Photo: instagram.com/sethbrundle
Leslie Antonoff and Seth Brundle are college friends who share a love for cooking and eating out at restaurants. Both friends learnt how to cook by watching food channels including, the Cooking Channel, the Food Network and many others. Overtime, Antonoff discovered a gap in the market and this inspired her to suggest that they start a cooking show together.
“I love food TV, which is why I was amazed and just kind of shocked that there weren’t any people who looked like me or of my generation,” she told Cuisine Noir. “I saw the void and realised that we can capitalise on that, especially with our personalities,” she explained.
Brundle didn’t hesitate and jumped on the idea straight away. She and I had been friends for a number of years at the point when she approached me with the idea, he said, adding that it made sense that they do the cooking show together.
At the time, Issa Rae was looking for new content, and so when Antonoff pitched the idea to her, Rae got on board. “That went from a pitch meeting to a production meeting because she was on board and was like, ‘Let’s do it’,” she said. The show was initially a scripted web series. However, after only one successful season, television executives started noticing Butter + Brown’s unique one of encouraging viewers to cook.
“We wanted to make a cooking show for everybody. We wanted to be the homies that you kick it with on the weekend,” Brundle said.
Following that, the two college friends hit TV screens in 2019 with a mini-series entitled, Big Screens, Small Bites. The series ran for 12 episodes before the TV producers decided to pick up Butter + Brown permanently.
Since then, Antonoff and Brundle have become executive producers of the cooking show along with Issa Rae and Celebrity Chef G. Gavin. The two work alongside the chef creating recipes on the show.
The show is designed in such a way that it does not intimidate beginners. The point is to inspire people to get into the kitchen and cook, Brundle said. People should not feel like they cannot cook and they should not be afraid to make mistakes, he concluded.
Butter + Brown airs Thursdays at 19:00 on 1 Magic.