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Q
& A with Devin Alexander ’93
 Devin
Alexander ’93
(who was named Renee Simone while at Smith) is busy these
days. Alexander, who lives in Los Angeles, is the owner
and executive chef of Café Reneucutee
Catering, which specializes in lower-fat, high-flavor cuisine.
She’s written two cookbooks: Fast Food Fix,
which offers recipes for healthier fast food dishes, and The
Biggest Loser Cookbook, a New York Times bestseller
that accompanied the hit television show The Biggest
Loser. She has written more than 200 magazine articles
and has served as culinary adviser and food editor for several
magazines. And every Thursday, Alexander concocts scrumptious-but-healthy
recipes of traditionally unhealthy favorites as the host
of Healthy Decadence with Devin Alexander, a Discovery
Health network television cooking show (airs at 10:30 p.m.).
Alexander, a theater
major at Smith who has waged her own battles against
excessive weight, recently responded to questions for The
Gate about
her busy life, and her Smith experience.
The Gate: How did you go from majoring in theater
at Smith to a culinary career? Had you always had interest
in culinary arts, or did it develop after you left Smith?
Devin Alexander: I was recruited by the Television Academy
(the Emmy folks) right from Smith for a sitcom I’d
written and produced at Smith called Not All Pearls.
When I got to LA a number of industry insiders figured out
that I could cook great tasting food that was actually healthy
and they wanted to hire me to cook for them. I resisted at
first, but when my internship ended, I thought it would be
a good idea to go to culinary school so I could land a job
as a celebrity private chef and get free room and board in
a celebrity’s guest house while my writing career took
off. But I ended up falling into owning a catering business
that took off very quickly, so I never even finished a script.
Gate: How do you manage to balance
your time between writing books, hosting your show, and other
activities?
DA: It’s not easy some days, but I’m lucky enough
to have two great assistants, an amazing manager and lawyer,
and most recently, a stellar publicist as part of “Team
Devin,” as we jokingly call ourselves. I could use
a bit more of a social life, but I get wrapped up in my work
because I love it so much and am lucky enough to get letters
from people daily telling me how my recipes are affecting
them. Nothing in the world beats that feeling.
Gate: Can you briefly describe your own battles against excessive
weight?
DA: I started dieting around age 8 and kept getting fatter
and fatter until I was 15. I was never able to follow a diet
because the notion of giving up my favorite foods FOR-EV-ER
was too much to handle. Finally, I heard that if you cut
just 100 calories from your diet per day, you can loose (on
average) 10 pounds in a year. It became a competitive game
for me to cut 100, 200 or even 300 calories per day and I
lost weight pretty quickly. It was hard to eat healthy all
of the time at Smith because there were so many talented
pastry chefs making us Friday teas and such amazing breads
and things (I am hopeless around that stuff to this day)
and because there weren’t as many choices there, even
for entrees, as I’d love, but I was actually losing
by my years at Smith. I would make dinner for myself and
a number of girls on my hall when the food was fattening
in the dining room.
Gate: What about your Smith experience has informed your current roles
as chef, businesswoman, and television host?
DA: Tons, actually…and my catering business boomed
because of a Smith alum, Hollis Brookover ’82, who
just started hiring me to help her and then promoted the
heck out of me. Len Berkman [Anne Hesseltine Hoyt Professor
of Theatre] was my adviser at Smith and he was hugely influential
in encouraging me to follow my passion for and enthusiasm
surrounding Hollywood. He encouraged me to design my own
course my senior year to produce my sitcom since the college
wouldn’t give me credit for a television production
class I wanted to take at Hampshire (it was said to be too
specialized for the liberal arts education). In retrospect
that was the best thing that could have happened because
the sitcom was my entrée into the TV Academy. Also,
when I started at Smith, I was very shy and insecure—having
spent my formative years being picked on for being overweight,
I didn’t feel like I fit in and I certainly didn’t
feel attractive enough to be on TV. By my senior year, I
was hosting a show on Continental Cablevision in Northampton
and producing and directing my own sitcom. Also, my
first year, there was a senior, Carla Manske ’90, who
grew up in my home town. She used to drive me to and from
Smith over breaks. She told me very early on that when you’re
at Smith, you had to walk looking up—she was taught
to be proud of who she was and what she had to contribute;
looking down when you walk suggests a lack of self-worth.
I remember that being a very poignant moment for me that
I immediately took to heart…I’m still a bit
shy at heart at times and that still pops in to my head every
once in a while.
Gate: What is the foremost message you would like viewers of Healthy
Decadence to come away with?
DA: Healthy food can taste great! The media, for
the most part, reinforces that “we just want fat” and
it’s a travesty that our children are getting fatter
and fatter. With a bit of time in the kitchen, it’s
easy to eat “cool food” and love every bite of
it!
Gate: What advice can you offer Smithies about how to achieve at such
a high level, as you obviously are?
DA: Wow, that’s a really flattering question!...I would
say that the best thing someone could do is to follow her
passion. I work hard, but I’ve also gotten really lucky
ever since I embraced what I’m good at. I left Smith
thinking I would be a sitcom writer, which is kind of silly
because I’m really not all that funny. I resisted
cooking even though it’s the one thing I was always
good at from a young age because I thought that I would gain
my weight back if I were around food all day. But I think
that I have had success in recent years because people believe
what I say…and only because I believe every word of
it. I truly believe that the fudge mint brownies that I make
that have only 112 calories and 1 gram of fat are as good
as any full fat ones you could possibly buy (they are!).
I believe that healthy food can taste great. And I believe
that kids should get to eat fun food like chicken tenders and they
should and can be healthy. The most integral part of my career
these days is “playing in my kitchen” trying
to tweak food until it tastes great. I work with three 20-something-year-old
women in my condo and have a blast doing it. And the fact
that we all love it gets other people excited about it and
gets me hired whether it’s to be on TV or to speak
at spas or even to buy my books. At the end of the day, I
wouldn’t be doing anything else in the world…not
many people realize that getting to that place takes time
and hard work, but is totally worth it. But as Nike would
say: “Just Do It”…whatever it
is. Nothing is impossible—I mean, I was the fat girl
sitting on the sofa watching Dallas and baking cookies on
Friday nights when the other kids in my high school were
at the dances. Now I’m a size 6 and I’m helping
girls (and others) who write and say that my story is their
story. It’s worth every minute in my kitchen and every
door that was ever slammed in my face. And it’s all
because I had a lot of people throughout my life telling
me that I could achieve anything I dreamed…and I believed
it.
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