(Photo: Getty Images) 
Sarah Lancashire, who you may know from Happy Valley, takes on the role of famed chef Julia Chlid in the biopic miniseries Julia.
In the first look trailer, we see the iconic chef and almost forget it's an actress and not the woman herself: 

You can look for the eight-part series over at HBO Max, which just premiered this week (March 31).
We feel like the portrayal speaks for itself (it’s just that good), but Lancashire does her due diligence, stepping in to explain her strategy going into the role.
She was first introduced to Child when seeing the 2009 movie Julie and Julia, starring Meryl Streep as the iconic TV presenter. Lancashire talks about the experience in an interview with the Radio Times, saying, "I had seen the film, I saw it when it first came out. And that was the first time that I became aware of Julia Child, mostly because of the marketing surrounding the film.”
Even so, she didn’t let the big picture adaptation influence her version, saying, “But I didn't revisit it (for) this piece because really when I am developing a character, any character, it's first and foremost informed by the writing; by the raw material."
She relies on the script itself for direction: "That has to be the foundation on which everything else is built because there are so many clues in the writing about the choice of language, the precision of the language or the rhythm of the language.
Lancashire goes on to describe the differences between the movie and the TV series, saying, "And our piece is completely tonally different. And the writing is tonally different, completely different to the film. So, it would have been a futile exercise to have used that as a form of research."
The official description elaborates on what to look for: “Julia is inspired by Julia Child’s extraordinary life and her long-running television series, The French Chef, which pioneered the modern cooking show. Through Julia’s life and her singular joie de vivre, the series explores a pivotal time in American history – the emergence of public television as a new social institution, feminism and the women’s movement, the nature of celebrity and America’s cultural evolution. At its heart, the series is a portrait of a loving marriage with a shifting power dynamic.”
You may have seen The French Chef in real time or in rerun, but if it’s new to you, here’s a peek:

Have you had a chance to check out Julia? What do you think so far!?