Paula Deen’s former lawyer has spoken out about the chef’s past use of the n-word. According to Entertainment Weekly, attorney Bill Glass, as well as Deen, have opened up about the career stain as the new documentary Canceled: The Paula Deen Story premiered on Saturday (Sept. 6) at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF).
In the interviews and non-fiction film, Deen and Glass advocated for her reputation and asserted that her racist rhetoric was not fully understood by the public. In 2013, the celebrity chef confessed to having used the slur in a legal deposition.
“It wasn’t, ‘Do you use it at the restaurant?’ It wasn’t, ‘Have you used it recently?’ It was, ‘Have you ever used the N-word?’” Glass explained in the documentary. “There’s two reasons to object to that line of questioning. One was it was directed at leverage, not truthfulness. The second reason is it had nothing to do with the claims in the case.”
According to the outlet, he also exclaimed, “If anybody brings any sense to her comments and heard her answer and understood the context, they should not take any issue with it,” Glass exclaimed in the documentary.
“Yes, of course I’ve used that word,” shared Deen in the documentary, per EW. “I said, ‘It may have been the day this Black man came in to the bank and put the gun up to my head.”
She continued, “I look up, and in comes a man totally masked with a gun in his hand and put that gun to my temple. And it was dancing on my temple. I said this man is as scared as I am. He’s going to shoot me. All he said was, ‘Get the big bills.’ So I did that and gave it to him. And he left. I couldn’t believe I was still alive.”
At the time of the controversy, Deen was the subject of a sexual harassment and racial discrimination lawsuit filed by a woman named Lisa Jackson who worked at one of her restaurants. According to ABC News, the litigation was settled “without any award of costs or fees to any party.”
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