Anthony Bourdain Worked On An Overlooked HBO Series With A Near-Perfect Rotten Tomatoes Score

In addition to writing novels and memoirs and starring in several of his own TV shows, Anthony Bourdain wrote for some high-class TV dramas. In 2011, he penned two scripts for Season 2 of the HBO show "Treme" and returned the following year to write two more episodes for Season 3. His contributions came as a surprise to a lot of Bourdain fans, as he hadn't published much of his fiction writing in over ten years at that point.

Making Bourdain's time on "Treme" more impressive is that this was a show run by David Simon, creator of the widely beloved "The Wire," meaning Bourdain held his own in a writer's room run by the guy who created perhaps the best show of the entire medium of TV so far. Like "The Wire," "Treme" was criminally undervalued while it was airing, with ratings much lower than they should be for a show of its caliber. Its 97% rating on Rotten Tomatoes meant little as far as regular viewers were concerned.

But whereas "The Wire" eventually enjoyed its boom in popularity, "Treme" has remained ignored by the larger public. Even though it's a similarly ambitious, sprawling show about a struggling American city — this time New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina rather than Baltimore — "Treme" has been overshadowed not just by "The Wire" but by David Simon's later New York-based TV series, "The Deuce."

Still, Anthony Bourdain didn't seem to mind this weird snub from the American public. In a 2016 discussion with Foundation Interviews, he talked enthusiastically about being asked to write for the series, comparing the call he got from Simon to being a Yankees fan in the '60s being asked by Mickey Mantle to play catch. "I immediately called my agent and said, 'Look, David Simon's going to be calling, and whatever he wants, just say yes,'" Bourdain recalled.

Bourdain elaborated further on his "Treme" experience:

"It was, in a lot of ways, the most fun I've ever had at work. I'd never done anything like it. I was part of a team of writers, all of whom were far more experienced and awesome than me. You know, I was well aware of the people who'd been on 'The Wire.' I mean, George Pelecanos and Richard Price and from Boston, Dennis Lehane. On the 'Treme' group, it was Eric Overmyer and David Simon, of course, and Lois Ellie and George Pelecanos. And, you know, I was given a character arc to write. And I mean, it was so much fun. I'd like to say it was hard, but it wasn't. It was really fun."

Bourdain explained how one of his big contributions to the series was getting famous chef Emeril Lagasse to appear in Season 3. "I wanted to get Emeril to say the word 'f**k' on television," he admitted. "It was very important to me." He also came up with one of the show's funniest scenes, where real-life food critic Alan Richman appears in the show only to get a drink thrown in his face by one of the characters.

"I suggested in a story meeting this, you know, there was this notorious Alan Richman article about New Orleans," Bourdain explained. "And I said, 'We should, you know, have a critic like Alan Richman, who publishes the Alan Richman-like article, and then our character can throw a drink in his face,' and David Simon says, 'Why don't we get Alan Richman? It was kind of extraordinary."

Laura Lippman, a journalist and fiction writer who's married to David Simon, wrote a piece for Vulture in 2018 (in the wake of Bourdain's tragic passing) explaining how and why Bourdain had been invited to write for the show. She wrote about how Simon was a huge fan of Bourdain's TV show, "No Reservations," and how she had devised a "scheme" to get them to meet up in real life. "He's a chef," she recalled telling Simon. "You've got a chef character in this New Orleans show you've sold. Call him and say you need to pick his mind. Oh, and there's one condition: I'm going with you."

After the two had dinner with Bourdain, Lippman explained, they both became convinced that they really did need him for the series. "David needed Bourdain to get kitchens right," she wrote. "He also needed Bourdain to recruit other chefs. Tom Colicchio, Eric Ripert, Wylie Dufresne, and David Chang would all come to New Orleans for cameos on 'Treme,' thanks to Bourdain."

The result was that, even though Simon himself wasn't particularly experienced with the culinary world, "Treme" still managed to be a uniquely authentic depiction of it. As David Chang, one of the many chef cameos Bourdain brought in for the series, said in a New York Times interview, "[Bourdain] nailed it. ... Everything he has written has happened."