David Williams is hoping for a long run on FOX’s MasterChef.

Last August, one of David Williams’ close friends told him that MasterChef, the FOX cooking show where Gordon Ramsay and a few other celebrity chefs try and find the best home cook in America, was holding auditions in Las Vegas and encouraged him to give it a shot.

There was just one problem. Williams had never seen an episode of the six-year old show. He had no idea what it was about and was hesitant.

“’I don’t know if I have time for this. I don’t even know what this show is. I’ve heard of it but I’ve never watched it. Let me take a night to think about it. I’m going to watch an episode’,” Williams told his friend.

That night he sat down with his daughter Liliana to check out the show and what he saw confirmed that it wasn’t for him.

“When it went off I was terrified. I was like, ‘Yeah, I’m not going to do this. This is not for me’,” recalled Williams. “Seeing Gordon (Ramsay) freaking out on people and just how hard it looked, it just didn’t look like something I was interested in.”

David Williams and his daughter Liliana
But then his daughter spoke up and gave Dad a pep talk that he just couldn’t say no to.

“Lili was so adamant. She was like, ‘Daddy, you can do this. You can do it. I want you to do it. I want to see you do it’,” said Williams. “She was pretty pumped on it and really wanted me to do it. I decided, “You know what, I’ll give it a thought over the next day or so’.”

The more Williams thought about it, the more he realized he couldn’t say no to at least giving it a shot. The audition was just a few days away and required Williams meet producers for an interview and prepare a dish for Ramsay and the judges. Having been in the media spotlight thanks to his poker career, the interview stuff was a breeze but Williams was stressing over what dish would win the judges over.

“I did some research I kind of figured, “Okay, so when you show up for the audition, obviously there’s going to be some waiting,” because I imagined what I saw on TV watching American Idol back in the day, just tons of people sitting around waiting for a number to be called,” said Williams. “I figured the food I make would have to be something that would be tasty even if it’s a little room temperature.”

Williams finally decided on a shrimp puttanesca dish. He had some time to practice the dish and after a few variations found a taste he was happy with. Then another roadblock hit him – one that can only be described as one of the pitfalls of being a young bachelor in Las Vegas. Williams was hosting some out of town friends for a Friday night bachelor party.

The audition was Saturday morning.

“I kind of got them started and left early, went to bed, woke up, remade my dish,” said Williams, who went out all with presentation. “I got nice white china, had cutlery, white napkins, plating napkins, wiped the plate, and when I was in the room few people were like me but a lot just had paper plates or Tupperware.”

White china and previous media experience aside, Williams had something else going for him. He’s spent the past 15 years living in a competitive environment, first in Magic the Gathering and then in poker. Sitting in a room full of other contestants didn’t bother him at all.

“I think the reason I wasn’t nervous was because of all the poker. The high stress situations, playing on TV, being critiqued by the viewers, by people in forums, the results of poker, being in those situations for so long I started in 2004 in tournaments for TV. I’d been playing longer than that, and when you do that, you sort of get used to the pressure,” said Williams. “I wasn’t nervous at all, and I think it was because it wasn’t something I really, truly, at the time, wanted to do. It was more something I was doing for Lili.“

The lack of nerves and the investment in white china paid off and a few weeks later he got the call to head to Los Angeles. Now he just had to prepare Lili for what could be a lot of time apart.

“I said, ‘if Daddy does this, he’s going to be gone for a little bit while I’m doing the show’. She said, ‘that’s okay. You can call me and I want you to win’,” said Williams. “She was cool about it. It hurt me more than her, I think, because I love being around her and she is the most important thing to me and I hate not being with her every day. I think because we’re adults and we can plan and think about the future it affects us differently, but when you’re four years old, the long term doesn’t really exist.”

The first show airs Wednesday night and Williams knows the timing is going to present a strange situation for him – the 2016 World Series of Poker also gets underway on Thursday.

“My first thought was, ‘I sure hope they’re not going to have TVs on.’ Sometimes they’ll show NBA playoff games,” said Williams. “If it comes on June first and I’m in tournament, I don’t know if I want people to see it or not while I’m playing, so I don’t know. It’s going to be definitely weird.”

Unlike some of his fellow competitors on the show, Williams has no formal culinary training. He taught himself from YouTube videos over the years. One of his “teachers” was none other than Ramsey.

“Because I wasn’t familiar with the show very much, I was actually very familiar with Gordon in two different ways. The first way I was familiar was because the way I taught myself to cook is YouTube. It wasn’t like I liked him and chose to watch his videos, I just naturally ended up watching a lot of Gordon Ramsey videos,” said Williams. “I think I ended up taking a liking to him in those videos because he’s just very down to earth and cool. I imagine myself as being kind of cool, so watching this cool guy cook and explain things, I was a fan immediately.”

Not long after the cast for this season was announced Williams found himself getting praise online from the person whose critique he originally feared most.


Compliments from celebrity chefs aside, Williams has never looked at cooking as anything other than something he could do for friends and most importantly, Liliana.

“I’d never thought about taking it to another level. I never really considered doing it as a profession or really competing or anything of the sort. It’s something I enjoy doing. I like to eat good food. I like to try to make it myself and I like to show off.

No matter how the season turns out for Williams it appears that he’s taken the pep talk his daughter gave him and turned it into an inspiration for her.

“They have a Masterchef Junior and that’s like my little girl’s favorite, even more than Masterchef. Even though daddy is going to be on it, she loves Masterchef Junior. That’s her jam and she wants to do it one day,” said Williams. “I’m just excited that I can inspire my daughter, you know?”