HBO Max's "Julia" feeds our insatiable appetite for Julia Child

By Nina Livingstone

With 18 films to her name, Boston-based food stylist Christine Tobin quickly admits that Julia proved to be the most challenging.

“All of the food production and styling work I’ve had leading up to [Julia] has trained me to do this job,” she said during a recent press junket promoting HBO Max’s eight-part series.

Julia is based on Julia Child’s culinary career and her long-running TV series The French Chef, which aired on WGBH, Boston’s public television station, from 1963 to 1973. The Julia pilot was filmed in eastern Massachusetts and premiered on HBO Max on March 31, 2022. It stars Sarah Lancashire as Julia Child, David Hyde Pierce as Paul Child and Bebe Neuwirth as Child’s close friend, Avis DeVoto.

With food as the show’s focus, Tobin’s work had a starring role. “It’s not just the element of food,” she said, “it was working in the various departments with the writers and the directors to bring an aspect of the storytelling to fruition [through] meetings and Zooms and mood boards and illustrations … I was engrossed in everything 24 hours a day.”

Never before had Tobin seen a production pay such attention to the food, right down to the kitchen they designed for its preparation. With Westerman (the family-owned Worcester-based restaurant equipment store) helping Tobin equip her kitchen, the Julia construction crew built her a “stage.” It came complete with lighting, sprinkler systems, plumbing, concrete walls, compost and recycling. “It’s like a collapsible kitchen space, just like the other sets,” she said. “We had a full, operating, restaurant-grade catering kitchen, from nuts to bolts.”

From there, Tobin prepared Julia Child’s recipes. “All of her recipes were executed exactly how they were written,” Tobin said. “Her writing is so meticulous and detail-oriented, she helped me in doing my job, just because of how she outlined all of the processes. Even without illustrations, it just sings off the page.”

Being a Boston native, Tobin has a special affection for Julia Child. “I’ve been a fan my whole life… She’s our queen,” she said. “For [Julia] we executed her food and her palate.”

On a personal note, Tobin lists Child’s roast chicken as a family favorite.

Since much of the filming took place during the COVID-19 pandemic, Tobin found herself putting additional layers of protection into place.

“[COVID] just added a new element of food safety,” she said. “But this was nothing out of the box for us, it’s part of our training. The only way it affected the process was bringing the food to the set or having Sarah [Lancashire] handle the food. They had various zones so only one person was allowed near the talent. I had to wear a bit more intricate COVID safety garb to keep her safe and all of us safe.”

Even with strict COVID protocols in place, the cast and crew of “Julia” still benefited from Tobin’s skills at replicating Child’s recipes.

When asked if the food captured on film was real, Tobin said, yes: made fresh, nothing fake. A communal refrigerator kept the leftovers “safe and beautiful” so people could pick from there. “There’d be a line out the door after certain scenes because everyone couldn’t stand the scent of duck a l’orange without wanting some!” she said.

David Hyde Pierce walked away with a new appreciation for the simple hamburger, which was based on Child’s recipe and prepared by Tobin.

“There is a scene where [Julia] makes hamburgers for me and her dad—simplest food in the world—and she makes her dad the kind he likes, which is basically a doorstop disguised as a hamburger. It’s cooked within an inch of its life,” Pierce related. “My dish was created by our chef, Christine, on the set and is this juicy amazing event of a hamburger with all kinds of garnishes and onions, beautiful Boston lettuce underneath it; the least fancy dish you could prepare but it’s just so unexpected to have a feast come from a hamburger!”

Bebe Neuwirth says her appreciation for French cuisine preceded the filming of Julia. “I’ve been lucky enough to have been in Paris a few times and it is very hard to not get a tasty meal in France! I definitely had an appreciation for our kitchen prop department who made all of the real food that you see on the television show.”

Pierce looked back on his food experiences and said it was his husband, “who is a fantastic cook,” who turned Pierce into his sous chef, “which is something that was helpful in working on this show. So I think it is safe to say that my experience with food in Julia has become intense and more immersive and I’ve gotten fatter than I was!”

While playing the role of Julia’s best friend, Avis DeVoto, Neuwirth admits she knew nothing of Avis’ role in Child’s life, yet she was delighted when she could relate to “her fervor, her self-knowledge.”

“She knew herself well enough to say, ‘I get very carried away and I get very passionate about these things and maybe it’s not a good idea for me to talk to this person about these things because I might get carried away.’ I relate to that,” Neuwirth said, with a laugh.

It was Avis who served as an early reader of Child’s forthcoming cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and it was Avis who supported Child’s decision to create and host The French Chef on WGBH. Perhaps forecasting her friend’s success, Avis had a wall filled with photographs of famous people she knew, explained Neuwirth. “At one point, she asked Julia to send a photograph to add to the wall.”

The HBO Max series threads together Julia’s professional and personal life, something Pierce recognized in his role. In summing up Julia and Paul’s relationship, he said: “They are people who met as young people in World War II, working for the OSS [Office of Strategic Services] in Ceylon and China. They were not attracted to each other at first, but they liked each other, and they spent time together and they had a love for exploring exotic and sometimes shocking food in these places, and out of that friendship grew their love.

“Paul introduced Julia to French cooking and to wine and French culture, but it was like introducing a fish to water,” Pierce said. “And when you talk about people who are meant for each other, meant to be together, and in a way they reinforced each other’s lives and supported each other in every way. I think they were a team.

“At the time that our show begins, that is when Julia’s star was in the ascendant and Paul’s star was starting to fade,” Pierce said in describing the changing dynamics. “He [supported her] with great love and great understanding of who she was and who she could be. He was always there for her.”

From her vantage point, Neuwirth spoke of Child’s and Avis’ friendship. “I liked Avis’ loyalty to her friend and the intelligence of her heart. That’s not to say [Avis] is a mush; I think she is a sentimental person, but she is compassionate toward people and in a way that is very real and very honest. I love the sense of humor that the writers gave her. It was really fun,” Neuwirth added.