The second season of the Hulu series Taste the Nation, hosted by Padma Lakshmi, is an exciting culinary journey through the diverse cultures and communities spread out across America. Spending time with various immigrant groups and learning how their traditions are represented in the food they eat, Lakshmi shares her own knowledge, experience and passion through human connection so pure that the viewer can’t help but be moved and inspired.

During this 1-on-1 interview with Collider, Lakshmi talked about the embarrassment of riches that Taste the Nation provides, the impact diverse cultures have had on American cuisine, how moving and impactful the small human moments are, how she came to have a career involving food, and how the World All-Stars season of Top Chef is a great companion series.

Collider: After having to do an abbreviated holiday season due to COVID, did you just have way too many places you wanted to go, for this season? Was it even harder to narrow it down for this?

PADMA LAKSHMI: It was because it’s an embarrassment of riches. I don’t think people realize how regional American food is, and that’s not even counting all the different ethnicities that make up American cuisine. So, for instance, this season on Taste the Nation, we go to Dearborn, Michigan, which had been on my list since before Season 1 because there’s a huge Arab enclave there. People don’t realize that the American auto industry is actually built by Arab hands. There’s a very cool story about that and about Henry Ford, that we also talked about. Whenever I go back to visit my family in India, I always have a mental laundry list of everything I’m gonna eat. And now, with Taste the Nation, I have a laundry list of places I wanna go, and I hope this season does as well as the first season. I just want Hulu to give me another season because I am not done eating or going around on my road trip.

Image via Hulu

When it comes to something like this, is it about the specific moments, or is it about the whole of it all, that you’re most proud of?

LAKSHMI: The whole is more than I could ask for, but it’s made of those small moments. I am hugely indebted to all our participants who trust me and open up to me about such deep personal issues in every episode, who allow me into their homes, who tell me about holding their child in their arms in the jungle, as they died of starvation when they were fleeing the Khmer Rouge, or this young beautiful woman that, like me, was a host and journalist on TV and had to flee Afghanistan in those big cargo planes that we all saw. She was still shell-shocked from it when I interviewed her, and her whole life is turned upside down. Every story is different. I’m still learning on the job. Before Taste the Nation, I could count on one hand the amount of people I’d interviewed, and it was mostly at a literary festival or at a food festival. It was not on this big, international scale. I’m just thankful that people trust me because that’s what Taste the Nation is really about. It’s about giving my platform to people who normally don’t see themselves in mainstream media in an A-list way, to tell their stories as they see fit. I write the show and I produce the show and I edit the show, but I’m really taking my cues from them. It’s their story to tell, as they see fit, and not mine.

Some episodes, the people you’re talking to are crying. Other episodes, you talk about how you’re tearing up. They’re strangers when you all come together, and yet there’s something so beautiful about that connection over food that makes it feel like you’ve known all of these people their whole lives.

LAKSHMI: It’s incredible. That was very surprising and a revelation to me, especially in first season. We did the Persian episode, which was my first day on the job, and I was talking to this guy who’d had so much happen to him, and he’d even killed a man. We didn’t even have time to show that in the episode because I got so much stuff and it didn’t pertain to what we were talking about. He’s this huge guy named Hamid, and he has a beautiful restaurant in Westwood, Calif., called Shamshiri Grill. He breaks down in tears, and then the next day it happened, and the next day it happened. I think everybody has a meaningful, interesting story to tell. They just haven’t had the chance to tell it, and you just have to listen.

Image via Hulu

I’m not nearly as adventurous with food as you are, but I’ve been a dancer since I was four years old and that always made me curious about every culture’s style of dance. I’ve always been interested in traditional dance and how that’s influenced other styles. I relate to your connection with food, in that way. What made you decide to make a career out of food? When you started down this path, could you ever have pictured that it would lead to everything that it has?

LAKSHMI: Not at all. Not in a million years. I went to theater school. I’m an actor. That is how I made my living. And I was writing, as well. I wrote a syndicated column for The New York Times that was about food and fashion because of my modeling career. And I had a style column in Harper’s Bazaar. I honestly just fell into the food career because I love to cook. I wrote a cookbook after my first film, because I had to gain weight for the film. I wasn’t paid very much. I had never tried to lose weight before. I was still making most of my living as a model, and that’s how the first book came about. It was really just a marketing hook. Everyone wanted to know what a model ate, but nobody thought it would do well. And then, it won this prize in Versailles at the Gourmand Awards. That’s how it happened, and I’m very thankful to be able to do what I love. That is the greatest privilege. I mentor two or three young women in the food space, and I always tell them, “Try to do what you love for a living because, no matter what, there’s a point in your life where your job will really suck, and it’ll be hard, and you’re gonna spend more hours in your life working than anything else. So, if you can do something that you’re genuinely interested in, you’re home free.” That is the best blessing for anybody.

With all of these episodes, we get the food, but we also get the music, and the song and dance, and the clothing, and all these different aspects.

LAKSHMI: There’s a lot of dance this season. There’s Greek dancing. There’s that beautiful Cambodian classical dance. I learned how to flat foot, even with my two left feet. I love world music. That’s what’s great about Taste the Nation. I learn something new, every single day, at work. I’m a history buff. I love local culture. I love trivia and all that general knowledge. The show really is made up of all of my idiosyncratic interests.

Image via Hulu

I love how this season of Top Chef, because it is world all-stars, feels like a companion piece to watching Taste the Nation. Was it fun to see how different chefs also influence each other and how they’ll all take pieces of what they learn from the different cultures, back to their own food.

LAKSHMI: Yeah. That was really exciting. Cooking is like writing, in that you should do what you know because that’s what is gonna be the most valuable thing you can contribute. Not that you can’t learn to cook other cuisines. I cook all kinds of food. None of my cookbooks have only Indian food in them. But I was really excited about that because it allowed us to see how chefs all over the world do things and bring themselves to the competition. At Top Chef, we’ve worked really hard to evolve and be more diverse, but it’s usually always African American or Chinese American. The people we have on this season are really Thai or Jordanian or Brazilian. There’s nothing American about them because they’re working in different countries. And I think that’s also great for the competition because it is truly the world’s Top Chef. You had to have either made it into the finale or won your own franchise of Top Chef, whether it was Top Chef Mexico or Top Chef France, or whatever.

I love watching both shows, and I’m definitely rooting for more of Taste the Nation.

LAKSHMI: Thank you so much. From your lips to Hulu’s ears. I just want another season. I really am hoping everyone will give this show a chance and the recognition that my crew and I want and deserve because we work so hard.

Taste the Nation is available to stream at Hulu.