Rachael Ray on ending her show and starting a new one: ‘Not just a waitress from upstate New York’

nypost.com:

ending its run of original shows May 24 after 17 years on the air, into the new series she will host and produce under her Free Food Studios production company, including a self-described “home show” for A&E.She will also continue her trips to Ukraine to help the people of that war-torn country.“We have one left [to film] in the first quarter,” she said regarding the A&E series. “It’s about people who’ve had losses just like mine; they’ve lost their homes to fire or flood … one friend of mine, Anthony, lost his home to a person driving through it.

These shows are so moving and these folks have gone through so much, emotionally. We end each of the home shows with food — they design their own menus and I make them anything they want. “It’s like a genie-in-a-bottle kind of thing.”Ray, along with a distinguished list of other industry veterans, will be inducted into the Broadcasting & Cable Hall of Fame May 3 in a midtown soiree, about 30 blocks uptown from Chelsea Television Studios, home to “Rachael Ray” since its seventh season (the show premiered in September 2006).Ray said she’s “not sad at all” that her syndicated daytime show is ending.“I celebrate all of these people and many of them have become family since I’ve known them,” she said. “I’ve never been a person who called HR when people [here] started falling in love with each other.

There are families now because our show existed. I’m producing so much TV that I hope I work with everyone again, whether it’s a side-hustle or they work a ton with us.“I truly believe I’m going to know these people the rest of the days that I’m breathing on the planet.