creator, host, and executive producer of Taste the Nation with Padma Lakshmi, which premiered on Hulu on June 18, 2020, and received the Gotham Award for Breakthrough Series and a Critic's Choice Award for Best Culinary Show. Taste the Nation received 100% on Rotten Tomatoes. In 2021, Hulu released a 4-episode special, Taste the Nation: Holiday Edition. In Taste the Nation, Lakshmi expands and redefines the meaning of American food collectively. In June 2022, Lakshmi received her first James Beard Foundation Award for Taste the Nation: Holiday Edition. Previously, Lakshmi served as a host of Domenica In, Italy's top-rated television show, in 1997. She hosted the Food Network series Padma's Passport, which was part of the larger series Melting Pot in 2001, where she cooked recipes from around the world. She also hosted two one-hour specials in South India and Spain for the British culinary tourism show Planet Food, broadcast on the Food Network in the U.S. and internationally on the Discovery Channels. Lakshmi was also an official contributor for season 19 of The View from 2015 to 2016. For celebrity contestant, she competed and won against music producer Randy Jackson in an episode of TBS's Drop the Mic that aired on December 26, 2017. She has appeared on See Us Coming Together, "a special that celebrates the rich diversity of Asian and Pacific Islander communities as part of Sesame Workshop’s ongoing racial justice initiative." Her first film roles were in the Italian pirate movies The Son of Sandokan and Caraibi (Pirates: Blood Brothers). She had a comical supporting part as the lip-synching disco singer Sylk in the 2001 American movie Glitter, starring Mariah Carey. In 2002, Lakshmi made a guest appearance as alien princess Kaitaama in "Precious Cargo," the 37th episode of the science fiction TV series Star Trek: Enterprise. She portrayed Madhuvanthi in the TV movie Sharpe's Challenge (aired 2006). In 2006, she appeared in ABC's Biblical TV series The Ten Commandments as Princess Bithia. In 2009, Lakshmi starred in the video for the Eels song "That Look You Give That Guy." She starred in the 2003 Bollywood film Boom, alongside Katrina Kaif and Madhu Sapre, as one of three supermodels accused of stealing diamonds. She played the role of Geeta in Paul Mayeda Berges's 2005 film The Mistress of Spices. Lakshmi also made a guest appearance on the NBC series 30 Rock in 2009 and appeared on