Anne Burrell’s Co-Host Gabe Bertaccini Reacts to Her Suicide: ‘You Just Never Know’ (Exclusive)

Anne Burrell’s “Worst Cooks in America” co-host Gabe Bertaccini is speaking out about the Food Network star’s shocking death.

“Extra” Mona Kosar Abdi sat down with Gabe, who called it “a challenging time for anybody.”

He explained, “Worst Cooks’ Season 29 comes out, there is so much [to] celebrate, but of course, you know, we miss Anne… We really had an amazing time shooting the show together. It was the first time I was working with Anne and… who doesn’t know Anne?… She’s larger than life. So I was so excited and we really had an amazing time, and I have so many beautiful memories, you know, that I carry with me.”

He went on, “So watching the show, I have to be honest, like the first 30 seconds is a little too rough for me… You really see Anne in what she loves doing. I mean, you just see her like happy, excited, funny, witty, but mostly really with this love for teaching people how to cook, and so I think it’s a beautiful way to celebrate her.”

As for his first impression of Anne, Gabe shared, “I have a big personality and I talk a lot… But Anne, oh, my God… she’s larger than life. She was somebody that made me feel at home right away. And, you know, I’ve been in the Food Network family for the last five years, Anne had been there for 20.

“So you meet this person that, you know, you have been seeing on TV for so long and you look up to and you know, it’s easy, it would be easy for somebody like Anne, of the caliber of Anne, to just, you know, not pay too much attention to me and just kind of, you know, glance me over. Instead, she’s always been so welcoming and she was so focused on making me feel comfortable and making sure that whatever we were doing — in this case was, you know, ‘Worst Cooks in America,’ that the product that would come out was authentic, was beautiful, was fun, and that everybody really felt comfortable, you know, while shooting.”

Gabe revealed how the Food Network family is coping with Burrell’s death, saying, “We’re all very tight, you know… When, unfortunately, we got the news that Anne passed and, you know, we kind of came really all together… like a tight group of family, which we are.

“It has definitely been,  you know, challenging mostly because it was so sudden, but I think all the amazing memories and all the times that we had with Anne… those are the things that we decide to like carry through and like remember her because there was never a time where she would not be up for something fun… She was always really the life of a party,” he said.

“So whether it was on TV, whether it was, you know, outside of TV, at a food festival, it was this friend that was just welcoming, you know, all the time and I think the whole family felt that way,” Gabe added.

Gabe also shared his disbelief over her death being ruled a suicide.

He stressed, “You just literally never know, you know?… We are so used to just pass everybody, you know, pass so many people, you know, every day walking by, and we just oftentimes don’t see these people as people and, you know, that they had their struggles and who knows, you know, they woke up in the morning and something might have happened and or, you know, somebody might have got a promotion, they’re happy, somebody might have not.

“So, you know, just having empathy for each other and just, you know, instead of like judging right away… And I think the empathy is actually what Anne was so good at when you see her on ‘Worst Cooks in America,’ like, she had empathy for these people… for these recruits that are so terrible at cooking, and I would get very frustrated, but Anne was just so empathetic and she was really there to teach them, you know, how to cook.”

According to Gabe, Anne even kept in touch with the recruits.

Gabe touched on the transformation of the recruits on the show, saying, “There’s actually more than one person, more than one recruit that halfway through, you see a light bulb go off, you know, like you’re just like you’re right there to give up. You’re like, ‘Okay, this is not going to end well.’ You know, you’re going to be eliminated. And then all of a sudden there is this light bulb and you see them doing something and actually making sense of the whole thing.”

Gabe discussed what he wants fans to take away from the season, saying, “It’s really a season of celebration and I understand this and some people can’t watch it because they’re very sad about it and others is that they, you know, see it as like the last hurrah and like really a celebration of life for her… I get that sense. I’m like, ‘Okay, this is so fun.’ And I just relieve like all the moments that we had together.”

He went on, “And you just see her, she’s really doing there what she loves to do… I think the most beautiful thing that I took away from this experience with ‘Worst Cooks’ and cooking with Anne or co-hosting with Anne was the authenticity that she had, and it’s very easy in this job to have a on personality and an off personality… You’re on camera, you’re on… With Annie, it wasn’t like that.”