BY INKOO KANG

Julia Child has been in the popular imagination

for so long — the memory of her charms and

achievements revived by Meryl Streep in the 2009

film “Julie & Julia” five years after Child’s death —

that it’s briefly startling to be reminded of the

unlikeliness of her professional trajectory, or that

she had one at all.

Child was 50 years old when she began her TV

career as the 6-foot-2 host of “The French Chef,” the

pioneering and long-running cooking program that

would eventually earn her multiple Emmys and a

Peabody Award. She received training at the

Cordon Bleu in Paris, where her diplomat husband,

Paul Child, was stationed for a few years. The

budget for her show was initially so low it probably

wouldn’t have made it to air without her paying for

the food out of her own pocket. To debut, “The

French Chef” needed not just a talented and

knowledgeable star but also a wealthy one, restless

and confident enough to bet on herself.

La chef française, who was neither, is newly

ubiquitous. More than a decade after Streep

garnered an Oscar nomination in the Nora Ephron-

directed biopic, the public-television icon has

become the subject of a 2021 documentary, the

inspiration for a Food Network competition series

and, now, the patrician protagonist of the HBO Max

comedic drama “Julia,” about the first year behind

the scenes of “The French Chef.” And yet the

eight-part season is often bracing, particularly in

its tale of middle-aged self-discovery and newfound

drive. Like a slice of chocolate cake, it doesn’t have

to be particularly challenging or ambitious to be

mighty satisfying.

“Julia” picks up where “Julie & Julia” left off, with

the childless Childs in Cambridge, Mass. — he

(David Hyde Pierce) unhappily retired from the

SEE TV REVIEW ON C2

Everything

Everywhere All at

Once



An inventive but goofy

multiverse journey. 20

Mothering Sunday



Thoughtful literary

adaptation still f ails to

capture the artistry of

the 2016 novel. 21

You Won’t Be Alone



This folk-horror fable

about a young witch is

creepy and hauntingly

beautiful. 22

MOVIES IN WEEKEND

An often refreshing show

that says ‘Bon appétit!’

‘Julia,’ about the TV chef, serves up just desserts with elan and a smile

Sarah Lancashire as the titular character in HBO Max’s “Julia,”a comedic drama

that portrays the first year of “The French Chef” TV show.

MICHAEL DWYER/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Chris Rock, left, arrives at the Wilbur

Theatre in Boston on Wednesday for his

first show since Sunday night’s Oscars.

BY GEOFF EDGERS

boston — Chris Rock wasn’t

defiant, but he was clear: If you

came to his first gig since the

Oscars looking for him to riff

about the slap seen around the

world, you might want to ask for

your money back.

“Let me do a show, y’all,” Rock

mock-pleaded after being greeted

by a long standing ovation. “Don’t

get all misty and s---.”

After a slight pause, Rock

looked out into the sold-out Wil-

bur Theatre and asked: “How was

your weekend?”

Busy Tremont Street in down-

town Boston was lined with jour-

nalists, from local TV reporters to

“Inside Edition,” “Entertainment

Tonight” and even Agence

France-Presse. Tickets were go-

ing for more than $1,000 on

resale sites. And a pair of Boston

ministers gathered to make a

sidewalk speech calling for more

attention to “Black-on-Black

crime.”

But Rock, dressed all in white

onstage, chose not to even men-

tion Will Smith, whose angry

attack during the Academy

Awards broadcast has become

the main topic in the world of

entertainment and culture.

“I had like a whole show I

wrote before the weekend,” he

said. “And I’m still kind of pro-

cessing what happened. At some

point, I’ll talk about that s---.”

A man in the balcony yelled,

“Sue him, Chris; sue him, Chris!”

in reference to the “King Rich-

ard” star.

Rock, 57, didn’t even pause

before launching into his routine.

“You know what the problem

with covid is? Not deadly

enough.”

Anybody watching Rock work

could understand why he didn’t

want to do any Will Smith materi-

al. He doesn’t work the crowd, he

doesn’t improvise. His material

isn’t conceived, written and ready

SEE ROCK ON C3

Chris Rock does not mention

Will Smith in c omedy tour return

BY ASHLEY FETTERS MALOY

For the first two decades of my

life, there was very little I did that

wasn’t touched somehow by

evangelical churches. I can still

sing a random smattering of Bible

verses, thanks to catchy little mel-

odies we played on cassettes tapes

in the car. If I squeeze my eyes

shut hard enough, I can reach

down into the primordial dregs of

my memory and find some of the

pledge to the Christian Flag,

bringing up with it the Play-Doh

smell of my preschool classroom

at a church-adjacent academy in

Scottsdale, Ariz. I still remember

the first time I ever felt so over-

whelmed by the Holy Spirit that I

wept during a church service — I

was 11, and it was during a rendi-

tion of “Shout to the Lord,” a

beloved praise anthem from none

other than Hillsong, the Austra-

lia-based global charismatic

church network known best at

the time for its stirring, interna-

tionally popular worship songs.

I’m still working out why exact-

ly I quit going to church in my

early 20s, about a decade ago; for

a long time, all I could really

muster was that I could no longer

ignore the gnawing suspicion

that I’d be happier if I did. (I was.)

As an adult, though, I’ve started

to piece together that perhaps it

had less to do with God or the

Bible or Christianity itself than

with the fallible, corruptible, mis-

guidable human beings I an-

swered to every Sunday.

SEE MEMO ON C3

MEMO

‘Hillsong’

reveals

more than

hypocrisy

BY MARION WINIK

In the fall of 2002, Erika Krouse

was broke and jobless. One day,

she went into a bookstore and

met an attorney while they were

both reaching for the same novel.

“We withdrew, laughed, chatted

briefly about the author and

books, and then he started telling

me about his life,” she writes in

her extraordinary new book, “Tell

Me Everything.”

The lawyer, whom she calls

Grayson, began confiding in her

about how he had come to hate

his job so much he was thinking of

leaving the law altogether. Then

he caught himself, shocked that

he had spoken so

openly to a total

stranger.

This wasn’t the

first time Krouse’s countenance

had elicited an immediate con-

nection, a familiarity that led to a

confession. “[I have] an ordinary-

looking face,” she explains, “but if

I ask ‘How are you?’ sometimes

people start crying. ‘I’m getting a

divorce,’ they say.... Or ‘I was just

diagnosed with late-stage Lyme

disease.’... Or an immaculately

dressed woman suddenly tells

me, ‘I hate my job so much I want

to kill myself. I’ve been saving up

Ambiens.’ ”

This unusual access to the in-

ner lives of others was surely an

SEE BOOK WORLD ON C2

BOOK

WORLD

A writer’s

uncanny

ability to

elicit candor

TELL ME

EVERYTHING

The Story of a

Private

Investigation

By Erika Krouse

Flatiron.

288 pp. $28.99

SEACIA PAVAO/HBO MAX

TV REVIEW

KLMNO

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