequent Monday on the Food Network. Each episode will be available the following Tuesday on HBO Max. Reports indicate that there will be a weekly tribute to Burrell as the season continues to air.
And according to Bertaccini, this season of Worst Cooks in America was extremely important to Burrell.
“[She] was so invested in it,” he told People in June. “It was her baby. She wasn’t there for the paycheck.”
Burrell hosted the show for 27 seasons, from 2010 to 2024. However, she was absent from season 28, which aired its season finale in February. In a January Instagram post, Burrell addressed her absence from the season.
Replying to one fan asking why she wasn’t hosting, Burrell wrote: “Honestly, I don’t know.”
In June, first responders arrived at Burrell’s home in Brooklyn after a 911 call reported a cardiac arrest. When medics arrived, she was found unresponsive.
A few days later, her death was being investigated as a possible drug overdose by the New York City Police Department, according to an internal document seen by The New York Times. The document said Burrell was “discovered in the shower unconscious and unresponsive, surrounded by approximately (100) assorted pills.”
However, the New York City medical examiner’s office confirmed in late July that the chef’s death has been ruled a suicide, more specifically, “acute intoxication due to the combined effects of diphenhydramine, ethanol, cetirizine, and amphetamine.”
