5 Bombshell Revelations From 'Canceled: The Paula Deen Story'

It’s already been 12 years since Paula Deen’s career went up in flames. Now she’s finally — and unapologetically — addressing the details surrounding her scandal.

In the new documentary Canceled: The Paula Deen Story, which premiered at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival, the self-proclaimed Queen of Southern Cooking and former Food Network personality chronicles how she turned her cozy restaurant The Lady and Sons in Savannah, Georgia, into a multimillion-dollar, one-woman empire. Eventually, she lost everything amid shocking accusations of racism, including her own sworn admission of using a slur.

“I want my soul back,” Deen, 78, says early on in the film. “To lose your reputation is like losing your soul.”

A quick primer: In 2012, Deen was sued for racial and sexual discrimination by the general manager of a restaurant that she owned with her younger brother, Earl (known as Bubba). The lawsuit led to a 2013 deposition in which Deen was asked if she “had ever used the N-word.” Her reply: “Yes, of course.”

Deen also admitted to a conversation about finding “the entire wait staff was middle-aged Black men” dressed with white jackets and black bow ties to be “really impressive.”

The Food Network immediately announced it was not renewing her contract, as all three of her shows were canned. Soon after, Deen lost her endorsement deals with the likes of Walmart, Sears, QVC and a pharmaceutical drug company. Most notably, per the title of the film, she became a public pariah and was a go-to punchline on Saturday Night Live, The Daily Show and The Tonight Show.

Deen, as well her husband of 21 years, Michael Groover, and her sons, Bobby and Jamie, speak emotionally throughout the film. Yet nobody from the family attended the world premiere or sat for the traditional post-screening Q&A. (Director Billy Corben took the reins.)

Still, Canceled offers plenty of insight into the controversy. Scroll below for five of the biggest revelations:

Deen Insists the Lawsuit Was a Shakedown

Deen says her troubles started in January 2012 when she received a letter from lawyers representing Lisa Jackson, the general manager of Uncle Bubba’s Seafood and Oyster House. The letter insinuated that Deen’s name would be dragged through the mud due to Jackson’s knowledge of damning issues in the workplace. If Deen settled for $1.25 million, the suit would be dropped; if she didn’t, the bombshells would go public. Deen’s lawyers and loved ones suggested she pay the money, arguing that she could afford it, but Deen said no.

“[A settlement] is bulls***,” she says in Canceled. “Bubba and I both agreed that it was not right to pay someone for something that is not true. … I wanted to clear our names.”

The lawsuit went forward. (Deen’s brother Bubba died in 2019 from pancreatic cancer.)

Deen’s Use of the N-Word

In May 2013, Deen was deposed — purportedly by an unqualified lawyer who specialized in medical malpractice. Under questioning, Deen replied in the affirmative when asked whether she had ever used the N-word in her life. Here, she describes that it happened in 1987 when she worked as a bank teller in Georgia. She says a Black man came in and robbed the bank, shakily holding a gun to her temple. After the incident, she went home to her then-husband, Jimmy Deen, and used the slur in her traumatic retelling of events.

Legal experts in the film say the question should have never been asked, arguing irrelevance because it was not said at Bubba’s restaurant. “Not one time did the attorney step up and say, ‘That’s not a legitimate question,’” Deen says.

The convicted bank robber, Eugene Thomas King Jr., was tracked down and interviewed by Inside Edition in 2013 and apologized to Deen for causing her harm.

Deen Was Badgered Into an Apology

To dim the uproar once the deposition went public, Deen flew to New York City and reluctantly hired a crisis management team at the rate of $50,000 per month. But she says no good came from it, as the team ordered her to make an apology video against her will.

“They told me I had to sit down and film an apology to the country,” Deen claims. “I said, ‘I didn’t do anything wrong. I was involved in a deposition, and I told the truth.’ They said, ‘You did do something wrong.’”

After her video was poorly received, Deen was prompted to film a second one while still in a state of shock, claiming, “They said, ‘It was not heartfelt at all. Do it again.’”

Her agent was allegedly supposed to approve the video before sending it out, but that didn’t happen. The same day the second video was released, she learned about her Food Network firing.

She Has Choice Words for Matt Lauer

While still in desperate spin control mode, a distraught Deen was convinced to sit for a live interview on the Today show with then-anchor Matt Lauer. “It went terribly,” she says. (One of her sons also refers to Lauer’s questioning as a court interrogation.)

In the cringe-worthy clip, Lauer confronts her about the controversy and asks her multiple times if she’s a racist while Deen tries to deflect and defend. Four years after the disastrous interview, Lauer himself was fired for inappropriate behavior at the workplace and got “canceled.” Deen shares that after this news broke, she was inclined to reach out and send him a note of condolence. However, she decided against it. “Some people,” she says pointedly, “deserve it.”

She Wants to Clear Her Name

If viewers are looking for a fresh apology from Deen, they’re not getting one. Instead, she maintains that she simply did what she was told under oath. “I could have lied,” she says. “But I chose not to.”

As for the inflammatory comment? Deen says she never spoke out of line at any of her restaurants and proclaims at the top of the film, “When they lay me down, I do not want my tombstone to say, ‘Here lies the body of a racist.’” She also notes that the planned lawsuit from Jackson was ultimately settled with no sum of money awarded to her. (Jackson even wrote in a statement, “The Paula Deen I have known for more than 8 years is a woman of compassion and kindness and will never tolerate discrimination or racism of any kind toward anyone.”) And yet, the once-celebrated chef admits that “the damage had been done.”

To this day, Deen has not returned to The Food Network or picked up any of her lost endorsements. In August, The Lady and Sons — the restaurant that started it all — closed its doors for good.

Canceled: The Paula Deen Story is still awaiting distribution and a release date.