During early quarantine, many of us were cooking up a storm, finding creative ways to use pantry ingredients and a lot of time stuck inside. Now, many months in, inspiration has faded. Fear not, though, because Selena Gomez's new quarantine cooking show will soon be streaming to get your motivated once again. Yesterday, the first trailer for the HBO Max show, which is officially titled Selena + Chef, dropped. As its name suggests, it's full of famous chefs, but it's also got plenty of cooking flubs.
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Selena + Chef is set to premiere on August 14. Hopefully, Gomez and the likes of Angelo Sosa, Antonia Lofaso, Candice Kumai, Daniel Holzman, Jon & Vinny, Ludo Lefebvre, Nancy Silverton, Nyesha Arrington, and Roy Choi can pull us out of our quarantine cooking ruts.
This story was originally published on May 5, 2020.
First, the shelter-in-place orders were announced. Then, we were advised against going to physical grocery stores. Yet, many of us found ourselves at home, getting joy from sourdough bread, fluffy coffee, and Instagram-famous stews. Which is probably why, highly-relatable-celebrity, Selena Gomez, is set to produce and star in a 10-episode HBO Max quarantine cooking show.
According to the announcement, the series is an "unapologetically authentic cookalong," where Gomez will welcome a revolving door of master chefs who will guide her through each meal. Guests will call in remotely and Gomez is a stand-in for all the enthusiastic-yet-misguided quarantine cooks out there. "I've always been very vocal about my love of food," Gomez said in a press release about the new show. "I think I've been asked hundreds of times in interviews if I had another career, what would I do and I've answered that it would be fun to be a chef. I definitely don't have the formal training, though! Like many of us while being home I find myself cooking more and experimenting in the kitchen."
As her comments suggest, this show is for those who have learned in quarantine that the kitchen is a really fun place to be but have little to no idea what to do. This series will answer all our quarantine cooking questions, like how and when to substitute ingredients. And because this singer, actress, producer, and director is also a philanthropist, each episode will highlight a different food-related charity.
The series name sounds like a code-name and it very well may be one, but for now, we'll go with it: Untitled Cooking Show will premiere this summer as part of HBO Max’s first round of programming. HBO Max is launching later this month. It's also where you'll find the Gossip Girl reboot among a suite of new shows, as well as every episode of Friends, Sesame Street, and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.