15 Qs With Meryl Streep, Amy Adams and Nora Ephron of 'Julie & Julia'
We sat down with Meryl Streep, Amy Adams and Nora Ephron in a sweet suite at a swanky hotel to talk about our very favorite subject: food. The Julie & Julia costars and writer/director dished on cooking, acting and the fine art of lemon-zesting.
Ladies, what drew you to the story?
Meryl Streep: I read Nora’s script, which was extremely beautiful and interesting, and I thought probably not commercial whatsoever, and I was very worried about her sanity and her financing and everything else. But they were willing to give us the money, and I think it’s turned out really, really well. [Laughs] I just loved the story of these two women looking for their calling, and I just thought it was extremely touching and also sort of elliptically written -- not hammered on the head. It’s so hard to find beautifully, subtly written things.
Amy Adams: It was gentle.
MS: Yeah. It had its own energy that was unique.
It seems to be a love story on so many levels, no?
MS: Yeah, a hopeful story.
What was the last thing that each of you cooked at home?
MS: Nora just gave me a cookbook, Ina Garten’s cookbook, and just last weekend -- where are we, Monday? -- Saturday, I made Tuscan lemon chicken. I highly recommend it. It was a big hit. And I have a shortcut for zesting lemons!
How comfortable were you before [your cooking lessons with Julia & Julia's culinary consultant Susan Spungen] and after in the kitchen?
AA: I’m not really intimidated in the kitchen; I think I’m a little bit tidier now because I’ve learned the correct way to do stuff. My chopped salad is more consistent. She gave me a lot of great tips and a lot of shortcuts I never would have thought of. So I don’t mind preparation as much. That’s opened up the world of cooking to me because I have more enjoyment of prep work and cutting.
MS: I just wonder if Julia Child had had four children, if she would have cooked the way she did. I’m just saying, because it’s just not that easy. But I learned patience, because I realize in my life so often I’d get home and I had planned to a certain extent, and there’d be some disaster with somebody that would keep me from one element of the meal, and everybody’s standing around like, “When is it gonna be reeeeady?”
Prior to the movie, did you read food blogs at all?
Nora Ephron: I read food blogs, yes I do. I read Chowhound. I always use them for new restaurants. I always go online to find out whether they’re good or not from the food blogs. I read Ed Levine’s food blog which I love. It’s great for New York. It’s called SeriousEats.com. There are so many good food blogs, it’s amazing to me. But I hadn’t read Julie Powell’s blog until I read about it in the New York Times.
MS: That’s the first time I heard about it. There was something about that article that jumped up … It was an unusual challenge that she’d set herself.
Nora, author Julie Powell told us that you printed out her blog. Why was that important for you?
NE: If I had found a section that I wanted to amplify beyond what was in the blog ... there were a couple of chronological things I was confused by, and I wanted to figure all of that out. Basically, I just wanted to hear her talk a little bit more about some of the events that I chose to do in the movie, because it was about 2,000 pages printed out -- that blog -- of one year, with all the comments that were printed.
So I had eight huge binders of material, and I had winnowed it down and then I had figured out what I was gonna do of it. What scenes had to be done. I had to do the meltdowns, and I had to do the lobster thing. And I had become very interested in her mother who wrote … her mother really got into her blog and wrote slightly inappropriate things, and I was so amused that she had sort of become a character in the blog. So that was really, mostly what it was, just to amplify.
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