For a brainy model with a hot new cookbook, marriage to a literary superstar creates opportunities—and problems. سب, سب سے اوپر Chef’s Padma Lakshmi now has an empire in the making, but Salman Rushdie won’t be part of it.

by Nancy Jo Sales
December 2007

She walked the red carpet that night with Helen Mirren and Queen Latifah and the ladies of Wisteria Lane. It was the 59th Primetime Emmys, and although she wasn’t there for the reason she’d always envisioned—her acting—it was, she said, “a big fucking deal.”

She could laugh over the fact that she was on a nominated reality show—she hated...