Season one of Max’s Julia introduced Sarah Lancashire as Julia Child, the iconic chef and author who taught American television audiences the art of cooking with The French Chef. The first season delved into Child’s personal and professional life while charting her ascension to TV star. Season two picks up the larger-than-life television personality in France, where she and her loving husband, Paul (David Hyde Pierce), are visiting Simca (Isabella Rossellini) and working on a new cookbook.
Series creator, writer, and executive producer Daniel Goldfarb revealed that they intended to go to France in season one, but that never transpired. Once the series was renewed for season two, there was never a question the story would include a trip to the South of France.
“We got Isabella Rossellini to play Simca Beck, Julia’s writing partner, and then just because of COVID and everything, it became too complicated. So even when we were shooting season one, it was always like if we get a second season, we’re going to start it in France and we’re going to give them their due, that relationship. So, that was always part of the plan/dream,” explained Goldfarb during a press conference in support of the new season.”
Goldfarb added: “And then we even end season one with Julia saying to Hunter, ‘I need to go to France. I need to relax but also be inspired and be stimulated. I need that experience before I can come back to a season two.’ We planted the seed for ourselves at the end of season one, so we had no choice but to take the show to France. And I’m so glad that we got to. And then we got to throw Paris in as well, which was an added bonus.”
Watching Sarah Lancashire once again channel Julia Child was the cherry on top of a trip to France.
“Julia was magnetic, and because Sarah is an incredibly good actress and pretty magnetic herself, she brought that character to life. The words just sing with her,” said Oscar-winning production designer Patrizia von Brandenstein. “Her personality is powerful and strong, and she can project because of her excellence and her training. And you believe her.
I was shocked when I found out she really wasn’t 6’2” tall. But because she is, the woman seemed to grow in front of our eyes. I mean, the force of her abilities is amazing. And her vocal…everything about her becomes Julia. And she’s supported by a superb cast, of course. But she is an amazing shapeshifter. She’s great.”
Showrunner, writer, and executive producer Chris Keyser is quick to point out that Lancashire isn’t doing an imitation of Julia Child. “The amazing thing about her is that she creates the essence of Julia with a voice that is unique and specific, but not Julia’s voice. And she doesn’t attempt to be that way,” said Keyser. “And, obviously, you begin to get used to being there with her as remarkable as she is. But periodically, it’s her physicality. I watch something, and I’m not even listening to her or paying attention necessarily to the drama of the scene. I just watch her, the way she moves, and I think. ‘That’s Julia Child.’”
Keyser believes it’s the way Lancashire leans and walks, and even the tilt of her head, that so beautifully captures Julia Child.
“There’s just something about her taking that in and expressing it through something that’s specifically Sarah and not just Julia that gives you the essence of her and then even more. I mean, it’s easy on your own show to say how much you love the people who are doing the show, but there is something incredible about standing there on set and suddenly thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, that feels like we’re watching Julia Child,’ even though that is Sarah without an imitation,” said Keyser.
Daniel Goldfarb credits Julia’s star with making incredibly interesting choices.
“Like, sometimes I feel like I know exactly how a scene should be played or how a line should be played, and then she’ll do something really unexpected and so truthful and so deep and so surprising. She’s just the most inventive actor,” explained Goldfarb. “It’s thrilling because it is both – she’s incredibly intuitive and incredibly present, but she also works really hard. I mean, like she is constantly working and working on the lines and looking at old footage of Julia. And she takes the responsibility of playing Julia very seriously, and we’re all incredibly grateful to her for that.”
Theatres were shut down because of the Covid pandemic, which opened up opportunities for actors who would normally have been busy on stage to join the Julia cast.
“We got every great American stage actor who was around at that time,” said Keyser. “[They] came up to Boston to do the show with us and then they stayed, I think, because they were working with Sarah and with David and with Bebe (Neuwirth). You get the advantage of the attraction of being able to work with amazing people. And because our regular cast is so good, it actually attracted people like Stockard (Channing) – and the list is pretty long.”
“I live in New York and I’m in the theater, and theater people were like, ‘Hey, I want to be on it,” said Goldfarb. “Like, it just became sort of a fun thing. And Boston’s close and France is not close, but it’s France. And so, we were able to get people.”
Season two guest stars Danny Burstein and Rachel Bloom will appear in multiple episodes. “We were really lucky and it’s been a thrill for me,” said Goldfarb. “It feels like this incredible rep company and like every three weeks, we get to put on a one act play with the best actors in the world, so it’s just been amazing.”
Rachel Bloom (Crazy Ex-Girlfriend) and Hannah Einbinder (Hacks) were among the actors who reached out and asked to be part of the series. “Rachel stayed for a long time, for a whole bunch of episodes. Hannah’s in for one amazing performance late in the season,” said Keyser. “It’s one of the advantages of coming back in subsequent years.”
In the Kitchen with Julia Child:
Sarah Lancashire was determined to do the cooking herself, and food stylist Christine Tobin calls the actor a total natural.
“The first time I met Sarah, she was […] doing the pilot, and she was there for a costume fitting. Our prop master at the time introduced us, and my face must have gone white and my mouth wide open. I said, ‘You look just like her.’ And she’s like, ‘Oh, I do?’ And I’ve only seen her once out of costume throughout all this time as Sarah, and that was while we were in France,” confessed Tobin. “I introduced myself to her because I’ve only known her as Julia. And we had this moment.”
Tobin said that she and Lancashire had real chemistry working together preparing the food seen on screen in season two. “I was more just providing her the tools that she needed and the foods to present. And we would walk through it almost like a dance or choreography. I would just stand there and be ready for her questions if she had any,” explained Tobin. “But she really just figured out her own rhythm each and every time she [needed] to engage with the food on set.”
For Tobin, being a food stylist isn’t just about a single piece of food that the camera will capture as a prop, or that an actor might handle. Tobin always works with real food; there’s nothing fake about her staging.
“I was given the opportunity and took it to go Amadeus on it. And I say Amadeus because here we have icon Patrizia. And it’s bigger and bolder and lusher and borrowing things like the costumes of John (Dunn) and the set decorating and the design of things to just sort of add pieces of jewelry on it,” said Tobin.
Julia’s Not Just About Cooking
If food is the heart of Julia, addressing important social issues is the soul of season two.
Showrunner Keyser had a lot to say about incorporating issues including LGBTQ+ rights and feminism in the critically acclaimed comedy.
“First of all, we do tend to start with theme. I will say that when we started with the second season, we don’t start with plot. We start with ideas that we want to talk about, driven mostly by Julia and mostly by the idea that Julia changed the world in subtle ways, in ways you didn’t expect. And that she changed over the course of her life so that she became – she moved from, as Patrizia [has] said, a woman who came from a very conservative, wealthy family and met Paul and was both a product of her time, but also ahead of her time. And we want the show to reflect that a little bit; that it is a conversation about – particularly, season two – the way the world changes from the point of view of people who are both pushing to have a change and also struggling with change.
It gave us a chance to talk about a lot of different things that happened in the ’60s because the ’60s are a decade of change. And we begin this season after the death of President Kennedy, but before the heart of the kind of radicalized late ’60s. So, it’s really – it is an intermediate period where the conversation about what is the world going to be like and what role do I play in it felt very naturally part of the conversation. So, we started with that.
We always say, I think for ourselves, that the show needs to feel like it’s light as a feather, and that it goes – it’s really like, in some sense, like cotton candy and it makes you happy and you don’t notice until the end that actually something serious has happened. And we’re pretty strict with ourselves about all of that. And all these other pieces then in the writer’s room have to come in. What is food going to mean in each episode?” explained Keyser.
Goldfarb took over the explanation, adding, “I mean, everything Chris said, of course, but also with Julia, that stuff is actually the stuff that we are most excited about. We’re not trying to slip it in. It’s such a gift to get to make a television show. And I remember at the very, very beginning, I had done all this research and I handed all this research to Chris and then to Erwin (Stoff). And Erwin was like, ‘This is your shot to say something about the world. What do you want to say about the world? Forget about Julia.’
I didn’t think about it that way. But our writer’s room was full of really smart, really interesting people. And we spent like a month just talking about the world. Julia has all these incredible contradictions. So, in Julia, who herself is struggling and who herself is on – if you watch interviews with her, she’ll say one thing in one interview and then she’ll say the opposite in – the exact opposite thing in another interview. And that we had all of that, and that we got to sort of understand everything she herself was struggling with and how she…again, as Chris was saying, on the one hand, she represents like a housewife in pearls cooking, but in the ’70s she was the face of Planned Parenthood. And so, all of that stuff is so inspiring, and that she isn’t just one thing the way I think sometimes characters can be reduced.”
Goldfarb continued: “Because we have this historical figure, we can lean into the real contradictions that made Julia and the real contradictions that made their marriage so interesting; and Paul’s backstory as well. And it was a great way to sort of like look at social change taking place in that time period through the lens of this marriage and this couple, and really explore all those themes. And then try and do it with humor, which is – it’s like whatever. It’s like backwards and in heels.
I personally in my whole life, I’ve always wanted to tell serious stories with humor. So, I feel like we get to do this light-as-air, delightful show that also is trying to say something about the world and put something out in the world.”
Julia Season 2 Plot, Courtesy of Max:
With her trailblazing cooking show up and running on the air, Julia grapples with her rising celebrity and what that means for her, her colleagues and her show. In season two, Julia and her devoted husband Paul return from Simca’s home in France to find that her success has changed everything. Through her singular joie de vivre, she and her team must navigate WGBH, the White House and a threat from their past, while continuing to spearhead female-driven public television and confront social issues still prevalent today.
Season two premieres on Thursday, November 16, 2023.
