Great British Bake Off ’s Prue Leith Addresses Show’s Controversial Mexican Week
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
Prue Leith is owning up to The Great British Bake Off's mistakes.
After the Netflix series faced criticism for throwing a Mexican-themed week during its 10th Collection, Leith spoke out about the controversy.
"There would have been absolutely no intention to offend," she who judges the show alongside Paul Hollywood, told The New Yorker in a feature published Oct. 23. "That's not the spirit of the show."
Leith noted that the judges are the ones who set the week's challenges, which, during Mexican Week, included pan dulce, tacos and tres leches cake. Fans in particular took issue with the tacos challenge, which required minimal baking and produced cringe-worthy moments like one apparent vegetable faux pas.
"This lady is peeling her avocado like it's a potato," one person tweeted. "This show is off the rails. #GBBO"
Other criticism of the episode included use of visual stereotypes like sarapes and sombreros and mispronunciations of dishes. There was also backlash to hosts Matt Lucas and Noel Fielding quipping that they should stay away "Mexican jokes" to risk offending people—"not even juan."
The Great British Baking Show Winners: Where Are They Are Now
"16 seconds into the Mexican Week ep of #GBBO," one person tweeted, "And I'm already offended."
In response to a clip of Lucas shaking maracas on the episode, another viewer wrote, "I just want yall to understand *how* f--king racist this is."
But for now, Leith is focused on remembering the positive impact of The Great British Bake Off, which she has judged since 2017.
"This is rather a cliché thing to say, but I do think that it is a force for good, most of the time," she explained. "Everything we do in life is a bit stressful—we are always short of time, we're short of money, there are all sorts of horrible things happening all over the world. And Bake Off is this safe space where the worst thing that can happen is somebody will drop their bake."
Get the drama behind the scenes. Sign up for TV Scoop!
