‘Julia’ Food Stylist Goes Behind the Scenes: ‘Everyone Gains 10 Pounds!’
Julia returns to Max on November 16 with its second season, and the titular character’s (Sarah Lancashire) trailblazing cooking show is and running on the air. Read on for a peek behind the scenes.
Who
Christine Tobin
What She Does
The food stylist with 30 years’ experience says she has enough Julia Child cookbooks to open her own library. And they come in handy for her job re-creating every dish the French Chef serves up on the comedic series. “I learned that [the recipes] were actually quite simple — Even the most elaborate or ambitious dishes, the way she writes them and approaches them is for the home cook,” says Tobin. “Although I’ve worked with food for 30 years, I’m instinctual with cooking and baking, but I’ve grown up following her recipes from an early age and they’re always foolproof.”
But as easy as that sounds, one vital personal ingredient is paramount. “You have to have the time and the patience and just the understanding that even if it doesn’t come out perfect, just like with her, there’s some happy accidents that can happen!” says Tobin.
In Season 2…
Cast and crew traveled to south-of-France locations like Valbonne and Antibes for the first two episodes and the third episode in Paris. During the episodes in the France countryside, Julia experiments with new dishes and butts heads with her jealous cookbook coauthor Simca Beck (Isabella Rossellini). But were there too many cooks in the kitchen? “There’s a lot more people handling food together than just Julia, or with her husband, Paul [David Hyde Pierce],” says Tobin. “It’s like gaggles of people are cooking together, tasting together, passing to one another. Compared to Season 1, it was a lot more planning, choreography and coaching of those [shots].”
Behind the Scenes
Tobin says shooting those cooking moments takes planning “so everyone knows what the sequence of the recipe is in preparation.” And for the sea bass pastry dish Loup en Croûte, which Julia attempts in the season premiere, Tobin made over 20 of them. However, one needed to be less than perfect when Julia’s first try fails. “It’s amazing how much more difficult it is as a food stylist to make something look ugly!” Tobin stresses the food in the show gets a lot of attention before filming commences. “There’s nothing that is put in front of the camera that hasn’t been looked at from the directors or the writers, the actors to participate or engage in it. There’s coaching that goes into it. So the ugly one, you can’t do multiple of them just because, but that was a really fun day. I like the ugly one!”
Gotta Love It!
Don’t worry that any food goes to waste; hungry cast and crew are always nearby. “Everyone gains 10 pounds when we’re shooting Julia,” says Tobin, laughing.
Julia, Season 2 Premiere (three episodes), Thursday, November 16, Max
