Anthony Bourdain's Ex Asia Argento Fires Back at Claims She 'Killed' the Famous Chef: I Live With 'Grief and Shock'

Anthony Bourdain’s ex-girlfriend Asia Argento lashed out at fans who claimed she “killed” the late chef.

“I want to say this once, clearly — Anthony took his own life on June 8, 2018. I loved him. I have lived with grief, shock, and the exhausting, crushing loop of ‘what if’ since that day,” Argento, 49, wrote in a lengthy caption via Instagram on Wednesday, September 17. “Anyone who has lost someone to suicide knows how natural and inevitable self-blame can feel — the questions, the ‘if onlys,’ the impossible wish to go back and fix something that can’t be fixed.”

Argento explained “survivors of suicide” often experience “intense guilt, self-blame, shame, and complicated grief,” adding, “People sometimes try to make sense of the unthinkable by assigning blame.”

“Other people — strangers on the internet — have chosen to direct that blame at me,” she revealed. “Being accused, insulted, and told I 'killed him' forces me into the same impossible question I already live with every day. It’s cruel to attack someone who is still learning how to survive the aftermath of loss.”

Bourdain was 61 years old when he died by suicide in June 2018. Although he was still legally married to estranged wife Ottavia Busia at the time despite separating in 2016, he was in a romantic relationship with Argento in the months leading up to his death.

Argento has addressed rumors that she played a part in his declining mental health, sharing her side of the story in a 2018 interview with Daily Mail.

"People say I murdered him. They say I killed him," she told the outlet, visibly emotional. "People need to think that he killed himself for something like this? He had cheated on me too. It wasn't a problem for us. He was a man who traveled 265 days a year. We took great pleasure in each other's company when we saw each other. But we are not children. We are grown-ups."

Four years after his death, their troubled relationship continued to be revealed in the unauthorized biography Down and Out in Paradise by Charles Leerhsen. The book shared intimate details from the chef's final days, largely taken from texts and emails on his phone and laptop.

“Their relationship had by June 2018 evolved into something bizarrely complicated and decadent even by the standards of celebrities and others not bound by the usual societal — or logical — considerations,” read an excerpt about Argento and Bourdain, shared by People. “As far as he knew, she hadn't been with anyone else in their time together except her ex-husband, Civetta—though both agreed they theoretically had every right to have additional lovers (as long he steered clear of Ottavia).”

The author claimed one of Bourdain’s final text messages to Argento was, “You were reckless with my heart.”