Nigella Lawson’s two former assistants were acquitted at their sensational fraud trial Friday — triggering an angry blast by the celebrity chef about her own ordeal on the witness stand.
Lawson, 53, said she was “disappointed but unsurprised” by the not-guilty verdict for sisters Elisabetta and Francesca Grillo, who claimed she had approved their $1.12 million spending spree because they covered up her drug habit.
The verdict comes two weeks before Lawson is scheduled to appear as a judge in the launch of the second season of ABC’s “The Taste.” ABC confirmed Friday that Lawson would appear in the Jan. 2 season premiere of the reality-TV cooking competition.
Ripping the London jury trial, Lawson said the public had been treated to “a ridiculous sideshow of false allegations about drug abuse which made focus on an actual criminal trial impossible.”
She said that while testifying for two grueling days, she was turned from a willing witness against the Grillos into a hounded defendant.
“I did my civic duty, only to be maliciously vilified without the right to respond,” she said.
Under cross-examination, the TV culinary star admitted she used cocaine a handful of times and smoked pot occasionally but strongly denied she was the daily drug abuser being depicted.
“Even more harrowing was seeing my children subjected to extreme allegations in court without any real protection or representation,” she said in a statement issued after the verdict. “For this, I cannot forgive the court process.”
Still, Lawson did get some good news. Scotland Yard said it would not investigate her drug use on the basis of the court testimony, although it said it would reassess its decision if new evidence surfaced.
The Grillo sisters were allowed to wait for the verdict in a special court chamber after Elisabetta, 41, collapsed Thursday and was taken to a hospital for an anxiety attack.
When Francesca Grillo, 35, learned of the verdict, she exclaimed in Italian, “There is a God!”
During the three-week trial, prosecutors said that over one stretch in 2012, Francesca spent nearly $80,000 a month and her sister $45,000 a month.
They used credit cards belonging to Lawson and her art-dealer hubby, Charles Saatchi, to spend lavishly on flights to New York, hotel stays, designer handbags and clothes, the jury was told.
Lawson has since split with Saatchi, who was caught on camera this year appearing to choke her at a London restaurant.
Branding experts, meanwhile, said the trial’s lurid drug charges would not permanently tarnish Lawson’s career as a TV host and cookbook author.
Jasmine Montgomery, CEO of the Seven Brands consulting firm, noted Lawson’s appeal as a “warm, vivacious, beautiful woman.”
“Finding out she took cocaine is not as damaging as if we found out her brownies were made by Mr. Kipling,” she said, referring to a supermarket pastry manufacturer.