Shining Light into Julia Child’s Wonderful Life

Chris Keyser is not much of a cook, nor were his parents. But his family still regularly clicked on the TV when he was a kid to watch Julia Child work her magic in the studio kitchen.

“We watched The French Chef together every week,” explained the veteran television writer and producer, best known for his work on Party of Five. “There was no filter. She was unambiguously herself. Even with all her unlikely characteristics — how she looked, how she sounded — none of those things are made for TV. Yet there she was, making connections through the camera right into your home. You felt very close to her and understood who she was. It was impossible not to be entranced as you watched.”

So when Keyser was approached by his colleague Daniel Goldfarb about working on a television series about Child’s life, he signed on instantly. After years of writing, producing the pilot — which was interrupted for six months by COVID — and shopping the idea around, Keyser and Goldfarb released their show Julia on MAX in March 2022.

“It was many, many years, and we were very lucky,” said Keyser. “We had cast changes in the middle of it, but we ended up with the cast that we needed and wanted — the right cast at the right time. Like so many things, it very nearly didn’t happen.”

Starring Sarah Lancashire as Julia Child, David Hyde Pierce as her husband Paul Child, and Bebe Neuwirth as their friend Avis DeVoto, the first season portrays Child as she creates The French Chef program at WGBH in Boston. The second season, which premiered last November, follows the development of a new cookbook, the growth of the show’s national reach, and many of the social movements happening in the mid-1960s. Along the way, as her very public TV life and very private home life with Paul is explored, Child’s role as a force for women’s rights and fair representation in the media are strong themes.

“We were lucky in that Julia was both known and not well known,” said Keyser. “We all know what she was like on television and in her books, but she was a mostly private person. We were able to use the known facts, the big events of her life, as the big tentpole moments in the story.”

For the private scenes, they did their best to craft them as they likely would have happened. “It had to feel truthful to what we understood about Julia and Paul and Judith Jones and Avis DeVoto — we couldn’t make things up out of whole cloth,” said Keyser. “But within that framework, we could create lots of private moments and smaller events that filled out the story. That gave us so much freedom.”

Lancashire is particularly stunning as Julia. “What she ended up doing was not the result of conversations or our direction,” explained Keyser. “It was just an intuitive embodiment of this person. It’s not an imitation. She created a voice. Her physicality is remarkable. It is just such a truthful embodiment of who Julia was. She became Julia herself.”

Unfortunately, the second season was the last one for Julia, which was canceled by MAX despite rave reviews, including 96 percent score on the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes. “MAX was incredibly supportive of the show, not just in the beginning but all the way to the end of the second season,” said Keyser. “But the business is the business. You go as long as you can.”

Keyser was pleased that the show ended at the closing of one chapter rather than abruptly. “It was short lived, but what matters is not so much the longevity as its the depth of connection that people had to it,” he explained. “It was a happy show to make, and it was a happy place to be when we made it.”

That was in part because there was a large kitchen on set, as each dish was created for the camera and then shared with the cast and staff. “They were churning out a lot of food,” laughed Keyser. “The food brought us all together.”

And that, after all, is what Julia Child’s life did for so many. But to Keyser, she transcends cuisine. “It’s the central question we’ve always had to answer in the show: Why does Julia Child matter like she does?” he explained. “It has something to do with her attitude toward life and experimentation and being allowed to fail and second chances. She had a sense of humor about everything, and a joyfulness that says doing what makes you happy is the thing that you should pursue.”

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Chris Keyser comes to talk about Julia during Taste of Santa Barbara’s “Lights, Camera, Julia!” screening on Sat., May 18, 7:30 p.m. at the Metro Theater. Also on hand to reminisce will be series director Jenée LaMarque, author and Julia’s grand-nephew Alex Prud’homme, and Todd Schulkin, the executive director of The Julia Child Foundation for Gastronomy and the Culinary Arts. Tickets, which include a glass of Fess Parker wine and popcorn, are $30. See sbce.events/event/lights-camera-julia.