Almost eight weeks after saying goodbye to Anthony Bourdain, CNN is getting ready to say goodbye to his series “Parts Unknown,” too.
In an interview with the the Los Angeles Times published Wednesday, Amy Entelis — the executive vice president of talent and content at CNN who oversees the network’s original series and films — revealed that Bourdain’s program would air its final season this fall, consisting of five episodes, only one of which was completed before Bourdain’s death by suicide in June.
“Each one will feel slightly different depending on what’s gathered in the field,” Entelis told the Times. “They will have the full presence of Tony because you’ll see him, you’ll hear him, you’ll watch him. That layer of his narration will be missing, but it will be replaced by other voices of people who are in the episodes.”
Bourdain’s written narration will accompany the installment featuring a trip to Kenya with W. Kamau Bell, the host of CNN’s “United Shades of America.”
Entelis told the Times four other episodes set in Manhattan’s Lower East Side — in addition to the Big Bend area of Texas along the border of Mexico, the Asturias region of Spain and Indonesia — will be completed by the directors who filmed them for Bourdain’s Zero Point Zero production company.
The network plans to use audio Bourdain gathered while shooting on location and include follow-up interviews to bring the programs together.
CNN did not immediately respond to TheWrap‘s request for comment about the final season of “Parts Unknown.”
The penultimate episode will include cast and crew commentary on the making of the series and behind-the-scenes footage. The finale will be dedicated to “how Tony affected the world,” Entelis said, and will include reactions from Bourdain’s friends and fans.
“We don’t want to start putting things together that weren’t meant to be,” Entelis said, noting that there are no plans to pull from the show’s archives beyond those final two episodes.
In June, the 61-year-old chef was found dead in a hotel room in Paris while on site filming another episode of the current eleventh season of “Parts Unknown.” In his years hosting the program for CNN, Bourdain had become one of the more beloved figures on the channel, even among frequent critics of the network. He was also a New York Times best-selling author.
“What Tony did was inimitable,” Entelis said. “What we want to do is find a show that captures what Tony is all about. It might be a very different show and look nothing like ‘Parts Unknown.'”
Anthony Bourdain's Best TV Moments, From a Meal With Obama to a Trip to Waffle House (Videos)
"Low plastic stool, cheap but delicious noodles, cold Hanoi beer." Bourdain famously tweeted this line along with a photo of himself and President Obama hunching over a small table in Vietnam as he demonstrated the best way to slurp noodles. It's an incredible sight to see both Obama and Bourdain so at home with their worldly curiosity and feels like an image of Americans at their best.
You may know it from the documentary "Jiro Dreams Of Sushi," but Bourdain got to the best sushi in the world first. In this clip he makes a great case for what it is to be a master of something and the importance of respecting someone else's values by eating something the way it was served. That means no soy sauce and no wasabi, just total faith that what you're about to eat will already taste like perfection.
Bourdain was known as a "rock star" chef for how he approached life with reckless abandon. So it makes sense that he'd be close with a bona fide rock star in Iggy Pop. While he had a lot of great musical moments lunching with musicians such as Serj Tankian in Armenia or The Black Keys in Kansas City, his finest moment came in Miami, where he sat down for a hilariously healthy and refined meal with one of punk's legends. "What does it say about us that we're now sitting in a healthy restaurant, I just came from the gym, and we're sitting in Florida?"
Bourdain's brash personality shines through in this brief clip in which he shows a little disdain at being so well known for making a relatively simple dish like scrambled eggs. But they might be the best scrambled eggs you'll make, and it's a must try. "Isn't it nice to do something vaguely normal like cooking for yourself," he says in the video. "I feel like a human being again."
Part of Bourdain's charm was that he was unapologetic about things he didn't like and had a way with words to embody his disgust. In this amusing clip of him talking with Conan O'Brien, he recalls a depressing meal he had at an airport Johnny Rocket's that he called temporarily "soul-destroying." "We all sort of stood there silently for a second, kind of sharing this moment of perfect misery. None of us were where we wanted to be."
One of Bourdain's more amusing discoveries in plain sight was him finally venturing to a Waffle House, this one in Charleston, South Carolina. The way he describes Waffle House as an inclusive, welcoming place with a warming, inviting yellow glow feels like a beautiful, microcosm of America.
"Neither East nor West but always somewhere in the middle," Bourdain says in this 2014 episode of "Parts Unknown" where he found some unexpected bonds with an Iranian family, sitting down to a glorious Persian, home cooked meal. He went in fully knowing that American audiences might react negatively to it and hoped to break down barriers.
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Late chef, traveler and host was a man of the world — these moments define his love affair with food and culture
"Low plastic stool, cheap but delicious noodles, cold Hanoi beer." Bourdain famously tweeted this line along with a photo of himself and President Obama hunching over a small table in Vietnam as he demonstrated the best way to slurp noodles. It's an incredible sight to see both Obama and Bourdain so at home with their worldly curiosity and feels like an image of Americans at their best.
