The ‘Bad Vegan’ Director Is Defending The Show’s Ending After Sarma Melngailis Called It ‘Disturbingly Misleading’

(Spoilers for Netflix’s Bad Vegan will be found below.)

Sarma Melngailis, the celebrity restauranteur who fell from grace in Bad Vegan, took umbrage with the show’s ending, and the director’s now stepping up to defend what transpired. This vegan-beef is different from the other one (how Sarma felt “sick” over how Netflix was marketing the show, by “mocking” her belief in the dog-immortality claim) that we recently discussed. Lots of vegan-beefs! Let’s get down to business.

The series ended with an audio transcript of Sarma on the phone with Anthony Strangis (who previously operated as “Shane Fox”). Even though the show made clear that this call had happened “22 Months After Prison” (Sarma took a plea deal, as did Shane, and she served time at Riker’s Island), it wasn’t made explicit that this call had taken place back in 2019. If people weren’t paying close attention to the timeline (Sarma’s tabloid appearances involving the pizza-order busting took place in 2016 when the two were caught as fugitives), then yeah, it’s easy to assume that the call was pretty close to present time. And that irked a lot of people (on social media), who watched how the two defrauded Sarma’s investors and shafted her employees for paychecks.

Sarma made clear that she wasn’t thrilled, writing how “the ending of Bad Vegan is disturbingly misleading; I am not in touch with Anthony Strangis and I made those recordings at a much earlier time, deliberately, for a specific reason.” Now, series director Chris Smith and executive producer Ryann Frase have spoken with Newsweek to defend their call to, well, include the call in the way that they did:

“The inclusion of the last phone call isn’t to imply that Sarma and Anthony were still close. The call is dated “22 Months After Prison”–and Anthony clearly says at the end of the call “it was nice to hear your voice”–which we feel shows that communication between them is not common.

“In this call, we found Sarma to be confident and strong—making fun of the tales Anthony had spun, telling him that he had to show up on a unicorn for there to be any reconciliation (meaning there is no reconciliation)… Lastly, this call was one of the few pieces of audio we found of them communicating in a way that helped us understand their relationship in the first place.”

It’s a fine line there, and again, it’s easy to see how people would have been misled without a clear “2019” label. And they’re pouncing on Sarma, who did some very Bad Vegan things, yes, but she did claim to use the money from Netflix to pay back her employees. That doesn’t fully fix things, obviously, but yeah, there are no winners in the Bad Vegan story. So to sum up, Sarma insists that she and cult-leader-esque Anthony “Meat Suit” Strangis aren’t in contact. Hopefully, it stays that way.