When Morgan Neville was making Roadrunner, his documentary about Anthony Bourdain, the Oscar-winning filmmaker spoke to many in Bourdain’s inner circle about the TV personality’s final months—specifically about Bourdain’s romantic relationship with the Italian actor Asia Argento.

Michael Steed, a Parts Unknown director, recalled how Bourdain met Argento in 2016 while filming a season-eight episode set in her home town of Rome. At the time, Bourdain was rebounding from his second divorce, and seemed to immediately fall for Argento, who was about 20 years his junior.

“When Tony met Asia, he was like, ‘She’s the best. My God, she’s so great.’ You know, like high school when you get laid for the first time,” Steed says in the documentary. The relationship quickly escalated, with the chef turned TV personality gushing about Argento in interviews and on Instagram, publicly championing her as she emerged as a #MeToo leader, privately paying off Argento’s own accuser, and even pushing for his girlfriend to direct an episode of Parts Unknown when another director fell ill. Another Parts Unknown coworker theorizes that Bourdain, a recovering heroin addict, “turn[ed] a lifelong addictive personality to another person, and that was extremely dangerous.”

Though the final act of Roadrunner features various friends and family members speaking about Argento’s hold over Bourdain, and the tabloid photos that some suggest may have catalyzed his suicide, Neville said that he actually pared down coverage of the romance.

“The Asia story is insanely complicated,” said Neville, who did not interview Argento for his documentary. “And if you go and read all the news stories, and kind of go into it, every question you bring up…brings up 10 more questions.… What I included was a fraction of what was there. So if people think there’s a lot, let me tell you, there is very little compared to what’s there.… And I think I was very fair with having seen all the facts. I’m very comfortable with what I did.”

Ahead, in an effort to understand the complicated nature of the relationship that Roadrunner outlines, we look back at Bourdain and Argento’s ill-fated romance.

“Like a Teenage Boy”

It didn’t take long for Bourdain to develop feelings for Argento. After filming the Rome episode of Parts Unknown, Bourdain gushed to CNN:

The episode would not have been possible—or be anything like it is without the truly magnificent Asia Argento.… She told us about “stornaro,” the bawdy, profane Roman folk songs we feature at various times during the episode. She introduced us to the batshit crazy boxing club where we ate pasta ringside as gladiators pounded one another and the crowd hooted and roared. She allowed us to shoot at her favorite little restaurants, where she takes her kids on the weekends for homemade fettuccine and polpetti.… She arranged for her sister Fiore to cook for me at her home—with her delightful children, daughter Ana and son Nicola (who pretty much steals the show as he struggles with his tripe).… But most importantly, she was herself. Always honest, completely unsparing. If you ask Asia a question, you are going to get an answer—and she doesn’t care if it reflects badly on you—or on herself.… Asia has never given a fuck. Her admission that she never votes is both terrible and true—and about as close to home as it gets. The last word, appropriately, is hers.

In February 2017, Page Six reported that the two had “fallen in love.” Bourdain posted photos of her on Instagram alongside captions like, “Just a perfect day…You made me forget myself.”

Bourdain told People he was “happier for sure” with Argento in his life. “It’s nice to be with somebody who I see as a peer.” During a final interview with the magazine, he said he was “happy in ways that I have not been in memory” and “happy in ways I didn’t think I ever would be, for sure.” He attributed those feelings to “somebody really strong”—seemingly a reference to Argento.

Though Bourdain did not want to marry again, he said that he’d be open to moving in with her.

“Look, I like being around her as much as possible,” Bourdain told People. “She’s like me, in a lot of ways. We’ve both been married…. So that’s not something that’s ever, ever going to happen. That’s the death of everything. I think we both respect each other’s work. Nobody’s ever going to say, ‘Oh, but you promised we were going to go to the beach.’ No, you know, you get a gig, that’s it. That’s it. Nothing else matters. Work first.”

Shortly after Bourdain’s suicide, a friend told the magazine, “Like a teenage boy, [he was] just absolutely lovestruck. He would have done anything for her, and that was a little red flag for some of his friends.”

Argento shared her feelings about Bourdain as well, but not as prolifically. In February 2020, she posted an Instagram of Bourdain holding what looks to be a fake heart alongside the caption, “My Bloody Valentine.”

An Extraordinary Woman

Bourdain’s relationship with Argento attracted more media attention in October 2017, after Ronan Farrow published a bombshell New Yorker exposé about Harvey Weinstein. In the feature, Argento spoke on the record about her own Weinstein rape allegation, adding, “I know he has crushed a lot of people before. That’s why this story—in my case, it’s twenty years old, some of them are older—has never come out.” (Weinstein has denied all allegations of nonconsensual sex.)

Bourdain responded by posting a photo of Argento giving a camera the middle finger. “Proud as Hell,” he wrote.

The TV personality spoke about Argento and her strength during multiple TV interviews, including appearances on Late Night With Seth Meyers and The Daily Show with Trevor Noah. On the latter, Bourdain explained how Argento inspired him to become a #MeToo spokesperson.

“I started speaking about it out of a sense of real rage,” he explained. “I’d like to say that I was only enlightened in some way or I’m an activist or virtuous, but in fact, I have to be honest with myself. I met one extraordinary woman with an extraordinary and painful story, who introduced me to a lot of other women with extraordinary stories. And suddenly it was personal.”

In December 2017, he even wrote an essay for Medium, taking responsibility for his own actions or inaction over the years.

“To the extent which my work in Kitchen Confidential celebrated or prolonged a culture that allowed the kind of grotesque behaviors we’re hearing about all too frequently is something I think about daily, with real remorse.”

The following year, Argento delivered a powerful speech at the Cannes Film Festival about the alleged toxic behavior permitted at the event over the years.

“In 1997, I was raped by Harvey Weinstein here at Cannes. I was 21 years old,” Argento said onstage during the closing ceremony. “This festival was his hunting ground.”

Afterward, Bourdain told IndieWire, “From the second she said she’d been invited to present an award, I knew it would be a nuclear bomb. I was so proud of her. It was absolutely fearless to walk right into the lion’s den and say what she said, the way she said it. It was an incredibly powerful moment, I thought. I am honored to know someone who has the strength and fearlessness to do something like that.”

In Roadrunner, a colleague of Bourdain’s says, “His love for her was completely pure and safe and helpful and supportive. Which is essentially what he was looking for from her. And I think that Tony thought that the way to earn her trust was to go in with his whole heart.”

Bourdain continued to speak publicly—taking responsibility for toxic masculinity and speaking frankly about allegations against his friends. He also took celebrities to task on Twitter for remaining silent about Weinstein, including Donna Karan and Matt Damon, and, in an interview, described his death fantasy for Weinstein.

In Roadrunner, Bourdain’s second wife, Ottavia Busia, reveals that she initially thought Bourdain’s public crusade “was very noble, but it turned to the point that he became obsessed with it.”

Merging Work With Personal Life

In Roadrunner, several Parts Unknown crew members point to the filming of the show’s 2018 Hong Kong episode as a breaking point. Unexpectedly, the show’s longtime director fell ill—and Bourdain pushed for Argento to take over directing duties. In the documentary, behind-the-scenes footage from the episode shows Bourdain seemingly thrilled as Argento takes filming into a new direction—treating the episode as if it is a scripted project and calling cut on an emotional conversation Bourdain is having with asylum seekers. The Parts Unknown crew, meanwhile, was stunned that Bourdain would so quickly turn on the method and rhythm the team had perfected.

Bourdain also fired his longtime cinematographer Zach Zamboni after the Emmy-winning Parts Unknown team member disagreed with Argento. As Parts Unknown producer Helen Cho told Neville, “When Tony fired Zach, it was a huge red flag. Because if he’s going to do that to someone like him, anyone in the inner circle is essentially disposable.”

Deepening the wounds with his Parts Unknown team, Bourdain posted a photo of himself with Argento and Zamboni’s replacement, cinematographer Christopher Doyle, on Instagram. In the caption, he referred to the group as “the Dream Team.”

By that point, Bourdain had made 11 seasons of Parts Unknown with a tight-knit crew. But he rhapsodized the making of the Hong Kong episode as “the most intensely satisfying experience of my professional life and a show that I am giddily, ecstatically proud of” in an essay for The Hollywood Reporter that was published days before his suicide. “I plan to get a Du Kefeng tattoo, in the original Mandarin, as soon as possible,” Bourdain said, referring to the Mandarin name for Doyle. “As you might have guessed, I already have an Asia Argento tattoo.”

The Final Act

In June 2018, Bourdain was filming an episode of Parts Unknown in Strasbourg, France when a tabloid printed photos suggesting that Argento was cheating on him with a French reporter. Two sets of photos circulated—one showing Argento dancing in a Roman restaurant with the journalist. (After Bourdain’s suicide, the paparazzo who took the photos, Rino Barillari, said he regretted taking the pictures and selling them to the Italian magazine Chi. “A picture is not worth a life,” Barillari said in 2018. “If that shot triggered suicide…this would make me suffer.”)

Another set of photos, taken by Agostino Fabio, show Argento and the reporter holding hands and hugging on the streets of Rome. Per Page Six, Fabio took the photos off the market shortly after Bourdain’s suicide.

In Roadrunner, one Parts Unknown coworker recalls Bourdain being furious about the pictures. His last communication with the outside world was seemingly an Instagram story Bourdain published showing the title sequence from the 1970 film Violent City, a revenge film that begins with paparazzi photos of a woman cheating on her husband.

In Roadrunner, Parts Unknown producer Cho theorizes that the story was his final message: “I mean, it’s all there.”

Bourdain’s brother Chris Bourdain tells Neville, “My brother committed suicide. I think if someone else had been in his room, it might have been a murder and not a suicide. I think he was just having explosive anger and this was the only way out.”

In an interview with Rolling Stone, Neville said Bourdain’s decision to take his own life was “a very unpremeditated act. He was giving notes on edits that afternoon. He was making lunch reservations with a friend for the next week. People say that when people go into a suicidal episode, they last about 90 minutes. I just think he was in a remote part of the world, by himself, and he had a depressive moment and just did something that…I know he had those thoughts before. He wrote about it. He had been talking about [killing himself] forever. I just don’t think anybody ever thought he would actually do it.”

The Aftermath

Two months after Bourdain’s suicide, The New York Times reported that Argento coordinated a payment of $380,000 to an actor, Jimmy Bennett, accusing her of sexual assault. Argento responded by denying any sexual contact with her accuser, but said that her late boyfriend Bourdain had paid off her accuser.

“Bennett knew my boyfriend, Anthony Bourdain, was a man of great perceived wealth and had his own reputation as a beloved public figure to protect,” Argento said in her statement. “Antony [sic] insisted the matter be handled privately and this was also what Bennett wanted. Anthony was afraid of the possible negative publicity that such person, whom he considered dangerous, could have brought upon us. We decided to deal compassionately with Bennett’s demand for help and give it to him.”

Shortly after The New York Times report, Argento was fired from her job as a judge on X Factor Italy.

Argento’s Response

Argento first commented on Bourdain’s suicide via social media. “Anthony gave all of himself in everything that he did,” she wrote. “His brilliant, fearless spirit touched and inspired so many, and his generosity knew no bounds. He was my love, my rock, my protector. I am beyond devastated. My thoughts are with his family. I would ask that you respect their privacy and mine.”

Months after the suicide, Argento gave a tearful interview on-camera to the Daily Mail: “People say I murdered him. They say I killed him,” Argento said. “I understand that the world needs to find a reason. I would like to find a reason too. I don’t have it. Maybe I would feel some solace in thinking there was something that happened.… I understand that people wanted to blame me because he was so deeply loved and he entered in the hearts of so many people, into their lives, into their hearts.

“So in a way I understand that they [want to] see me as the negative person, the destroyer.”

Argento admitted that she cheated on Bourdain, but added, “He cheated on me too. It wasn’t a problem for us.… He was a man who traveled 265 days a year, when we saw each other, we took really great pleasure in each other’s company. But we are not children. We are grown ups.… Anthony was 62 [his suicide was shortly before his 62nd birthday]. I was 42.… We had lives, we had wives and husbands, we had children. I cannot think of Anthony as somebody who would do an extreme gesture like this for something like that.”

About three years later, Argento is still thinking of Bourdain. Last month, the actor posted an Instagram in homage to her late boyfriend.

“Celebrating the most extraordinary man I have ever met,” Argento wrote. “Missing you every day. Cherishing each moment we shared in our life together. I feel your presence and your strength. You shine so bright within me. I love you my A. Happy birthday ❤️”

According to a representative for Argento, the actor has not yet seen Roadrunner.

“A Price to Pay”

Speaking to Rolling Stone, Neville further explained, “I do think I accurately portray what happened. I want to be clear: I don’t think Asia made Tony kill himself—somebody even says that in the film. She was a fiery character, and Tony was looking for that. He says [to someone] in the film, ‘I’m dating a crazy Italian actress, and it’s not going to end well.’ That was something he told a lot of people.”

Neville said he considered including more Argento. “I looked at everything that she had said publicly in the wake of his death, including an autobiography she published in Italy, and interviews she gave in England,” Neville explained. “It’s all a version of the same thing, which is kind of, ‘People don’t understand me and our relationship. I loved him.’ I just felt like I was going to end up in this she-said/he-said litigating what happened and who was right. It was narrative quicksand.”

Neville also said that speaking to Argento for the film might have risked the trust he had built with the people in Bourdain’s inner circle who had already spoken so candidly about the late TV personality.

“I pretty much know what she’d say, which is that she loved him, and felt misrepresented by people,” Neville told IndieWire. “I also knew, honestly, that to interview her, you would incur a lot of bad blood from lots of people in Tony’s life. So there was a price to pay too.”

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