Interview with Elizabeth Chambers - Toxic (2025 TV series)

Thank you for taking the time. Thank you.

Yes. Obviously I was born in San Antonio. My dad lives there. My godparents live there. My family's all there. I don't have a home there now because when we opened Dallas, I was spending more time at our other locations, but I'm there at least once a month. I was there last week and then my relationship with San Antonio just got deeper. I have the craziest story, Kiko. My kids fell in love with this dog. The lady was like, 'I'll give you the breeder's number, but she's very picky about who gets the dogs.' So I called her and didn't ask any questions. For all I knew, this lady was in Korea. It already sounds sus. But she said we have to audition for this dog. So I called her and was on my best behavior, saying I would be a wonderful dog owner, these are my children, they have a vision board asking for this dog. I was basically begging at her mercy. In the end, I felt I was finally allowed to ask a question. I asked where she was located, wondering if I was going to fly to Michigan. She said, 'Right now I'm just picking up some prescriptions at H-E-B.' I asked where, and she said, 'Right here in San Antonio, Texas, on Lincoln Heights.' I was meant to go to San Antonio the very next morning to be at the bakery. It was such a full circle moment. I went to the bakery the next day and got first choice of the litter. She was in Spring Branch, and I felt like God really wanted me to have this dog. He was winking, of all the places she could be, she's right there in Alamo Heights.

She's a teacup Maltipoo.

We had one when they were born and he's now like 15. When we moved to the Cayman Islands, he couldn't come with us. He went to stay on a friend's farm and now he's just an old man who bites. I can't have him around the kids. He's happy there, and he's welcome to come back anytime, but biting dogs are not great with young kids.

No, I'm in LA. We moved back to LA in September. We spent almost five years there. I went for a divorce and then moved back to LA in September. We're happy to be home. The island life is great and beautiful, but it's hard to work there. I know how to do two things: own restaurants and do television. I did what I could do there and then I had to come home.

No, I know. I opened a Bird there.

Yeah, I told you, Kiko, I know how to do two things in this life. I did them both there. I opened a bakery there. It's great, but it's seasonal. Everyone leaves for the summer. It was amazing and people loved it. I brought our team from San Antonio down. They got to enjoy island life while training our chefs.

Gosh, all of it. But our California turkey, I do it EC style: toasted, extra extra extra raspberry chipotle mayo, extra onions, and extra avocado. I love our tomato basil soup. It's dairy free, gluten free, made with organic coconut milk. I tell people it's like drinking a smoothie, but it tastes like it's made with heavy cream. People love La Madeleine's tomato basil soup, but I say you're sleeping on ours. Ours is the best. That La Madeleine soup has a lot of calories; ours doesn't, and you'd never know the difference. I also love our carrot cake. It's the cake my grandmother always made for me and my mom always made for my birthday. Ours has walnuts, golden raisins, shredded coconut, crushed pineapple, freshly shredded carrots. When we take it out of the oven, we put a buttermilk glaze on top and let it seep in, then citrus cream cheese butter frosting.

Well, come on over. Are you in San Antonio right now?

We'll get your little bum to the bakery and I'll make sure your lunch is covered.

You know, Kiko, this was such a pivotal moment and a privilege for me because I wasn't drawn to the series; I created it. I've never been able to create a show from scratch before that is my baby. It was very similar to creating Bird. I always say Bird Bakery was my first baby because it was before I had babies, but this felt the same in terms of building something that didn't exist before. Dave, Jason Slanes, who is an incredible mastermind, was a producer of mine at E! 20 years ago. He now runs Discovery and is a genius. He came to my agent and said he wanted me to do a show that's really meaningful based on my recent experiences. When I was going through my divorce, I'm a very traditional person. I love family, children, generations of joy, Christmas cards. You've never met a more basic traditional person than I am. So when you realize you're going to leave a marriage and consider a dissolution of everything you ever wanted and dreamed of, that's a huge deal. It was huge for me, but more importantly, for my children. Divorce in itself is trauma. How do I make this decision that I know is best for me long term and for my children so they don't accept this later in life while mitigating the trauma? As a journalist, you understand doing research. How do you mitigate trauma during a divorce? That meant making appointments with family separation therapists. There's no manual. No one knows your kids, you, or the situation. I spoke to every family separation therapist that would take a call with me. I booked an hour with everyone I could find, from the Hasidic Jewish specialist on the Upper East Side to a lady in Kentucky, Denmark, and a doctor in Russia. Obviously, cultural differences, but it's like anything you do for work: you do the research and take what works. In that process, I learned about generational patterns. There had been infidelity in many generations before that I was a little aware of but not completely. Looking at my kids, I don't want my son to continue this or my daughter to be in a relationship like this. Looking at my own patterns and behavior, it was a year of therapy in many forms and then a year of building out this knowledge for my kids' toolbox. They were three and five when we moved, four and six when I filed. I wanted to build an arsenal of tools to parent them through, so when they're older, they have the skills to make good decisions and break generational patterns and trauma. That's why I became obsessed with the show. We see Dateline, True Crime, cold cases, and the end results, but what was the prequel? What got them there? I started chatting with my friends. When you're divorced, you have time to chat with single and unhappy married friends. I realized there's so much happening that no one's talking about. A lot of it is the messaging from Disney films, 17 magazine, telling us to learn to give the best so he marries you. Why are we auditioning for people to marry us and looking for Prince Charming to rescue us? That messaging is wild. So we created Toxic, a true crime show about toxic relationships that end tragically. I didn't want to do anything that couldn't help people. My goal is for it to help everyone. I want everyone to end every episode asking themselves: Am I in this relationship? Is my sister? Could my kids be in a relationship like this? Also looking for micro messaging. Maybe it's not obvious like being silenced by a narcissist, but there are little things in marriages, work relationships, or friendships that are micro red flags of unhealthy communication. The show comes down to humanity, relationships, patterns, and families. Our parents and grandparents brushed things under the rug and wanted everything to look great. They didn't speak candidly about happiness. Not everyone is happy all the time, but were they truly content, heard, living life to the fullest? That's what this show comes down to: living your dash. The date you're born, the date you die, but that dash in between on your tombstone. I want that dash to be pixelated, happy, healthy, saturated, beautiful, and joyful. You have to put things in place in your relationships to ensure you're heard and have healthy communication. Our show is an extreme example of how it can go wrong, but there are many ways to make it right in different spaces in your life.

It is a dream job and a dream show for me. Every single person on the show I love. You understand this: I could have made it just an interview, sit in a room, read questions, get on a plane. Instead, I lived in Baltimore for a week, got to know the families, went to dinner at their houses. You can't tell these long format stories without diving deep. It's a privilege to do that because with schedules, turnarounds, and budgets, you rarely get to do that work. I feel so grateful and privileged, and now I want to share it with as many people as possible.

That's a very good question. Obviously, you're sobbing and you want to hug them, but as a journalist, you have to tell a balanced story. We need to reach out to every perpetrator for comment. I made sure there was a chance to tell that side of the story for balance. At the same time, the egregious experiences they went through, you almost don't want to, but you have to give both sides a chance. In terms of being there, we saved that for off camera. I needed them to tell their story as subjectively as possible, in a safe space where they felt heard. It couldn't be me crying, them crying, which I wanted to do a lot of the time. That's a good question because people write weird things online. Some say I lack empathy, but I was literally trying to hold back tears to be a professional journalist. No empathy was lacked. Ask any of my women; I talk to their families every day. I care so deeply. But you can't win on the internet.

You're doing it for them, right? Some of them aren't with us. You have to approach it as doing it for the potential of saving somebody from being in that same situation. If I take that on too much, I won't be able to tell the story well or ask certain questions. It's difficult to sit there and ask a woman who had her life burned to the ground, almost was murdered, 'Why are you still living in this house where you were almost killed, and why didn't you walk away?' That can feel disrespectful and judgmental, but it's the question everyone's asking. You were almost murdered in your own home, and now we're walking through where your head was put through drywall, and you go to sleep in that room every night. Why? That question cannot come from a judgmental place. If you're so deep in a coercive relationship, you can't see the forest from the trees. It's about understanding the psychology of how you get so deep. It can happen to anyone. It's not judgmental; it's the fact that this could be anyone. Their techniques are so strong and strategic. I always say, if you open a door 10 times and someone punches you, you won't open it again. If you open it 10 times and every other time someone hugs you, loves you, and affirms you, you'll keep opening that door. That's what these people do. You can't judge anyone because it could be you. I prepared understanding that it could be anyone I know and love, or me in the wrong hands.

I would say if you examine your life closely, you probably see little micro examples of this all around. No one is immune to it. We're taught to just be grateful when someone loves us, not to have boundaries from day one. That's not a conversation people have. 'Oh my god, I met this guy online. He did this, he did that. He knew what flowers my grandmother liked. He loves hiking.' Does he love hiking? Have you checked with his friend group? Does he have a friend group? Did he just go on Facebook and see that you love hiking? I love romance and love more than anyone, but it's about being discerning with your dating and the people you're with. That goes beyond romantic relationships. There's so much to unpack. We're showing extreme examples of how that can happen. If you do the work backwards, this show's demographic is every living breathing human because it's people who have dated, are dating, will date, and are in any relationships. Unless you're a recluse, this show is for you.

Well, let's change that. Let's get some boundaries in place and get some dates happening. Bird Bakery can be the Bumble meetup spot.

Of course. That's such a great question. If you look at our last episode, Kate Rant was staying in a relationship and it took a child protective service officer to say, 'If you don't leave him, I'm taking your child away.' We do things for our kids that we wouldn't do for ourselves. Even when we're pregnant, I like to eat Bird Bakery chocolate chip cookies for breakfast, but I wouldn't do that when pregnant. We give our children more than we give ourselves. For me, it's about looking at these patterns, understanding that certain things have happened on both sides of the family that haven't served us. It ends now. It ends with us. We break those patterns because now we have the knowledge, we are equipped, and we can do the work and therapy. My kids are everything in this. They were the impetus for this show. We do everything we can as parents: feed them the best food, give the best education, steer them in the right direction. Ultimately, if they end up in the hands of somebody like the perpetrators on Toxic, they could die. It's as dangerous as putting them by the pool when they can't swim. It's our duty and responsibility to arm them with the tools to navigate relationships later in life and have healthy communication.

It's for your own good. They are literally the bane of my existence. You have to just remove them. It's the worst. They're addicted. They're seeing that messaging of 'look pretty, get ready with me for what?' All that messaging continues to be toxic. It's our job to model that behavior in our relationships, respecting our partner, speaking kindly, not having microaggressions or imbalances. Then talking to our children about what it means to respect and communicate healthfully. I'm obsessed and very passionate about all of this because it comes down to parenting. It comes down to modeling and parenting and not accepting anything we wouldn't want our kids to accept. Imagine raising them. You have a 13-year-old and an 8-year-old. We go from making sure they make it out of the womb to making sure they don't have SIDS in the first year, to making sure they're alive. Tina Harris in episode 3 did the same thing. What does her daughter do? Falls in love with an oral surgeon who kills her in eight months. Part of our parenting is to talk about healthy communication and what a healthy partnership looks like, what those boundaries look like, and making sure they have the confidence that they don't need another person. They're not looking for a partner or waiting for Prince Charming to rescue them. They're going to focus on themselves, be financially responsible. If somebody can be an added value or asset, that's fine. We're not doing what our grandparents did, getting married at 19 and being locked in because you have no way out. That's not happening.

That's awesome. I love it. I hope you get a season two whenever that decision comes down the pike. We're really excited for you and we can't wait to tell more people about the show if they haven't seen it yet.

I appreciate it, Elizabeth. Thank you very much. Have a good rest of your week.