‘The Great British Bake Off’ Judge Prue Leith Reacts To Mexican Week Backlash Episode

30.10.2022 - 01:47 / deadline.com

Prue Leith and her fellow The Great British Bake Off judges and hosts were slammed on social media for the México-themed week of the show that reduced the rich Mexican culture and cuisine into stereotypical imagery. Following the backlash, judge Leith is now talking about the controversy.

“There would have been absolutely no intention to offend. That’s not the spirit of the show,” she said in an interview with The New Yorker.

Not delving too much into the polemic around the Mexican-themed episode, Leith talked about the the good of the show and the “whole phenomenon of Bake Off” and how she finds it “absolutely extraordinary.”

“This is rather a cliché thing to say, but I do think that it is a force for good, most of the time. 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,” she added.

Leith continued saying Bake Off was a “safe space where the worst thing that can happen is somebody will drop their bake. And everybody will be sympathetic! Nobody will cheer, nobody will say, ‘Oh, good, you’re out of the way, and now I’m going to win.’ There’s none of that nastiness that you sometimes get in competitions.”

To promote the themed episode hosts Matt Lucas and Noel Fielding made jokes that were then shared on the show’s official Bake Off Twitter page, which many fans did not find funny.

The juan and only Matt & Noel welcome you to Mexico Week!