Dishing on Julia - Episode 5
Everybody Wants A Bite
Nancy Silverton:
And I look at her and there's tears rolling down her eyes. And my first response was, "Oh, no. I just burnt the inside of Julia Child's mouth."
Kerry Diamond:
That is the renowned chef, Nancy Silverton, talking about the time she made Julia Child cry on a TV show about baking. Were they tears of joy or did Nancy actually singed the taste buds of America's culinary hero? We know there's no crying in baseball, but crying in baking? Hang tight.
Kerry Diamond:
Welcome to Dishing on Julia, the official companion podcast of Julia, the HBO Max original series inspired by the life of Julia Child. I'm your host, Kerry Diamond. And each week, I recap a new episode of Julia and chat with special guests about the making of the show and the cultural impact of our culinary icon. I'll be checking in with actor, Brittany Bradford, who plays the young WGBH producer, Alice Naman. I know many of you, me included, love her character. And Julia writer and story editor, Natalia Temesgen. Then Nancy Silverton, chef, restaurateur, and best-selling cookbook author, joins us to talk about her encounters with the real Julia, and we'll get to the bottom of that teary story. In the meantime, let's dish on the latest episode, the Crepes Suzette episode.
Hunter Fox:
Listen, things are afoot.
Kerry Diamond:
Thank you, Hunter. Yes, they are. Speaking of Hunter, the boss of WGBH, home to Julia's show, The French Chef, he is about to make an appearance. But first, Julia is wrapping the latest episode of her show. She's made mousse a'la framboise, also known as raspberry mousse, a frothy dessert that gets its airiness from whipped egg whites. The crew, spoons in hand, can't wait to dig in.
Speaker 5:
Oh, God almighty. It's like biting into a raspberry chocolate cloud.
Kerry Diamond:
You won't find that exact mousse recipe in Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Chocolate mousse? Yes, that is on page 604. Hunter announces that San Francisco public TV station, KQED, wants Julia to promote The French Chef and is paying to fly the team out west. Producer, Russ Morash, is not happy because of all the work that will be interrupted. True to form, Hunter does not care.
Hunter Fox:
Russell, we are a public television station. We do not say no to free.
Kerry Diamond:
Guess who's getting left behind, Alice, of course, the person who negotiated the deal with KQED. She has to brief Russ on the particulars. In San Francisco, Judith Jones, Julia's editor at Knopf, has scheduled a book signing for Julia. When she, Julia, Julia's husband, Paul, and Russ arrived to an empty bookstore, Paul comforts his wife.
Paul Child:
Don't take it personally, my love. Californians don't read.
Kerry Diamond:
But it turns out that Julia's fans are lined up outside and Julia winds up signing books for hours. Inside the bookstore, displayed on a table, there's a copy of Betty Friedan's, The Feminine Mystique. A little foreshadowing is all I'll say. And look who shows up, it's James Beard as played by actor, Christian Clemenson.
James Beard:
You know I have a soft spot for tall cooks with arty appetites.
Kerry Diamond:
James, as many of you know, is another culinary legend. His legacy lives on today in the James Beard Awards, which are the Oscars of the restaurant and food media world. In time, he and Julia would become the best of friends. Back in Cambridge, Avis and Alice bond as Avis shares the true story of how she and Julia became friends. Later at dinner, Avis attempts to school Alice in French and French food only to discover there is more to Alice than she knows.
Avis DeVoto:
I studied some French at Oberlin. My parents took me to Paris when I graduated.
Alice Naman:
And here am I just pronouncing cheese puffs to you.
Kerry Diamond:
Back in San Francisco, the fun continues but without Paul.
James Beard:
If music be the food of love, play on. Give me excess of it.
Julia Child:
Well, these shrimp are the food of love. [inaudible 00:04:04].
Kerry Diamond:
Twelfth Night fans, you'll recognize that. Julia and James peel off from the group and head out for an evening on the town.
James Beard:
Isn't there something? I always feel like Dorothy when she lands in Oz. Finally, some color.
Julia Child:
It's indeed colorful, but you could have given me some kind of warning.
Kerry Diamond:
James has taken Julia to a gay bar. Julia is clearly uncomfortable, especially when her drag doppelganger, Coq au vin, drops by to introduce herself. Coq au is played by Samuel Austin Brackley. Sweet Coq au is clearly a super fan, and Julia warms to her enough to jump on stage for a duet of It Had To Be You, or as Coq au puts it, I had to be you. Alice, in her family's backyard, uncharacteristically snaps at her mother and asks for a little support. Instead, she gets a little tough love.
Alice Naman:
Mom, it's hard for me at work. I have to constantly explain myself who I am, why I'm there. And when I come to you, sometimes I just want you to listen.
Virginia:
Oh, Alice, I'm your mother, not your friend.
Kerry Diamond:
Over at the KQED Morning Show, Julia tries out what will become her favorite party trick, flambeing food with a blowtorch. It's something she would go on to repeat over the years on TV shows with the likes of David Letterman and Dick Cavett. At the end of the episode, Julia reconnects within the neglected Paul at their hotel. They peruse the room service menu. Here's to love and lettuce. Will Alice finally get the recognition she deserves? Will James get the fame he's hungry for? And will the hotel room service live up to Julia and Paul's expectations? We'll find out more next week.
Kerry Diamond:
Now, let's chat with our first two guests. Joining me in the studio is Brittany Bradford, who plays Alice Naman, who we learned a lot about in this episode, and Zooming in from Columbus, Georgia where she is a professor and a playwright is Julia writer and story editor, Natalia Temesgen. Brittany and Natalia, welcome to Dishing on Julia.
Brittany Bradford:
Thank you. So excited to be here.
Natalia Temesgen:
Thank you so much.
Kerry Diamond:
Brittany, let's start with what attracted you to playing the role of Alice?
Brittany Bradford:
When I got the audition... This is actually the first TV film job period that I'd ever booked. So I was coming from theater. I graduated a couple years before that from drama school. So really, I was just getting auditions in general and trying to say yes and go with it. And when I got this, the first thing that really struck me about Alice was she wasn't fully formed. She was somebody who was young, who was trying to find herself. And I think normally when you have a character that's a Black person in a period piece, you don't really get to see their development. You already see them fully formed. So it was really exciting to me that this was someone who was a little insecure, a little unsure of herself, and that they would potentially be a journey to go on through the season.
Kerry Diamond:
How did you go about preparing for this role?
Brittany Bradford:
I could sit and do research for days and weeks, and never do the part and be very happy. That's just who I am as a person. I love learning about characters and people historically as well. This was a great opportunity to do that. So one of the first things I did was try to collect any type of books that were written specifically about Black people at that time period. We didn't know exactly who Alice would be at the beginning, so trying to figure out if she came for money or if she didn't come for money, did she go to college, how would she have found this as a career.
And also, seeing if I could find more information about Black producers at the time. Because she is an amalgamation of a lot of different characters, it did give me a little bit more freedom in that way. And I found this interview with this woman named Carol Munday Lawrence, who was a producer and she worked at WGBH. She was one of the producers on a show called Say Brother, which was an all Black-run led show in the early '70s. She wrote about meeting Julia, and I was like, "Oh, this is..." It was like a great touchstone for me to grab onto. And I was like, "Maybe that could have been Alice, and she would've been in contact with those people."
And also, going on YouTube and looking at any kind of documentaries I could find with that time period, watching movies of that time, like Paris blues with Diahann Carroll and Sidney Poitier. There was one piece that was really fascinating and it was called New Girl in the Office. It was a government-sponsored piece to teach people about integration essentially. It had actors in it like Ed Asner. It was about this young Black woman who was entering a white-collar workspace, and it was basically trying to teach the white people there how do you interact with a Black woman. But there were also some really wonderful scenes with that Black woman at home saying, "I'm so nervous and scared about this. What do I do?" And I remember showing it to Charles McDougall, who directed the first two episodes, and both of us said, "That's Alice. At least at the beginning, that's Alice." And we used that as a jumping off point. And so, that was really exciting.
Kerry Diamond:
Natalia, what drew you to the project?
Natalia Temesgen:
Honestly, the amazing writers, first and foremost, is what drew me in. Daniel Goldfarb is an incredible playwright and a former teacher of mine actually. And so, when I learned that he was creating Julia, of course, I still went through the interview process, but I just knew it was going to be good because of him. And then, Chris Kaiser is incredible. And I think really telling the story of a living, breathing, loving marriage really jumped out to me. I'm coming up on 10 years of marriage with my husband.
Brittany Bradford:
Congratulations.
Kerry Diamond:
I know, right? Bravo.
Natalia Temesgen:
Oh, thank you. And I love a lot of different kinds of stories. I'm not particularly looking for these stories all the time. But I did realize when I was reading the first couple episodes, there isn't a lot of that on TV actually, just how to find that kind of loving but sacrificial, but also still holding onto your passions and the things that you want in a partnership and how that evolves over the years. So, that really pulled me in too.
Kerry Diamond:
So Natalia, tell us about the writers' room. You were able to stay in Columbus, Georgia, right, and didn't have to move to New York or LA.
Natalia Temesgen:
It was a dream come true. I grew up here in Columbus and moved back with my husband in 2013, and we ended up finding a real wonderful community here. You're right, a writers' room is usually in person in LA, in particular, maybe in New York now and then. And so, for this job to be Zoom-based meant that I was able to still see my kids and my husband every day and log on to work. And I also teach at the university down here, Columbus State, and I could still do that job. It's just been an unprecedented opportunity for writers that live in different cities to be able to engage.
Kerry Diamond:
How are you able to replicate the energy of an in-person writers' room over Zoom?
Natalia Temesgen:
We have to like each other, and we do very much. I think the good energy just comes from good people, and I'm really comfortable saying that that room is full of great people. We bring our full self to work. We chit-chat for the first 15 to 30 minutes about whatever we did the night before and just share our worlds with each other. And then, part of being on Zoom is sometimes somebody's toddler runs in or a dog or just they're in a different room in the house and suddenly we want to hear all about what this room is. So we just shared our little worlds with each other and we just kept... We were enthusiastic because the show was so positive. There was never a time where it was like, "Ugh, back to Julia land." Everyone was just excited to do this.
Kerry Diamond:
Alice is one of the few fictional characters in Julia. Why do you think it's important she was added to the story?
Brittany Bradford:
I remember this conversation that Chris and I had actually right around when we were filming this episode, because we were talking a lot about the dynamic between my mother, Virginia, and Alice and how to show that. And I asked this question because I wanted to know as an actor too. You never want to feel like you're being tokenized in some way or that you're just there so that they have a Black character. And I remember Chris saying something about a family friend I think he had where it was I think there was like a Black woman and a white man, and they met at WGBH or at another studio and that no one really ever knew about her and her story and who tells the story. I mean, it looks like a Hamilton reference or something, but really, who tells the story is there's a lot of agency in that and it affects representation.
And so, it's important to me that we get to know about who these people could have been. I think sometimes, I think I said this before when we've spoken, but people, it's easy to make something that seems improbable impossible. And if you don't see a lot of people that are Black in certain time periods, everybody just assumes, "Well, Black people weren't there," or, "Black people weren't doing this," because it might have been a little more rare when that's not the case. We are everywhere and every part of history. So to be able to show that is representation in and of itself and I think something really fascinating and a story that doesn't get to get told that often. I think it's the beauty of this whole season. This show, in general, tells a lot of stories of people that you don't think about. Everybody has something extraordinary in them. I think that's what's amazing and what Julia is able to bring out of a lot of people.
Kerry Diamond:
So many of the characters in this first season could be spun off and have their own shows.
Brittany Bradford:
If Alice had her own series, what cool, fun-
Kerry Diamond:
Oh, girl.
Brittany Bradford:
Yeah, it would just be so fun. And you just don't know about people who did that job. I was thinking about if somebody was affluent enough to be able to make their own career at that time period. A lot of the time, those people would've been told, Black people, "You become a doctor or a lawyer or a principal," because that's what we've seen before. You can become a teacher, but nobody would've been a TV producer. So how miraculous of a human she must have been to, even with all of her fears and anxieties and insecurities, to choose to do this. And I was like, "I would watch years of that person. You know what I mean?" So it's really exciting to get to portray her.
Kerry Diamond:
Natalia, I was doing research on you last night and read that your maiden name is Naman which, as our attentive listeners out there know, is Alice's last name. I felt like Indiana Jones finding a treasure map. I'd love to know what is the significance of you passing on your last name to Alice?
Natalia Temesgen:
Kerry, I have to tell you, I didn't know about this at first. Actually Daniel Goldfarb, he just did that. And so, when I got the job and saw the script, I was like, "Are you kidding me?" I was just moved. I was honored. And as we've come to know who this character is and develop her more, I always think about her as an aunt, like a family member that we just didn't know and we lost track of, because she just has an essence that reminds... I come from a family with a lot of really powerful, ambitious women in it, and she just feels like part of that family. I'm really grateful.
Brittany Bradford:
Oh, I love that.
Kerry Diamond:
And did you know Brittany that that-
Brittany Bradford:
We talked about it.
Kerry Diamond:
You did? Okay.
Brittany Bradford:
Yeah. I think Daniel told me and then we talked about it as well. I loved it because I had a teacher once who said that you should treat every character as if they're a real person, who's in the space with you. They're sitting there watching you portray their lives. And even when it's parts that are awkward and comfortable, they're still like, "Yeah, that's me," so that you have a responsibility to them. And so, connecting with Natalia in that way just makes me feel like she's a real person more and more. And so, there's a responsibility because of that.
Kerry Diamond:
It is so be beautiful that she's carrying your family's last name. How does your family feel about that?
Natalia Temesgen:
Very excited. I've been blasting them with group texts for over a year. And then, my brother watched the pilot and texted me, "Oh my God, I didn't realize she had our name." I was like, "Are you kidding? Do you check your phone?"
Kerry Diamond:
Sounds like my brothers exactly, exactly. I'd love to know your favorite scene in Episode 5. Brittany, let's start with you because a lot happens to Alice.
Brittany Bradford:
So the first one, the scenes with Virginia who plays my mother. I feel a responsibility to her and to... Listen, Black people aren't a monolith, but I am Black, I'm a Black woman and I want to be as specific as possible to this story so that she is as fully fledged a person as anybody else. And so, when we got those scenes and I really appreciate Chris for this, Chris Kaiser, we got to really talk about who these people were and what the relationship is and how do we portray these two Black women in this time period, especially when you're not seeing a lot of other Black characters. And so, those scenes feel very personal to me because I got to have a hand in them. But I love the scene with Bebe, with Avis because I just love playing with Bebe. We would always be like, "B squared, A squared," because there was Bebe and Brittany, and Alice and Avis. And we would just dance in between our little set sometimes. We just had so much fun together.
That was a wonderful scene because it flipped the narrative on Alice. You don't hear a lot about her life and then all of a sudden, you hear that she went to Paris and that she has this education and that she comes from affluence as well. And for me, a trick of Alice was she's always watching everybody. She's a listener more than anything. And for the first time, you get to hear her talk and you realize what she's been maybe holding onto. I don't want to say privileges, but the things that she has that make her special as well, that there's more to discover. And so, that scene was just really I think how they delivered the discovery so it was really cool.
Kerry Diamond:
You let your mom have it in this episode.
Brittany Bradford:
Yeah, tried to. She's a strong woman.
Kerry Diamond:
That's true. She still won that.
Brittany Bradford:
She did. She did, but that's part of the... That's the great thing. That's part of the journey. It's like, "Okay, she gets to take that one step. And now, we get to see in subsequent episodes what did she learn from that step that will influence the next few and how does that influence how she goes back into work as well?"
Kerry Diamond:
Exactly. Natalia, how about you? Any favorite moments from Episode 5?
Natalia Temesgen:
I'm going to co-sign on everything Brittany said.
Brittany Bradford:
Please do. Thank you.
Natalia Temesgen:
I love those scenes. If I had to add one more, I love the scene where James and Julia decide to go out for their after afterparty. When Coco au vin goes home and tells his mom that he got to meet Julia Child, it was such a cool moment because you really get this little sort of blip of a character that we'll never see again, that you see the impact that she has on just slice of life folks from all walks of life. And I just thought that was really cool that we added that.
Kerry Diamond:
I thought it was very interesting because Julia Child had a complicated relationship with homosexuality despite deep friendships with James Beard and others. If you're a student of Julia, as you know it was until later in life that her thinking evolved. And she even became an AIDS activist during the AIDS crisis.
Natalia Temesgen:
We're always curious about her complexities in those areas as well as others. The way she relates to feminism as well is complicated. She just was herself, and part of that is contradiction. And it's interesting to see someone that can surprise you, sometimes not in the ways that you were hoping. But I feel like in this episode, we get to see her maybe out of her comfort zone, but really finding the joy in that space and letting go a little bit.
Kerry Diamond:
Brittany, this is a period piece. What was it like being in a period piece?
Brittany Bradford:
I love doing period shows of any... It helps you immediately. It does all of the hard work for you. You get the costumes, and John Dunn was absolutely amazing with that, and it's like, "Oh, okay, this is who she is." And then you get the wig, "Oh, this is..." And then you get to go on set and you see the old cars or the old cameras. It does all of the ambiance, so my imagination can focus on other things a little bit.
Kerry Diamond:
Is it true you named your wig?
Brittany Bradford:
Yeah, we named the wig, Grace Carroll, in honor of Grace Kelly and Diahann Carroll because it was a little bit of both. And so, that was just really cool. She was her own person and we were like, "How is Grace doing today? Is she ready for a long day on set?" So, yeah, it's great. It's a great gift to be able to do that.
Kerry Diamond:
What happened to Grace Carroll?
Brittany Bradford:
She's probably honestly in a box when we're resting, but hopefully she'll get dusted out when we come back for a Season 2, get her all coiffed up again.
Kerry Diamond:
Tell me what you hope is in Alice's future.
Brittany Bradford:
Oh boy, I'm not going to ruin anything, but I will say last night, I finally got to watch the rest of the season and I was just so elated over everything. The possibilities are endless. That's what's so exciting about Alice. She can really go in so many different directions. I would love to see even more representation. I'd love to see more Black, brown people. I'd love to see more people in Alice's life. We hear about the father and we hear about her brothers. I would love to meet them. I'm so curious about her relationships, in general. And can she have a love life or not? Just all of these different dynamics. It's endless possibilities.
Kerry Diamond:
And then Natalia, about your future, I want to ask you a question. I've found this beautiful video of you on YouTube. It's an interview that a filmmaker did with you and you say that your main focus as a writer is telling Black stories, and in particular the stories of Black women. And I was curious, how does working on a project like Julia fit into that mission or is this one stop on a writer's journey that's going to be winding and layered?
Natalia Temesgen:
Well, hopefully it is a stop that will be long and layered and all of those things, but what's really cool is that Alice, as much as I think Brittany mentioned, there's that concern about tokenizing her as this character. She is a super specific and unique individual. And so in that way, we are telling the story of a Black woman, this particular person. And I think some of the pressure as a writer is to feel like you do want to cover as much ground as you can, but then you start to lose track of the fact that we're talking about Alice Naman.
Digging into all the different ways that someone can do what she's doing and keep her head up and not have a nervous breakdown every other week, it's a real challenge to unpack. What kind of person is that and how did she get to be confident enough to be that person? And that's where we have so much fun understanding who her family is and where she's come from and how they've raised her and the kind of pride she has and confidence in her abilities that are sort of countercultural to what we might expect at that moment.
And I think also as much as she's an amalgamation, just like Brittany said, she is a representation of real women that we just unfortunately don't have Wikipedia pages for, but they did do this work. And so, it's a joy to be able to illuminate that through her. And then, later in the season, we'll get to actually meet Madeline Anderson as well. So that's a Black story that is a... We know that story, but maybe not enough. But she was a very early producer of film and TV and did a lot of cinema verite and documentarian type work. She worked for WNET. I mean, she really was the band leader of being a Black woman in this space, and I'm grateful that we found a way to bring her into this show even on tertiary level. So we'll meet her soon.
Brittany Bradford:
Yeah. And I remember having a conversation with Daniel, it was right before the first day, and I was like, "Do you know who Madeline Anderson is because I've been thinking about her a lot too with Alice," and he said, "She's going to be in it." And that was super exciting.
Kerry Diamond:
Oh, that's fun. You didn't even know she was going to be in it.
Brittany Bradford:
I had no idea.
Kerry Diamond:
That's great. Yes, we do meet her soon. And she's someone who could be a bigger part of-
Brittany Bradford:
Who knows?
Kerry Diamond:
Well, we shouldn't say because you don't know what happens to her for the rest of Season 1.
Brittany Bradford:
I truly don't know.
Kerry Diamond:
Yes. One of the things I love is that so much of the Julia dialogue is brainy and witty and there's lots of literary and theatrical namedropping. I love that line, "Ghetto isn't exactly Jenée." Russ says that to Judith, and Judith had, I think, translated Jenée as the maid's story.
Natalia Temesgen:
Right.
Kerry Diamond:
I'm trying to remember all these things I learned in French class in high school as that's going on. I got the sense that the writers thought very highly of the audience and you don't always come away from a TV show thinking that. Was that discussed in the writer's room? Was there any fear of going over people's heads or alienating the audience or were you all like, "Let's go for it"?
Natalia Temesgen:
These people are nerds. I will just say that. It was inevitable because everybody is extremely passionate about musical theater and literature and drama through the ages. I mean, the references that are made at work that are not even relevant to the show are just very erudite. It's just what we're dealing with here. And I think on some level, it was fun for Chris Kaiser and Daniel Goldfarb to be able to just lean into that because that's the truth of these characters, especially Paul. I mean, Paul Child is almost a snob. I mean, he's just so knowledgeable at so many things, such a Renaissance person. It was like a field day to be able to drop as many kind of references, especially Albert. I will say that-
Kerry Diamond:
Oh Albert, I just love Albert.
Natalia Temesgen:
... He is the eldest of eggheads. I mean, there's no bounds to who he might bring up.
Kerry Diamond:
Natalia, what do you hope viewers of Julia ultimately come away with?
Natalia Temesgen:
I think they're already coming away with what I would've hoped, which is feeling hopeful, which is feeling like a no might just be later and not now. We're watching in real time women trying to strive for things, being blocked and then taking it in stride, taking note, processing, but continuing to step out on faith. And I feel like that's just a really encouraging message. It makes me feel hopeful about the things that I could possibly do even in my 50s. I think to myself anybody that's maybe under 40 that's watching this show, maybe, if anything, they'll just think, "Oh, there's a lot of life that could await me after I'm 40 or 50 years old."
Kerry Diamond:
Natalia, if Julia were coming over for dinner, what would you make and who would you invite?
Natalia Temesgen:
I would rather her come over for brunch-
Brittany Bradford:
Oh, yes.
Natalia Temesgen:
... because I love brunch. I think what I would make would be, I found a scone recipe on allrecipes.com of all places, that really works for me. So I would do some scones. I would do a cornmeal porridge, like a Jamaican style, cornmeal porridge, maybe a pat of butter on there. Definitely, we're going to have mimosas or whatever she likes to drink in the morning. And who's there? I don't know, maybe my kids and my husband will join and we'll just all have a good time.
Kerry Diamond:
Brittany and I are going to show up.
Brittany Bradford:
Oh yeah, no, I'll be there. I'll bring a cocktail, bring some orange juice or something.
Kerry Diamond:
Right. We'll bring the champagne for the mimosas. How about that?
Natalia Temesgen:
Yes, please.
Kerry Diamond:
Brittany, how about you?
Brittany Bradford:
The first thing I thought was my mom's mac and cheese, and therefore I think I have to give my mom an invitation. I can't just make her mac and cheese and say, "You got to stay home." So maybe my mom and I will sit there and gush about Julia to Julia and hope that she likes her mac and cheese, which she will because it's decadent.
Kerry Diamond:
Give us a little insight as to how your mom makes her mac and cheese.
Brittany Bradford:
There's multiple cheeses, can't say which ones it is baked. That's as far as I'll go.
Kerry Diamond:
I love mac and cheese.
Brittany Bradford:
Me too.
Kerry Diamond:
Might be one of my favorite food groups. Brittany and Natalia, thank you so much for your time and for your beautiful work on Julia.
Brittany Bradford:
Thank you. Thank you so much.
Natalia Temesgen:
Thanks, Kerry. This was awesome.
Brittany Bradford:
Yeah.
Kerry Diamond:
Next up is Chef Nancy Silverton who joins me to share her memories of cooking and baking for Julia Child. Some of you might know Nancy from her popular Mozza restaurants in Los Angeles, from her latest spot, The Barish at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, or from her best-selling cookbooks. Nancy Silverton, welcome to Dishing on Julia.
Nancy Silverton:
Glad to be here.
Kerry Diamond:
Tell us how you met Julia Child.
Nancy Silverton:
In my generation, that was one of the few iconic personalities, food personalities. Besides meeting her from afar at a few events, because when I would do events either that she was an attendee of or a few that were honoring her, she was just always so polite and professional about coming back into the kitchen and complimenting all of us or shaking our hand. So really, my first interaction was when she asked me to be a part of that first television show and it was going to be called Cooking with Master Chefs. She asked me to be sort of the representative of the then recent bread movement in the country.
Kerry Diamond:
Were you nervous?
Nancy Silverton:
Well, first of all, not only nervous that I was with her, nervous about what I was doing and nervous about being on television because that was probably one of the first introduction into the world of cameras and spotlights and filming and all that.
Kerry Diamond:
For this bread segment, what did you do with Julia?
Nancy Silverton:
It was the first episode that they were doing in this format that they had never done before. They had never done that format of Julia standing off to the side and directing. And I think that was a hard one to do because bread is not an easy thing to do. It's one of the things that was so painful. I've blocked out most of it, but I know that I was in a rented home kitchen, so I wasn't in my home kitchen, I know there was a lot of props in the garage. But I also know that because of the nature of bread, there were so many parts of the process that had to be set up so that I could just pull them on camera and say, "So after your bread has proofed two hours, this is what it's going to look like." And I had never done that with bread to be able to anticipate all of those moves, including taking the bread out of the oven and having to fake how wonderful the aroma was.
So I really felt that I was put in the position of being more of an actor than a baker, and they realized that. And I think after my episode, seeing how painful it was for me to get through my episode, that they completely changed how they were going to do and they were going to do it a lot looser. Julia was probably frustrated because when you watch Julia and all her shows from the beginning to the end, I think besides Julia being a great cook, I think it was so clear that Julia wanted everybody to have fun in the kitchen. She was serious in her technique and serious in her recipes, but when it came right down to it, it was supposed to be a time that you enjoyed and you had fun and you lived with the mistakes. That was something that I couldn't do. And so, it wasn't fun and I'm sure it was... I never watched it, but I'm sure it was very clear on my face that I was not having fun.
Kerry Diamond:
You never watched it. Oh, gosh. So this experience might have scarred you, but it did not deter Julia from wanting you back.
Nancy Silverton:
No, I was shocked. But it was a couple years later they came back to me and they said, "The bread episode that you did was the most popular of all the episodes." I was shocked because really, I was just... My tail was between my legs on that. So I was shocked. And they said that it inspired them to do just a baking series. So they want to do a baking series with Julia, but they were going to change the format. And one of the things that they were going to change is they were going to bring the bakers into her kitchen and she was going to be on set. And it's like, "Okay, I'll do that," because being so unfamiliar with the camera, the idea of speaking into a camera and not a person, but having somebody next to me was a whole different scenario. And so, that's how they convinced me. It'll be in Julia's kitchen with her.
Kerry Diamond:
And was this in her Cambridge kitchen?
Nancy Silverton:
Yeah.
Kerry Diamond:
Wow. So you got to fly out to Cambridge.
Nancy Silverton:
So I got to fly out to Cambridge and I actually got to be in that kitchen that is now at the Smithsonian.
Kerry Diamond:
What was it like when you walked into her house?
Nancy Silverton:
Walking into her kitchen, it was everything that I expected, including what I just always loved about her. Not only the idea that you're supposed to have fun in the kitchen, it's supposed to be fun to do, it's not a chore to cook, I love that she wasn't into any fancy gadgets as I'm not. It was all just, it was a home kitchen.
Kerry Diamond:
This segment that you did, folks can find it on YouTube. And it is notable because you made Julia Child cry. Tell us more.
Nancy Silverton:
She says, "You're on your own. You're teaching me how to do this dessert that you've chosen. But just to let you know, I don't like to edit. I like to shoot as much as in real time. So that means that when we're getting, I'll be next to you, but as we're getting close to whatever that time ending should be, I'm going to tap you on your hip and that means you have two minutes or three minutes to wrap it up and give me a taste." Simple enough. And that was really the only instruction that she gave. Everything else, you're on your own. You do it. It was really fun and it was just wonderful being next to somebody rather than just talking to camera.
Sure enough, I was probably 10 minutes away from completion when I got that tap on the hip. So what I did was this brioche tart, which was garnished with stone fruit that was sauteed in a very hot wine syrup that I would finish by spooning over this brioche tart and then a zabaione. I got that tap on the hip right before I started sauteing that fruit. So I turned up the heat, I sauteed that fruit, I spooned it over the tart, I finished it with the zabaione. I cut a piece, shoved in her mouth, and looked at her. And of course, I'm looking to see like good, bad, spit it out, whatever. And I look at her and there's tears rolling down her eyes. My first response was, "Oh, no, I just burnt the inside of Julia Child's mouth." And then she said something to effect of, "This is a dessert to cry over," and it was not staged.
Nancy Silverton:
So again, that is a memory that not only will I never forget, but it's that thing in my pocket when somebody asks me, "What is your proudest moment in your food journey," I can say, "I made Julia Child cry."
Kerry Diamond:
What goes into a dessert that makes Julia Child cry?
Nancy Silverton:
The ingredients to make Julia Child cry is something French, so this was a brioche-based tart. So the tart was actually out of brioche dough. And then, it was filled with a creme fraiche custard. That's your second French element to it. And then baked, so it was yeasty and soft and pillowy and everything about it is so right. And then, once you sauteed this warm fruit on top and then finish it with a custard that's lightened with whipped cream and then with nuts, you can't go wrong. It's sort of a cross between a breakfast pastry and a elegant dessert.
Kerry Diamond:
Did you watch Julia Child when you were younger?
Nancy Silverton:
I didn't because I didn't watch television, I certainly have seen so many of the recaps, but my mother loved Julia Child. My mother bought Mastering the Art of French Cooking and she was obsessed with making Julia Child's roast chicken. She used to talk about how much you needed to babysit that chicken because you needed to turn it a few times, but how satisfying it was in the end. And so, I certainly grew up knowing who Julia was, but I didn't watch her shows.
Kerry Diamond:
Why weren't you watching television? Were you not allowed?
Nancy Silverton:
I was definitely restricted growing up. We had one small black and white TV. I think it was in, I don't even know where, in my parents' room. And I grew up in an era where people watch TV while they ate. That was a big thing, and TV dinners was a big thing. That was not my-
Kerry Diamond:
TV dinners, I ate TV dinners at the dinner table. We never ate TV dinners in front of television.
Nancy Silverton:
The only time I ever had them was at my grandma's house, my mom's mom, and I just thought they were the best thing in the world. And I couldn't understand why my mother would never buy something like that.
Kerry Diamond:
I remember them well. Do you remember the Salisbury? Is that even how you say it, Salisbury steak?
Nancy Silverton:
I remember the peas, I remember that the food didn't touch. I mean, I loved all of it. I loved the idea of a TV dinner. That is just... And of course, I remember the Salisbury steak.
Kerry Diamond:
What would be in a Nancy Silverton TV dinner?
Nancy Silverton:
Now?
Kerry Diamond:
You're like, "Nothing."
Nancy Silverton:
Nothing. Well, first of all, I can't stand reheated food. It drives me crazy when people take, say, leftovers from a restaurant and then the next day they stick them in the microwave or they reheat them. Food's not meant... I mean, I love room temperature food, but reheated food, I can't stand, of any sorts.
Kerry Diamond:
I'm the queen of the leftovers. I love taking my-
Nancy Silverton:
But do you reheat them?
Kerry Diamond:
Yeah, I do.
Nancy Silverton:
Oh, don't.
Kerry Diamond:
I'm sorry. First off, I'm so lucky to go to restaurants with amazing chefs like you. I'm not going to waste that food if I can't finish it, but just don't reheat it?
Nancy Silverton:
But don't reheat it.
Kerry Diamond:
Okay. You're getting the inside scoop here, listeners. Okay, don't reheat it. All right, I'll try that next time but I don't know about-
Nancy Silverton:
Well, it depends. I don't need a hot food.
Kerry Diamond:
I might not share your affection for room temperature food.
Nancy Silverton:
It'll taste better.
Kerry Diamond:
Okay. I take your word for it. Julia spends a lot of time in this entire series having to deal with the fragile male egos of those around her. You've been in the restaurant and the hospitality industry and the world of chefs for a very long time, and I'm curious just how you, over the years, have dealt with fragile egos.
Nancy Silverton:
I just felt that as long as I could prove myself as somebody that could hold their own and somebody that my gender was either not an advantage or a disadvantage, and I feel like that's really how it was. I feel like the only one time possibly is when I went to cooking school in France and I was the only woman in my class at that time, and it was a very small class. Everybody was French but myself, and I didn't speak French. And I feel like on the day that the instructor gave me the job of making an enormous batch of hazelnut praline that took a lot of upper arm muscle, that maybe he was trying to break me possibly. But other than that, I don't feel like I really was in that compromising position, which I'm happy to say.
And I think also a difference is growing up in California, because when people would say to me, "So who are your favorite cooks," that's a common question a journalist would ask, and without thinking I would right away say, "Whose food did I like?" And everybody I named from Alice Waters to Joyce Goldstein to Barbara Tropp to Judy Rogers to Mary Sue Milliken. All of a sudden, I'm naming only women and I'm like, "Wow, we have a lot of female back then. And now, have always had a really large amount of female cooks for people like myself to be influenced by." So I never saw it as something that was a rarity.
Kerry Diamond:
It's interesting how different cities and pockets in the country had different experiences like Boston, and I think this was a big Julia Child influence. Boston was a great city for female culinary talent. Places like New York, Chicago, other cities, not so much, San Francisco, amazing.
Nancy Silverton:
And I wonder if it had anything to do with the amount of what we called fine dining. We didn't have so many of those restaurants in California. I'm not sure what Boston had, but New York and Chicago definitely did where whoever it was, felt that the leaders of these fine dining establishments had to be old school European men that wore big white hats, right, and we didn't have that. The mother patriarch/matriarch of California cuisine was Alice Waters, right?
Kerry Diamond:
Absolutely. And also, so many people consider you a hero and a big inspiration.
Nancy Silverton:
That's very kind of you.
Kerry Diamond:
So Nancy, what are you up to? You've always got a million projects. What are the latest projects?
Nancy Silverton:
So I'm finishing a baking book, and I haven't done a baking books since, well, Pastries From La Brea Bakery. So I don't know how many years ago that was, at least 15 or something, but I haven't. And during the pandemic, rather than baking a loaf of bread, I decided to make a peanut butter cookie. So I made a peanut butter cookie, and after I made it, I patted myself on the back and said, "Wow, this is the best peanut butter cookie I have ever had."
And it got me to think that what I would love to have, because now it's so different than it was, I always like to say back when when I started cooking, where not only are there gazillion cookbooks available, but anything you want to know is online. So the good of it is you have a question like, "How much baking soda should I put per pound of flour or something," you can look it up. You don't have to go buy a book. But the downside is then you're inundated. If you're looking up a recipe, "Best chocolate or best peanut butter cookie," you're inundated with 5,000, right? So which one do you make?
So I was thinking, "Boy, the kind of book that I would want would be a book where if I trusted the author, I didn't go any further, there would only be the best..." I'm reluctant to say the classics, but kind of the classics. So nothing is innovative in that book at all. Nothing has played it. It's just, I want to make the best angel food cake and this is what I think it should be. So I thought it would be an easy book, but it's been incredibly hard.
Kerry Diamond:
Classics aren't easy.
Nancy Silverton:
Nope. So I'm doing that. And then I'm opening a bunch of new restaurants, which is crazy during, again, the pandemic. I had no idea would my restaurants ever come back. And so, I started getting calls about restaurant opportunities around the world and I'm like, "Sure, I'll do it. Sure, I'll do it. Sure, I'll do it," because I didn't know it was going to happen. And all of a sudden, they're all happening which is exciting. And I'm at the age of retirement, but who needs to retire, right?
Kerry Diamond:
Did you ever cook for Julia Child?
Nancy Silverton:
I did several dinners where I did a course and she did eat at my restaurant, Campanile. So if that's considered cook for her, then yes I did. She never came to my house for dinner.
Kerry Diamond:
What do you think were some of the seeds she sowed that we are benefiting from now?
Nancy Silverton:
Look at what she did for television. And I'm wondering what she would feel today when television has become such a competition-based industry rather than a teaching-based industry, because I think she really thrived on spreading her knowledge.
Kerry Diamond:
I'm so amazed that Julia endures to the extent that she does, and that even a younger generation is now discovering and embracing Julia Child. Why do you think that is, Nancy?
Nancy Silverton:
She was genuine. And I think that that's what even, like you said, younger generation, they know who Julia Child is.
Kerry Diamond:
Each generation has had a new introduction to Julia, whether it's the book, the TV show, Dan Aykroyd, the movie, and now the show.
Nancy Silverton:
And at the Smithsonian. Here's this kitchen of this icon that all the people that go through that museum, if they didn't know who she was, they do now.
Kerry Diamond:
Nancy, thank you. It's always great talking to you and thank you for sharing your stories. If you'd like to watch the video of Nancy and Julia, just search on YouTube for the dessert that made Julia Child cry. And if you are crying because this episode is over, well dry your tears, we'll be back next week. That's it for this episode of Dishing on Julia, the official companion podcast of Julia. Now streaming on HBO Max.
Dishing on Julia is produced by Cherry Bombe Media. Thank you to the Cherry Bombe team, including executive producers, Catherine Baker and Audrey Payne, special projects' editor, Donna Yen, associate producer, Jenna Sadhu, and editorial assistant Krista White. I'm your host, Kerry Diamond. Special thanks to Steven Tolle and the team at CityVox for the audio production. Check back as we dish on the latest episode of Julia and chat with our cast and crew and special industry guests.