Paula Deen made her first public appearance this weekend since the N-word scandal that plunged her into infamy back in June.
Deen guest starred on the Metro Cooking & Entertaining show in Houston, Texas on Saturday, where she broke into tears - again - after the audience gave her a warm standing ovation and round of applause. But this time, she claimed, her crying came from a place of contentment.
"These are tears of joy, y'all," she choked through the waterworks. "This is my first time out in three months...The one place I wanted to make my first step out was in Texas. You are forgiving folks with hearts as big as your state."
The 66-year-old former Food Network star was joined by her two sons Bobby and Jamie for a cooking demo on stage, People Magazine reported. She gave a quick nod to the scandal, then moved forward with the recipe.
"We all experience pain in some way, but pain is also a good thing because it makes you grow," Deen said.
The butter enthusiast got herself into serious trouble three months ago, when she admitted to having used the n-word in the past. She also had plans to organize a "Southern" wedding inspired by a restaurant she'd visited with her husband - complete with an all-black wait staff to pose as "slaves."
"I mean, it was really impressive," Deen said of the restaurant at the time. "That restaurant represented a certain era in America...after the Civil War, during the Civil War, before the Civil War...It was not only black men, it was black women...I would say they were slaves."
A former employee of Deen and brother Bubba Hiers' restaurant, Uncle Bubba's Seafood and Oyster House, filed a discrimination lawsuit against the two chefs in May. The ex-worker, Lisa Jackson, said she was sexually harassed, in addition to working under hostile, racist higher-ups.
Following this series of scandals, Deen was quickly dropped by nearly every company that endorsed her - the Food Network effectively fired the chef after she posted videos begging for the public's forgiveness. Sears, K-Mart, Wal-Mart, Walgreens, QVC, J.C. Penney, Target, Smithfield Foods, and more, let Paula Deen go, resulting in Deen's total loss of earnings around $12.5 million, according to the New York Daily News.
