‘Julia’ Premiere Date, Release Schedule, Cast, and Episode Titles
Julia Child’s life was chronicled over the years of her own television shows and appearances. Now, a streaming series is telling her story. Julia is about Child’s transition from cookbook author to television host of The French Chef and also the production of her landmark show. Showbiz Cheat Sheet is here to tell you everything about the Julia premiere date, release schedule, what episodes are called, who’s in the cast and what the show is about.
‘Julia’ premiere date: Thursday, March 31 on HBO Max
Three episodes of Julia premiere on HBO Max March 31, but slow down after that. Creator Daniel Goldfarb discussed why fans are still interested in Julia Child 60 years after The French Chef premiered.
“There’s something kind of unsinkable about her,” Goldfarb said at a Television Critics Association Zoom panel. “She never took no for an answer, she just always persevered, and she persevered with joy, she lived her life really with joy in every stage of her life. And she sort of bloomed as she got older and older and more and more comfortable in her shoes and as herself. I think there’s something when you watch her, whether she was cooking or whatever she was doing, you sort of saw the joy and the kind of love for life that she had. And I think that it had staying power.”
‘Julia’ release schedule: Weekly episodes
After March 31, only one new episode of Julia premieres every Thursday. That takes the show through May 5 with the season finale. Over the course of the series, viewers will also see how culinary television was born.
“Everyone loves an origin story,” showrunner Chris Keyser said. “If it’s X-Men or food on television, there’s something about watching those first moments of discovery. They come up with, in the moment, a bunch of innovations that will last for half a century or more in food television. And watching the moments when that happens are kind of remarkable. Being anywhere at the birth I think is something special.”
Episode titles and cast
Each episode of Julia is named after a dish she prepares. The cute titles are “Omelette,” “Coq Au Vin,” “Boeuf Bourguignon,” “Petit Fours,” “Crepes Suzette,” “Bread vs. Sweetbreads,” “Foie Gras,” finally concluding with “Chocolate Souffle.”
Sarah Lancashire plays Julia Child. David Hyde Pierce plays her husband, Paul. Bebe Neuwirth plays Child’s book editor Avis DeVoto. Fran Kranz plays producer and director Russ Morash. Brittany Bradford plays producer Alice Naman. Fiona Glascott plays Knopf editor Judith Jones. Judith Light appears as Blanche Knopf and James Cromwell plays Julia’s father.
Keyser said there was no second choice for the role of Julia.
The truth is that if Sarah hadn’t done it, the show wouldn’t have happened. There was no second person on the list. And the truth was we got lucky in that way over and over again. In some sense, both Paul and Avis were written for David and for Bebe. They were the people we thought about when we started talking about the show and we ended up, I think, in the only place we could have ended up with the two of them playing that part. Everyone else auditioned, but we didn’t know them.
Chris Keyser, Television Critics Association panel, 2/15/22
