BBCNigella Lawson is in a better place than ever before. The brunette beauty is gracing the April cover of British Vogue, has recently completed the second season of the popular reality competition show The Taste, and she's seemingly put her much-publicized struggles over the past year behind her.
Except she's still dealing with the emotional aftermath after facing a drama-filled divorce from former husband Charles Saatchi and then later losing a high-profile court case against her former assistants, during which her drug use became the focal point.
"I have had better times," she admitted during an emotional appearance on Michael McIntryre's chat show, when the celebrity chef was asked how she was feeling now that those events are in the past. "It's spring and I am feeling better and I am very happy to be here."
"I have been alive longer than you, so I know life has its dips and it can get better and you can't fight it," she added.
Lawson made headlines last summer after photos of former advertising bigwig Saatchi allegedly grabbing his then-wife's throat at Scott's restaurant in London surfaced, which ultimately led to the former couple's divorce. The images also prompted an investigation by authorities, who ultimately gave Saatchi a warning for assault.
"I really think if the major thing in your life is what people who don't know you think, then you are living your life wrong," the 54-year-old beauty admitted.
"I'm not particularly guarded, and I say and do some things I may regret later," she confessed. "But I would rather embarrass myself and be a bit idiotic sometimes than spend my whole life worrying about what people think."
Lawson also admitted to taking cocaine and smoking cannabis during the fraud trial of her former assistants (sisters Francesca Grillo and Elisabetta Grillo, who worked for Lawson for more than 10 years, were both found not guilty), although she insisted she is not a "habitual drug user."
"I'm not an innocent. I understand how it works," she said. "I just don't involve myself. I don't speak and I don't comment."
"I could say things and be indiscreet, but I don't want to," Lawson added.
Less than one month after the ruling, she told Good Morning America it was "mortifying" to have "distortions of [her] private life put on display" in court after her drug use became a massive source for tabloid fodder.
"The real truth is if you don't read things and don't get too involved, it doesn't enter your bloodstream. If it doesn't enter your bloodstream, you are not contaminated," she said. "What I have found is it has given me a far too sensitized reaction to newspapers. We all like gossiping in our own lives, so I don't take a lofty view. I just perhaps feel having had a layer of skin removed, I am more sensitive to other people's fortunes."