Gordon Ramsay’s Daughter Tilly Talks Carpooling Home with Her Dad After Filming “MasterChef Junior ”Together
“We tease each other constantly,” Tilly, 22, tells PEOPLE about her time on set filming the FOX series with dad Gordon Ramsay
Gordon Ramsay and his daughter Matilda “Tilly” Ramsay are bringing their goofy relationship to the small screen.
The duo will appear on MasterChef Junior, which returns on Monday night. The FOX cooking competition’s 9th season sees Tilly, 22, join on as a full-time judge for the first time. Gordon continues hosting and Aarón Sánchez and Daphne Oz return as judges.
The father of six — who also shares Megan, 25, twins Jack and Holly, 24, Oscar, 4, and Jesse, 3 months with with his wife, Tana — has been hosting the competition series since it first premiered in 2013, so he was able to show his daughter the ropes, according to Tilly.
“We laugh, he makes me laugh all the time,” she tells PEOPLE about their time together on set. “We annoy each other, don’t get me wrong. We tease each other constantly.”
This is not the pair’s first time sharing a set. Tilly has filmed with Gordon over the years as a guest on his numerous shows, like Hell’s Kitchen and The F Word. But by shooting a full season of MasterChef Junior together, they got to experience what it was like to be coworkers in a whole new way.
“We’d commute home together,” says Tilly, who released Tilly’s Kitchen Takeover cookbook when she was 15. “The car journeys home in the evening were lovely. We’d just chat about everything about the day. It’s just such a nice thing to do with him, spend that time together.”
On MasterChef Junior, amateur chefs between the ages of 8 and 13 test out their skills in a series of culinary challenges for a $100,000 prize.
“I grew up watching him leave for work in the morning and come home in the afternoon and I’d always say, ‘Oh, what did they cook today? What did you try? How was this? How was that?’ So now actually doing it with him and living those stories he used to tell me and getting to know the kids in a way that he gets to is really great,” adds Tilly.
The psychology student is a natural in front of a camera. From 2015 to 2019, Tilly had her own cooking reality show, Matilda and the Ramsay Bunch, on CBBC. She competed in the British competition show Strictly Come Dancing back in 2021. That same year, Tilly was a contestant on Celebrity MasterChef Australia. Now she’s happy to be on the judging side of the show.
“Being on the other side of it was such a relief,” she laughs. ”I love being a judge. I feel like I was learning constantly from the kids, from the other judges, just everyone around.”
Tilly says it was difficult to send any of the young contestants home, especially as someone who has also loved to cook since she was a child.
“I found that especially hard because you just want the kids to know that it doesn’t mean this dream is over. But even though it was emotional, there were also happy emotions and the kids were always just so grateful to have been there in the first place,” she say, “which I think was really cool to see.”
MasterChef Junior premieres March 4 at 8 p.m. ET on FOX.
