i
around her open kitchen in her spacious
mid-century modern home, Chrissy
Teigen stirs Tom Yum Gai chicken soup,
drops pork and vegetable egg rolls into
a sizzling wok, and checks on the garlic
pork ribs roasting in the oven. Overseeing
the traditional Thai meal is her mother,
who moved to LA from Thailand a year
ago with Teigen’s father. Until recently
the couple had lived with their daughter
and her husband, R’n’B icon John Legend.
“If we weren’t making Thai food, I would
be doing all the cooking,” Teigen says,
bending over a pot and inhaling deeply.
“I’ll come in from a shoot and go straight
to the grocery store. I love cooking for
my man. John is successful, so people
sometimes think that I am mooching
off him. But we take care of each other
in different ways.”
The 29-year-old Sports Illustrated
Swimsuit Issue cover star – whose new
MTV show, Snack-Off, premieres here
in Australia in August (although you can
download the cooking competition show
online) – is perfectly on-trend in a chiffon
sleeveless top, David Lerner leggings and
knee-high Givenchy boots. She shows
off some piercings she had done earlier
in the day: five delicate diamond studs
and rose-gold accents circulating her lobe
and upper ear. Then she offers me a glass
of wine as we watch the indulgent meal
come together. “I always get to eat what
I want, because if I don’t, I go insane,”
she says. “If you’re going to choose to do
something like the paleo diet, then you
choose not to enjoy your nights out.”
No one would ever accuse Teigen of
not enjoying herself. That’s evident from
her hilariously blunt Twitter account
and her food blog, So Delushious, where
she has posted F-bomb-laden recipes,
retorts at her haters, romantic photosfrom her honeymoon, and at least one
naked selfie of her in the bathtub. “I have
way more female followers than I do
men,” she reveals. “Men are very tough,
very critical of me. I think they expect
you to basically just be a picture. They
don’t want to hear you speak. Women,
I love. It’s amazing to me, because I am
a swimsuit model; I’m half-naked. I just
love the fact that women love me, and it
makes me love them so much back.”
While dinner is cooking, she leads
me to her bedroom, a Zen lair with a
low, king-sized bed piled with pillows
and a wall of windows overlooking her
backyard. Close on her heels are two
portly bulldogs, Pooey and Puddy, and
a French bulldog, Pippa. Still wearing
her boots, Teigen plops onto her bed and
shrugs as Puddy climbs right up beside
her, settling onto the pillow and whining
at her TV. “Sorry, he gets very emotional
over the Sarah McLachlan [animal
cruelty] commercials,” she jokes.
Teigen’s fun and funny personality
is what first attracted Legend back in
2006, when Teigen, then 21 and working
as a catalogue model, was cast in a music
video for his hit single, Stereo. “Please
don’t look it up on YouTube!” she cries.
“I was doing this fake model-y dancing
with the most dead eyes you’ve ever seen
in a human.” Regardless, she made an
impression off-camera. “I walked into
his dressing room to meet him, and he
was ironing his underwear,” she recalls.
“I said, ‘You do your own ironing!?’ He
said, ‘Of course I do.’ I gave him a hug.”
After chatting throughout the 14-
hour shoot, the two feasted on burgers
later that night at his hotel. “I’m not
going to lie. We hooked up,” she admits.
But then Legend headed out on tour. She
spent the next year texting and talking“VERY FEW
THINGS PLEASE
ME AS MUCH AS
EGGS” – FRIED,
SCRAMBLED,
WHATEVER –
SAYS TEIGEN