His marriage to Busia unraveled amid his near-constant travel and they split amicably in 2016, though their divorce was never finalized.
Shortly after, he met Italian film actress/director Asia Argento while filming “Parts Unknown” in Rome. He quickly developed a teenage-like infatuation with Argento, with friends in the film likening it to an addiction and noting that he referred to her as “the crazy Italian actress” and said things would end “very, very badly.”
“There was a very sort of manic nature to what was going on in that last year,” Collins says. “The highs were very, very high, and the lows were very ugly.”
Chang angrily and tearily recalls Bourdain telling him he would never be a good father.
“He was projecting,” says Chang, now a doting parent to 2-year-old Hugo, with another baby on the way. “It broke his heart that he couldn’t be the f–king dad he thought he could be, the romantic version of dad.”
Bourdain let Argento direct “Parts Unknown” in Hong Kong, after regular director Michael Steed fell ill. Veteran crew members bristled at her approach. Bourdain even fired his longtime Emmy-winning cinematographer Zach Zamboni after he clashed with Argento, who is not among those interviewed in the film.
“I just felt like at the end, I wasn’t going to get closer to him by talking to her because she has her own very clear point of view about things,” Neville has said. “She says the same thing in every interview.” (Argento has said that she and Bourdain had an open relationship.) He’s also noted that he wanted the film to be about Bourdain, not just his relationship with Argento, although that shadows much of the final portion.
Days before Bourdain’s death, Argento was photographed with French reporter Hugo Clément. In the doc, Steed recalls checking on Bourdain after the photos hit the papers, and the star mumbling “a little f–king discretion” in reference to Argento being so public with her infidelity.
“My take is that the thing that Tony was having the hardest time with was humiliation,” Neville has said. “He has taken himself so far out on the limb to be made to feel like a chump so publicly. That was the thing — not heartbreak. Humiliation.”
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