What's Up - Your guide to what's happening in Fayetteville, AR this week!
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T10 WHATS UP! May 21 - 27, 2023 Recurring spots on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" pro- gressed to the point where Winfrey became an executive producer of Ray's own talk show from its inception. How- ever, recent Broadcasting & Cable Hall of Fame inductee Ray maintains she's never been overly concerned with how she fares as an interview- er of other celebrities, despite how many of them have passed through "Rachael Ray." "I just don't think that trans- lates to people who do what I do, service people," she re- flects. "You never think about how you did; you think about the customer. I think Howard Stern is the greatest inter- viewer on the planet. He grew into it because he was grateful for the job he had, and I think of it that way. If you do any- thing long enough, you're go- ing to be better at it than when you started." Throughout the run of "Ra- chael Ray," the host (a major advocate for the people of Ukraine, as seen on the show) has had a true partner — if not always on camera — in her husband, musician and lawyer John Cusimano. Besides con- tributing melodically to the program, he effectively be- came Ray's co-host when the coronavirus pandemic forced her to halt the usual method of production on her show, nor- mally taped in a Manhattan studio. The couple headed up- state to their home in Lake Lu- zerne, New York, and did a bare-necessities version of the program from there. (A fire ravaged the house in the sum- mer of 2020, but they rebuilt it in a little over a year.) "I crossed a line for the first time," Ray muses. "I never thought I'd be able to say I loved working from my home, because a few years ago, that was the thing I was most afraid of … that anybody would cross the barrier of coming into my home. No magazines, no TV shows. I was so strict about it because it was my safe place, just for me and my family. Then with the pandemic, I had no choice. And then after my house burned down, I really had no choice! We had to live in one bedroom with one bathroom, and we had to tape from our guest house for two years. It was a weird time." As for what lies ahead for Ray, she intends to work again with many of her "Rachael Ray" colleagues in channeling much of her focus and energy into her new venture, Free Food Studios. It has a commit- ment for an A&E series — for that network's Home.Made.Nation initiative — tentatively titled "Rachael Ray Meals in Minutes," the first effort in a new library of programming she intends to build with fellow producers she has worked with before. She also plans to nurture new talent in the food-show space. "There's tons of great con- tent out there, now more than ever," Ray reasons. "We're go- ing to be working on platforms on multiple levels. The world is constantly changing in that way, and I feel so lucky as an American woman in her 50s to still be relevant. It's exciting and cool, and it proves the point that you can do anything you want. I feel that I've been given so many great opportu- nities." continued from page T2 Kitchen closing: 'Rachael Ray' bids farewell to daytime TV TV FEATURE Rachael Ray bids farewell to "Rachael Ray"