Padma Lakshmi: Pirelli Calendar 2027 Artist

“I don't think it's an accident that I'm a writer, and a food writer, because my grandmother was an excellent cook and my grandfather was a bibliophile. He was one of the most well-read people I've ever encountered, even to this day. So, I think my grandfather instilled in me a love of books and my grandmother instilled in me a love of food”

Padma Lakshmi can see a clear line from her bicontinental childhood to her career as a bestselling author, television host and culinary expert. Raised “with a lot of love” in the arms of her extended family in Chennai, south-east India, her early years were “heavily influenced” by her relatives and their passions. From the age of four her time was divided between Chennai and New York, where her love of exploration came into play.

“I had a very happy childhood, and my childhood was very broad because I was a latchkey kid in New York, where I had all the freedom to rollerskate up and down Manhattan and Queens, and then I lived in a two-bedroom flat in Chennai by the beach with eight to ten relatives at any moment, all living under one roof”

After first finding success as a model and actress in Europe and the US, Lakshmi turned her attention to cooking. Her first cookbook, Easy Exotic, came out in 1999 and she gained household-name status after joining the American TV series Top Chef as host in 2006. Since becoming a producer of that show and creating other shows such as Taste the Nation and America's Culinary Cup, she has garnered 17 Emmy nominations. She has channeled her activism through the American Civil Liberties Union and the United Nations Development Programme as a goodwill ambassador, and she also co-founded a women's reproductive health organization, Endofound. Her varied career has encompassed activism and entrepreneurship and continues to take her around the world. What does she see as the answer to bridging multiple cultures?

“The best way to bring us together as humans sharing the same planet is to have a sense of curiosity and wonder, not only about the world we share, but about each other. And yes, I've been fortunate enough to have a professional career in writing and television and modelling, but I think the throughline that connects all of that is that I am a curious person. I do get easily bored, so I want to challenge myself”

To that end, the New York-based mother of one has recently been trying to push herself out of her comfort zone and recapture the thrills of her days in live television by taking up stand-up comedy in “very small, humble ways”.

“I was trained as an actor, but my career took this different path in writing and food, [so] I think I missed an audience. I missed having that immediate visceral exchange that only comes from performing live. I love the adrenaline of not being able to do something twice and just saying whatever comes to mind”

Lakshmi's Pirelli shoot marks her second appearance in the Cal after her debut in 2025, when she was photographed on a Miami beach by Ethan James Green. Delighted to be asked back, she “couldn't wait” to get to the shoot after learning the Calendar would be photographed in India and with an all-Indian cast and, despite the intense heat, she described the Rajasthan set as beautiful.

“It was this gorgeous dark pool with all this greenery and wonderful lotus flowers. I thought it was a good omen because my name in Sanskrit means lotus, Padma, so I was very pleased… I felt ethereal and like myself, and I thought the whole thing came together effortlessly and in such an organic and pure, timeless way”

Looking back, Lakshmi recalls the life-changing journey that set her on her globe-trotting path. After travelling as an unaccompanied four-year-old from Delhi to New York (via Cairo, Rome and London) to meet her mother, she decided she wanted to be “an air hostess, which is what we called them back then”.

“I saw those women as very glamorous with their printed silk saris, their little beauty cases and their big bouffant updos. I thought these women have so much freedom, so much independence, they can travel the world by themselves. And in a way, maybe I'm not a flight attendant, but I did do what I set out to do. I make food and travel shows, I get to travel all over the world, and I do have a lot of freedom, which I've gained and hard won”