HBO Max’s new comedy series Julia explores the personal life and professional career of Julia Child, the extraordinary woman whose The French Chef TV show revolutionized public television. Premiering on March 31, 2022, Julia stars Sarah Lancashire (Happy Valley) as the iconic chef, bestselling author, and larger-than-life television personality who continues to fascinate us nearly 20 years after she passed away at age 91.
So, why are we still so interested in Julia Child? The cast of Julia and executive producers Chris Keyser, Daniel Goldfarb, and Kimberly Carver shared their thoughts on Julia’s lasting appeal during the 2022 Television Critics Association’s winter press tour.
David Hyde Pierce, who stars as Julia’s supportive husband, Paul, believes Julia was one of a kind. “I think that’s why people have stayed interested in her throughout changing fashions and styles and foods and everything else, and why so many different versions of her have occurred, because she’s one of a kind and eternally fascinating.”
Brittany Bradford (Broadway’s Bernhardt/Hamlet) plays Alice Naman, a producer who wholeheartedly supported Julia and The French Chef. Bradford thinks it was Julia Child’s authenticity that continues to drive her popularity.
“She [had] a great sense of humor. She’s somebody that we can really connect to and a joy to be around as well,” added Fiona Glascott who stars as Judith Jones, the editor who championed Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking. “I think that’s what makes her so popular, too.”
Bebe Neuwirth plays Julia Child’s good friend, neighbor, and staunch supporter Avis DeVoto. Neuwirth recalled that as a child the real Julia was fascinating to watch. Audiences of all ages got a kick out of her show.
“She was goofy. She was brilliant. She was profound. She was funny-looking, but she was also beautiful. And she did these incredible things and then fed you. It was sort of like quicksilver. She’s sort of like everything, a very, very multifaceted…like you can’t not look at her and say, ‘What is going on there?’ At least, as I say, from a kid’s perspective watching TV and we all are kids watching TV. That’s in all of us, that element,” said Neuwirth.
Fran Kranz, hot off his critically acclaimed directorial debut with Mass, plays The French Chef’s producer and director Russ Morash. “I thought the more I learned about her in doing this show and being so lucky to be a part of it, I saw her as an artist. And great artists are eternal. They stick around. We pay attention to them for years and years, centuries,” said Kranz. “There was an artist inside of her and I really love that.”
Finding Their Julia Child
Series creator and executive producer Daniel Goldfarb said they were lucky to find Sarah Lancashire and fortunate she was able to work on Julia and Happy Valley at the same time. Goldfarb describes Lancashire’s performance as Julia Child as full and rich, and executive producer Chris Keyser believes they wouldn’t have had a series if Lancashire hadn’t said yes.
Asked how she approached the role, Lancashire replied, “There’s such an awful lot of source material available online, so that was a starting point to reference her, plus reading the books about her and the letters between her and Avis. But at some point for me, I actually put the written material away. It didn’t necessarily make sense with what we were trying to do, which was a drama as opposed to a documentary.
I worked with a vocal coach for a very short period of time who, we were looking at accent, really. And then for me, I pulled away from that and started looking at trying to create a parallel voice, really, that would essentially create the essence of her vocal eccentricity and her singularity but was harmonized with the physical. And that’s important to find a place which is comfortable. That’s just a matter of time, really, of playing around and trying to find something which works.”
Lancashire continued: “I’m not a mimic. I can’t impersonate. And, also, she did have this extraordinarily complex vocal change, which I don’t share with her. And, therefore that, unfortunately, wasn’t an in for me. I had to find something which worked in parallel and was comfortable.
But really, I spent many, many hours just watching her. There’s so much source material available and really that’s what I was doing. But that’s not a hardship. She’s a joy to watch. You kind of want to be in her company and, yeah, she makes you feel better about the world, really. She’s a tonic.”
Julia Child’s Fierce Female Squad
Alice Naman and Judith Jones played pivotal roles in getting The French Chef on air at a time when the network brass were inclined to pass on the project. Brittany Bradford was thrilled to explore Alice’s part in The French Chef’s success and to learn more about Black producers in the 1960s.
“That was what excited me about the pilot as well, was not only getting to explore – you don’t get to hear a lot about Black producers at this time, which they were around, I just want to say – sometimes you want to think that something that’s improbable is impossible, but it’s not. And so getting a chance to learn about who Alice could have been and the Alices of the world and then getting an opportunity to interact with Julia… They’re two women that are going through life and working in completely different ways but they are complementary towards one another,” explained Bradford.
Executive producer Chris Keyser felt it was important to also fully explore the relationship between Julia Child and Judith Jones. Jones was already a highly respected editor when she discovered Julia Child.
“It was an extraordinary thing that they got together. I mean Judith Jones, her body of work before she comes to the cookbooks, is extraordinary,” said Fiona Glascott. “The amount of serious, heavy-hitting literary works that she has done and at the time was looking for – without even realizing it, she was looking for a way of French food particularly to be taught in America and cooked at home. And then when this manuscript fell on her desk, it’s like worlds collided.
She also is an extraordinarily generous woman who was really interested in bringing people together and elevating them. And I think not only did she fall in love with Julia’s work, but she fell in love with her. I mean, who couldn’t? And so together they started to elevate each other.
Julia was an answer for Judith’s wishes for years. They found each other and then Julia brought Judith again into this world of cookbooks. Judith, always being a huge fan of food and cooking, then ended up years later writing her own cookbooks, which I think was hugely owed to Julia and these women coming together and finding each other and then gathering more around them.”
