Chef Charity Morgan Talks Working For Miley Cyrus, Dealing With Difficult Cooks, And Her Delicious New Show ‘Unbelievably Vegan’ 

Chef Charity Morgan may have yet to become a household name amongst viewers, but your favorite celebrities and athletes all know her by name.

The accomplished vegan chef has cooked for names including Miley Cyrus and Liam Hemsworth, and has prepared meals for NFL athletes around the country, including her husband, former Tennessee Titans linebacker Derrick Morgan.

“I tell people this all the time, if you ever told me that I was going to be vegan and I was going to be cooking for NFL players, I would have said, whatever drugs you’re on, just stop,” the chef told DECIDER in a Zoom interview. “Just stop right now. Just leave it alone. I never, ever thought of this.”

The chef’s new show, Unbelievably Vegan with Chef Charity, will follow Morgan around as she travels to restaurants in the South with the goal of implementing vegan menu options — and getting all of the staff on board. Her philosophy for success? Meeting people where they are.

“It’s all about not taking away somebody’s palate, not taking away somebody’s memories and what’s nostalgic about what they eat,” Morgan shared. “I truly believe in allowing and letting people keep those memories and keep what’s so beautiful about their family. I’m not taking anything away, what I want to do is just replace the ingredients and make everything beautiful from what you remember.”

DECIDER chatted with the culinary expert to discuss her new show, what it was like working with Oprah Winfrey, and debunking common vegan myths.

DECIDER: So, tell me a little about the series. Was this an idea that you had, or was it something you were approached about? 

CHARITY MORGAN: This was something that was a collaborative effort, that everybody was like, “Okay, what’s the approach and what are some things that we can reach the audience [with] and people that are wanting to go plant-based, plant-based curious, that might perk their interest.” And this show gives it a very honest approach on how plant-based is viewed, and how you often get your pushbacks, and all the different misconceptions of how people will view plant-based. They think that you’re just going to have a big bowl of broccoli. And so it was a collaborative effort, getting people to understand that this could be just as wide and big as you think that it could go.

I love that you say in the first episode, “I don’t want someone telling me what to eat, so I’m not going to tell someone else what to put in their mouth.” There are some vegan creators out there that try to force the lifestyle onto individuals or guilt them into it. Do you have a message for these creators, or do you find their platforms problematic?  

Yes, I do. I do find it very problematic. I’ve been vegan for seven years, and in that seven years, I come across people very often, almost on a daily basis, that say to me, “Hey, I once tried being plant-based, and this is what I got back, and this is how people treated me, and these are things that people said to me.” And they were quickly discouraged and quickly cut themselves off from that community. And what I found, and this is just my findings, is that often when people try plant-based, vegan, whatever reason it’s for, whether it’s health, environmental, animal, and they get discouraged, it literally takes years for them to come back around and even consider it, so it’s like, I have to undo all that work, and it has to come from a very, very compassionate place of, hey, even if you’re willing to try it once a week, I’m game for that. Let’s just crawl before we walk. Let’s just take this one day at a time, because there are people that do the all-in approach, and it gets overwhelming, and then they quit and they don’t do it again. And I am actually that person. I tried to go plant-based in 2015, was the first time I went plant-based, and I failed, and so I didn’t even think about it for years, so it was 2017 when I tried it again.

Do you have a favorite moment or most difficult obstacle in the series that you think viewers should look out for? 

I just think that overall, JDee, he is just such a hard person to try to get through to. And I often reach these people within my journey where they’re just like, “No, I like this. You can’t take my steak away. No, thank you.” And they come up with all these barriers and all these walls. And instead of me going in with a grenade, going to try to make them feel guilty or trying to force them into this lifestyle that they’re not ready for, I just slowly chisel away at it, and show them what is possible, instead of telling them, “Oh, these are the benefits, and this is what you’re doing for the environment.” I don’t do that because a lot of people have big habits when it comes to food, and it has nothing to do with health.

It comes down to flavor, and if I show him that things could be flavorful and delicious, I realized that I can win him over. Everybody’s different. It just depends on who is in front of me. JDee was all about flavoring, and at the end of the day, what does the food taste like? So that’s what I’m teasing now, that I am dealing with a very hard-headed carnivore that is not trying to hear me.

Is there an episode you’re most excited for viewers to watch? 

I think the first one is such a great way to jump in because it’s an icebreaker and it shows people all the difficulties of what I go through on the daily, not only with [JDee], but even with family members, with NFL players, with clients. People have these walls, and my job is not to break down the walls. It’s not. It’s for them to be vulnerable enough to listen to the education that I’m willing to share. That’s it.

What is your personal philosophy behind being a vegan? You mentioned you were not as vegan as a kid, so when did you decide to start this lifestyle as an adult? 

What helped me out the most was my husband’s effort to have a non-inflammatory diet for performance reasons. When I jumped on, I was more so helping him out. At the time, I was having some gut issues, and so I was like, you know what? Let me just try it. I never intended to be plant-based for this long. Absolutely not. But once I did, and I felt all the benefits of waking up without all this brain fog and tons of energy, and I don’t like to tell people I lost weight, because I wasn’t losing weight, I was losing inflammation and just like the puffiness around my waist area, I just noticed these small little things that I was like, oh my gosh. Eventually, I lost the desire to have those things that put me in a bad place.

Knowing she is a celebrity who has openly talked about her weight and diet her whole life, was there a specific reason you partnered with Oprah Winfrey’s network on this?

She was just excited about it. And I think that overall, she is very educated in what is good for you, the body, and what’s not. I remember reading years ago — this is decades ago, and this is far before I even considered doing a show — of how she talked about that she avoided white sugar, white breads and all these different things. And I just think that she’s so open and very open minded and very forward thinking about diet and what’s on our plate and lifestyle, that it’s very helpful to share it with other people, if she knows that somebody can share the message. So it was just timing and synchronicity.

What’s your philosophy around getting people to at least try out the vegan lifestyle, especially if they’re skeptical?

It’s all about not taking away somebody’s palate, not taking away somebody’s memories and what’s nostalgic about what they eat. And everybody has their own way of eating, and a lot of times, and this is an epiphany I had years ago, that we don’t inherit food choices from our parents. We inherit this flavor profile, it’s weird, like, I love cilantro and tomatoes and avocados because, duh, my mom loved it. So we’re exposed to all these flavor profiles that is pretty much within our family, right? And depending on what your culture is, it can get even deeper depending on which country you’re from, and I’m not here to take that away from you. I truly believe in allowing and letting people keep those memories and keep what’s so beautiful about their family. I’m not taking anything away, so what I want to do is just replace the ingredients and make it everything beautiful from what you remember.

In the show, you mention that you started out cooking vegan for your husband and his teammates. I know you went to culinary school. Is this where you ultimately saw yourself ending up with your career? 

Hell no. Oh my gosh. If I ever, I tell people this all the time, if you ever told me that I was going to be vegan and I was going to be cooking for NFL players, I would have said, whatever drugs you’re on, just stop. Just stop right now. Just leave it alone. I never, ever thought of this. It’s just such a divine thing that’s happened, and especially like culinary school, it has such a fundamental way of how you cook, and this is the rule of how you do this, and this is the technique, and this is the French way, and you can’t break that rule. And years later, I decided that rules in the kitchen are meant to be broken.

Speaking of your clients, obviously you’ve had some very fun celebrity clients. I know you cooked for Miley Cyrus and Liam Hemsworth’s wedding. You’ve had a bunch of NFL players as clients. Can you talk about your favorite celebrity client experience or the most famous person that you’ve ever cooked for?

No, because that doesn’t intrigue me. What intrigues me is just being able to share my knowledge with people, no matter who you are. Anybody that wants to be collaborative with me is super exciting. And it was exciting to work with Miley, because she had all these different ways on how she viewed what she wants to eat. And it was super easy. It was just like, “Girl, we’re just having a down home Southern wedding.” And I was just like, [I] got you. And that’s when I just started rolling off all these ideas. And she just let me run with it. So anybody that is collaborative and allows me to be creative, that’s my client.

What is the hardest food item to find a vegan substitute for? 

There’s a lot of great replacements out there. Often people say bacon, but I’ve found my ways around that. I think almost anything, almost, can be replicated, but I have not found a great lobster substitute. That would be my only [one].

There seems to be a stigma about eating vegan, that it’s a more expensive lifestyle, the food isn’t as good, and it’s harder to get all of the nutrients you need. Care to debunk?

I always start out with the simplest, most common sense thing that nobody ever thinks about. People often talk about protein, protein, protein. We’re so obsessed with the word protein here in America, it actually drives me insane. I’m just like, Oh my god, we are so brainwashed. My biggest example is just thinking of the strongest mammals on the planet. And I just say, name them. And people go, oh, an elephant, a rhino, a gorilla. And I’m just like, yeah, so what protein are they eating? I just let them figure it out from there.

What can people get out of this show? Why should non-vegans and vegans alike watch it? What about it is interesting for everyone? 

I feel that whether you are part time plant-based or full time, what it does is it shows you that there’s no limitations. And I have gotten that even from my cookbook, where I have had people email me that have said, and it’s just such a tearjerker for me, “I have been vegan for 15 years,” or “I’ve been vegan for 20 years, and I kind of got to that stale point of kind of bored of what I eat, and I got your cookbook, and it was like, wow, you just opened up a whole new door of possibilities and flavor profiles that I never thought that I would think I needed. Thank you so much.” And so I just let people know that it’s not a limited thing. It’s whether you’ve been vegan for 20 years, or just it’s peaking your interest of something that you want to do, it’s just good to understand all that’s possible.

Unbelievably Vegan With Chef Charity premieres Aug. 22 on Max.