Mason has made amazing crepes in the past, so many that he not only knows the recipe by heart, but he could flip them in the pan behind his back and under his leg. It didn’t take long to see that Mason’s obvious weakness was dessert, in fact, it still is! Not only was he not able to be as creative with desserts, it was this dish that he didn’t finish in time (when he didn’t finish in time). I knew I could not prepare him with ingredients, but I could absolutely prepare him to know what 30 minutes feels like and to be able to work in the timeframe seamlessly. Mason spent the next five weeks doing a 30 minute chopped challenge every day, with the exception of two days. This was in July 2015 and we were not to share this information with anyone, except we had to share it with a few people, the people who would help us mentor and train Mason. The only real difference is that on Chopped, chefs only get 20 minutes for their appetizer round and the kids got 30 minutes for all three rounds. Yep! Mason was selected to compete on Season One of Chopped Junior! A new show on Food Network that was using the same model as Chopped, only for kids from 8-13. Practicing! Mason practiced every day for 35 days! We had to wait until Monday to call back and get more information, and when we did, it was super cool news!
It was many weeks later that I got a voice mail message that was not coming across very clearly, something about Mason auditioning for a show, and they really loved him, and then the word chopped. Too funny that he put those things together!
I also took the opportunity to dispel any ideas that he was a bad kid, I assured him that one fight with a friend of his did not justify a bad run, or hanging out with the wrong crowd. I can’t recall the exact context of the questions he was being asked, but he was answering with things like, “Yeah, I’ve been on a bad run lately, hanging out with the wrong crowd, getting in trouble.” I was sitting in the living room overhearing him and thinking, what the heck is he saying? He knows better than to talk about all that kind of negative nonsense! Not to mention, none of it was really true! In any case, when the torture finally ended, I commented that we might as well just move on and look to the next opportunity as I didn’t see a callback in his future for this gig. He managed to smile and put on a front that he was his normal happy go lucky self, but in fact, the things he was saying were telling a different story. He had to hurry and cook his signature dish and be ready to be energetic and bubbly on camera. “And I said, ‘What did you do? When?’ And I realized in my head that there had been many hours since this probably happened.The audition for Chopped Junior was the worst audition of his young life! He had had a bad day at school, he got in a fight with another boy and his audition was just 45 minutes after he got home. Ms Heard said she took sleeping pills and woke up to find Mr Depp “missing a finger”. I just remember thinking ‘Please God, please. I looked around and I saw so much broken glass. “I remember not wanting to move because I didn’t know if it was broken – I didn’t know if the bottle that he had inside me was broken,” she said. Ms Heard said she remembered being still, not wanting to move, looking around the room, and seeing broken bottles and broken glass. I could feel his arm moving and it looked like he was punching me. My back is on the countertop and I thought he was punching me. I don’t know how – I don’t know what happened next.” Ms Heard sobbed as she continued: “The next thing I remember, I was bent over backwards on the bar, meaning my chest was up.
“I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t get through to him, I couldn’t get up,” she said.
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