Bourdain biography author says celebrity chef ‘had worked himself into a state of exquisite misery’

The author of a controversial new biography on late celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain has claimed he ‘had worked himself into a state of exquisite misery’ in his final days as he spent them drinking and sleeping with prostitutes.

The biography, by author Charles Leerhsen, uses files, texts and emails from Bourdain’s personal phone and laptop to paint a picture of the chef’s life and highlights his turmoiled last days before taking his own life. 

‘I think in his last days he had worked himself into a state of exquisite misery,’ said Leehrsen, who details Bourdain’s struggles with addictions and heartbreak over Italian actress Asia Argento.

‘If I’ve written an unauthorized biography, I’ve also written a sympathetic one and I’ve written one I think is true to the man,’ said Leehrsen of his book, Down and Out in Paradise: The Life of Anthony Bourdain.

Though Argento and Bourdain’s brother are against releasing the ‘unauthorized’ biography, Leehrsen defended his book, which goes on sale October 11, as ‘sympathetic’ and ‘true to the man.’ 

‘Every single thing he writes about relationships and interactions within our family as kids and as adults he fabricated or got totally wrong,’ Christopher, Bourdain’s brother, told the Times. 

Neither Christopher Bourdain or Argento could be reached for further comment about the book’s publication. 

An executive at Simon & Schuster, the books publisher, wrote back to Bourdain’s brother: ‘With all due respect, we disagree that the material in the Book contains defamatory information, and we stand by our forthcoming publication.’

Leehrsen believes many of those in Bourdain’s inner circle did not speak with him for the book because the chef’s longtime agent, Kim Witherspoon, told them not to, according to the New York Times.  

The book details Bourdain’s transformation from a New Jersey teenager into the famed but troubled chef that struck gold with his writing on food and travel.

The TV star took his own life in a French hotel room in June 2018 while he was on location filming his CNN show, Parts Unknown, and seemed to deeply unhappy at the time. 

In one text to his ex-wife, Ottavia Busia-Bourdain, he complained: ‘I hate my fans, too. I hate being famous. I hate my job. 

Busia-Bourdain had become a confidante for Bourdain in the final days of his life, and she is not fighting publication of the book. She currently controls Bourdain’s estate.

‘I am lonely and living in constant uncertainty’ he told Busia-Bourdain before he died, who he was married to for 11 years before their separation in 2016. 

Bourdain was also ‘hopelessly’ in love with Argento, who had just dumped him in an argument over photos of her with a French journalist in Rome.

She had broken up with him, citing his ‘possessiveness’ over her. 

Bourdain had been left heartbroken by photographs of the Italian actress dancing with journalist Hugo Clement in the lobby of Hotel de Russie in Rome, where she and Bourdain shared special memories. 

The book reveals that he searched her name online ‘hundreds’ of times afterwards.  

In their final text exchange, he asked: ‘Is there anything I can do?’

She replied: ‘Stop busting my balls’. 

He responded: ‘OK’ and killed himself hours later.

Argento declined to comment for the book. In an email to the journalist she says she forbid him from publishing, she said: ‘It is always Judas who writes the biography.’