Growing up in Seattle in the 1980s and 90s, Jeff Smith, The Frugal Gourmet was a household name. A former Methodist minister, he became an overnight sensation teaching America to cook through his PBS cooking show. He reached an estimated six million households each week across more than 300 Public Television stations nationwide, and authored 12 cookbooks, many of them New York Times bestsellers.

But behind the public success lay a darker story. At the height of his career, Smith's carefully cultivated image collapsed under the weight of shocking revelations, forever altering his legacy and changing the way the public viewed a beloved national figure.

I set out not only to examine the life of Jeff Smith, but also to grapple with his legacy — and what it reveals about how we, as a society, respond when public figures we admire are accused of terrible behavior. His story has never before been told in its entirety, and this independent production is the first to take on that challenge — a story that predated the #MeToo movement — and confronts the cultural reckoning around power, celebrity, and accountability.