What Keeps Padma Lakshmi And Adam Dell So Close Despite Their Romance Being Over?

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Two years after Padma Lakshmi divorced famed novelist Salman Rushdie in 2007, she became pregnant. Despite trying to keep her romantic life out of the press, Lakshmi was mortified by the media coverage of her pregnancy, specifically the speculation over who fathered the child. "It was just about as horrible as is possible to be. I mean, talk about sl*t shaming," she told Helen Rosner of The New Yorker in 2024. A prenatal paternity test determined that Adam Dell, a venture capitalist and brother of Dell Inc. founder Michael Dell, was the father of Lakshmi's daughter. Krishna Thea Lakshmi-Dell was born in 2010.

Initially, Lakshmi didn't want Dell involved in their child's life, and in return, he sued her for full custody. Thankfully for everyone involved, Lakshmi and Dell worked through their differences and even dated again for a few years, starting in 2017 and splitting up in 2021. Today, the former couple is committed to co-parenting Krishna. In 2023, Lakshmi revealed on Instagram that she and Dell split holidays with their daughter. The following summer, Lakshmi posted an Instagram selfie of the trio celebrating Krishna's graduation from middle school.

For a long time, Padma Lakshmi hid her daughter's face when posting to social media and used the nickname Littlehands when referring to her. This changed in 2020. Lakshmi no longer saw the point in obscuring Krishna Lakshmi-Dell in photos after her daughter appeared in an episode of "Taste the Nation," coupled with the fact that many pictures of her were already public – thanks to paparazzi. In 2022, Lakshmi shared a short Instagram video of a candid mother-daughter soup moment that captured their playful and endearing bond. Since then, Krishna has been a regular in her mother's social media content.

In 2025, Lakshmi and Krishna sat down with Vogue India's Iva Dixit for a mother-daughter interview (and also graced the issue's cover). In it, the then-15-year-old Krishna discussed attending a New York City performing arts high school and auditioning professionally. "This has been my plan since I was three," she told the magazine. "First this school, then Juilliard." These days, Krishna seems to be enjoying life and traveling with Lakshmi. For her 16th birthday, Krishna spent a weekend in Miami with her mother, who commemorated the milestone birthday in a carousel of Instagram photos. In July 2026, Lakshmi posted photos on Instagram of the pair's weekend vacation to Mexico City.