There's been no shortage of biographical material about Julia Child, who in the 1960s

became one of the first food television personalities in the United States.

HBO Max adds to the story with Julia, a scripted series about her life in the early years

of public television's The French Chef, when she was uneasily navigating a transition

from cookbook author to TV star, and that transition, the show suggests, was not always

easy.

I'm Linda Holmes, and today we're talking about Julia on Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR.

Joining us today is New York Times Food Reporter, an author of the best-selling cookbook, Indian-ish

Priya Krishna.

Welcome back, Priya.

It's going to have you.

Always happy to be here on my favorite podcast.

I wanted to speak to no one else about this as much as I wanted to speak to you.

As you may know, there have been other attempts to tell the story of Julia Child, to say the

least, including a documentary film, also entitled Julia that came out just last year.

But the most famous scripted version is probably her half of the movie, Julia and Julia, where

Maral Streep played Julia Child in the part of her life leading up to the publication of

her book, Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

New HBO Max series, Julia, picks up a couple of years later when Mastering is a hit, and

Child goes on public television on WGBH in Boston to promote it by demonstrating an omelet.

And the demonstration goes well enough that she pitches a show to the station and they

start airing it.

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