The disgraced TV chef Paula Deen struck a defiant tone as she looked back on her N-word controversy in a new interview on Sunday.

The 78-year-old former Food Network host was joined by her sons and business partners Bobby and Jamie Deen on Sunday for an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, in which she claimed that she ‘lost it all’ as a result of a lawsuit deposition in which she admitted that she had used the N-word in the past.

The contentious interview, in which she seemingly had tense interactions with her own sons, followed the premiere on Saturday at the Toronto International Film Festival of the documentary Canceled: The Paula Deen Story, which is directed by Billy Corben.

During the conversation, Deen was quizzed on the lawsuit and her past use of the N-word.

Notably, the cookbook author, who has since regained much of her empire, offered up a fuzzy timeline for when she stopped using the offensive term for Black people.

The Daily Mail has reached out to Deen’s representative for comment but has not yet received a response.

The disgraced TV chef Paula Deen struck a defiant tone as she looked back on her N-word controversy in a new interview on Sunday with The Hollywood Reporter; pictured Sunday in Toronto

The conversation turned contentious when she and her sons Bobby and Jamie Deen discussed her 2013 cancellation after she admitted in a lawsuit deposition that she had ‘of course’ used the N-word in the past

The controversy original began after Deen was sued by Lisa Jackson in 2013 for sexual discrimination and for allegedly making offensive remarks about Black people at her brother’s restaurant.

The judge overseeing the lawsuit ultimately threw out the racial discrimination claims on the controversial logic that Jackson, who is white, did not have standing to sue for Deen’s allegedly poor treatment of Black employees.

However, her sexual discrimination claim was allowed to stand before both parties asked for the lawsuit to be dismissed. Neither Deen nor Jackson have ever said if a settlement was reached to end the case.

In the interview, Deen’s son Bobby admitted that he was ‘excited for’ the documentary to be released, but he ‘thought it was a terrible idea from the beginning.’

‘It just felt like a lot of time had passed. I didn’t see the reason to go back and over it and rehash it,’ he explained. ‘Because we had survived it. As a family, we had survived it.’

He added that his mother’s detractors and fans had already made up their minds and likely wouldn’t be swayed by the film.

But Deen objected, saying that the fallout from the lawsuit ‘ate at my gut every day.’

‘I would have been fine had the whole story been told — had the real story been told,’ she claimed, before accusing Jackson of being ‘a known liar.’

In the interview, Deen’s son Bobby admitted that he was ‘excited for’ the documentary to be released, but he ‘thought it was a terrible idea from the beginning’; Deen (center) is pictured with Bobby (L) and Jamie Deen (R)

But Deen objected, saying that the fallout from the lawsuit ‘ate at my gut every day.’ ‘I would have been fine had the whole story been told — had the real story been told,’ she claimed, before accusing Jackson of being ‘a known liar’; seen with filmmaker Billy Corben (L) in Toronto

‘They took her word and ran with it, and no one every investigated any further,’ Deen claimed. ‘I was not going to be happy until the world saw the truth.’

After Bobby reiterated that there was ‘a lot of risk’ to relitigating the case in the documentary, Deen claimed she had already ‘lost it all.’

‘I disagree with that,’ Bobby replied.

‘Mom, I’m sorry to correct you. We have not lost it all. By far,’ he continued in a shockingly unvarnished moment. ‘Our family is intact. We’re alive.

‘This was 2013, a long time ago. And our beautiful business has thrived and survived this whole time,’ Bobby continued. ‘We have beautiful families. We have far from lost everything. Far from it.’

But Deen wouldn’t let up, and she recounted how, within ’24 hours,’ she had lost deals with the Food Network, Walmart and Target.

‘It was just everybody,’ she claimed.

Deen added that it was ‘heart-wrenching’ because ‘these people knew me.’

After Bobby reiterated that there was ‘a lot of risk’ to relitigating the case in the documentary, Deen claimed she had already ‘lost it all.’ ‘I disagree with that,’ Bobby replied

Things got particularly awkward when Bobby, in what’s described as a ‘stage whisper’ meant to be audible to everyone, said, ‘They’re also not your friends.’

Deen went on to claim that she was forced into issuing an apology that she later regretted, though her other son Jamie clarified that ‘nobody made’ her apologize in that manner.

She even claimed that she ‘didn’t know what [she] was supposed to be apologizing for.’

‘For being truthful when the other side had lied?’ Deen added.

She offered up a fuzzy timeline, as she said the N-word had ‘been out of our vocabulary now for a long time,’ and added, ‘My daddy taught me when I was a teenager, he told me, “I don’t ever want to ever hear you being mean or rude to anyone.” That’s how I was raised.’

The anecdote seemed to suggest that Deen hadn’t used the N-word since her teen years, but in her deposition she admitted to using it as recently as the 1980s when she recounted to her husband how a Black man had allegedly robbed a bank that she worked at.

She also admitted to have said the N-word more recently than that incident, though she claimed the last time she had used the offensive term ‘had been a very long time’ prior to the 2013 deposition.

Deen went on to say that the N-word ‘always kind of made me shiver.’

Deen claimed in her lawsuit to have used the N-word multiple times as an adult, but in her interview she seemed to suggest that a conversation with her father as a teen got her to take it out of her vocabulary; seen in 2017 in NYC

In a cringe-worthy portion of the interview, Deen went on to describe her impression of how the ‘Black community [had] chang[ed] its name’ over time, and she claimed that she had ‘many Black friends that I love very much.’

‘And they love me,’ Deen added, though she said she didn’t remember if she had consulted any of her Black friends during the controversial period.

As for regrets, Deen didn’t say that she regretted having ever used the N-word multiple times.

Instead, she said she wished she had gotten an attorney who would have forcefully objected when she was asked about using the term during the deposition.

She also said she regretted not just settling the lawsuit from the start, instead of letting it get to the point of the disastrous deposition.