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Gr i tt y woman
It took a dark, psychological thriller – her favourite genre – to tempt Julia Roberts onto the small screen for her first major series, she tells Kathryn Knight
Julia Roberts has covered all genres in her impressive 30year acting career, from rom coms like Pretty Woman to dramatic biopics like Erin Brockovich, but the Hollywood superstar admits to being a ‘complete sucker’ for one type of story in particular.
‘I’ve been lucky to be in psychological thrillers like Sleeping With The Enemy. I love stuff like that,’ she says, ‘even if I know what is going to happen.’
The lure is so strong that it has drawn the Oscarwinning actress onto the small screen in a major role for the first time, in the twisty thriller Homecoming. The new series focuses on what appears to be the innocuous work of the Homecoming Transitional Support Center, a government-funded halfway house where returning soldiers are gently reintroduced into civilian life.
Here we meet Julia’s caseworker character Heidi Bergman, greeting returning soldier Walter Cruz (Stephan James). But it quickly becomes clear that the Homecoming facility is not all it seems. Running parallel with the story of Walter and Heidi in 2012 is another story ten years in their future, in which Heidi is no longer sitting in a wellappointed room using her psychiatry degree, but working as a waitress at a seafood diner down on the docks.
Tracked down by a government official who questions her about why she left the facility, her panic is palpable. The question that will keep viewers glued to their seats for the ten episodes is – what happened in between?
Before it became a TV series, the Homecoming plot had garnered acclaim in its previous incarnation as a radio podcast of the same name, of which Julia, 51, was a big fan.
‘I was sent it ages ago – podcasts, to me, just seemed like an old-fashioned radio play, the sort you’d sit in the living room and listen to, and I loved it,’ she recalls. ‘So when I got a call from the director Sam Esmail about it I didn’t assume he was going to make a TV show, it was just a conversation about this story that we were both intrigued by. It took off from there.’
Sam came to prominence by creat- ing the cyber security political drama Mr Robot, which airs here on Amazon Prime, as does Homecoming. Julia is a fan of Mr Robot, which has won multiple awards, and the pair hit it off.
‘We’re the same, but my hair is longer,’ she laughs. ‘Instantly we were like 20-year friends. So we knew it’d work bringing the show to television because TV is not for the faint of heart.’
On the small screen, Julia has played Chandler’s school fr iend on an episode of Friends in 1996, and in 1998 she turned up on Law & Order, mostly as a private joke with her then boyfriend, the show’s star Benjamin Bratt. Now she says it’s the project , not the medium, that is the pull for her.
‘I’ve never called myself a film actor; I’m just an actor,’ she insists. ‘So I go where the parts compel me.’ She admits that television is a different form of storytelling, as it involves a lot of out-of-sequence filming.
‘Sam kept me on track each day with, “Here’s what we know has happened, here’s what we don’t know has happened, and here’s what might happen later”,’ she says.
Sam was attracted to the project by the tense storyline and the intimate feel of the podcast, which he replicated by making his episodes just 30 minutes instead of the usual hour for a TV drama.
‘An hour-long episode with not much happening will test people’s patience. When I made Mr Robot, which was an hour per episode, I packed a lot in and could “wow” the audience. Homecoming is a slower burn – it’s a seduction rather than a grabbing. With just 30-minute episodes, a slowmotion trainwreck is more effective.’
It is clear something nefarious is going on behind the scenes at the Homecoming facility, although whether the government is involved is left deliberately murky. ‘It’s run by a private company, sub- contracted by the government,’ says Sam. ‘There are tons of private companies who really do get government con- tracts to take care of veterans. And that sets up interesting plot possibilities... you just hope you have someone moral at the top.’
Dropped into this situation are a group of young soldiers, newly home from war and adjusting to civilian life. ‘It’s not normal to go to war and kill people, and coming home from that is tricky,’ says Sam. ‘Even if you don’t suffer from PTSD, there’s a psychological decompression to go through before you can try to feel normal.’
For Julia, the opportunity to present the case of returning soldiers was a powerful draw. ‘They’ve done incredible things for our freedom. I wish there was a greater government infrastructure to give them tools to return. Maybe not at the Homecoming facility, because that’s weird and creepy!’
In an inspired bit of casting, Sissy Spacek plays Heidi’s mother. ‘I adore the characters’ relationship. I’ve known Sissy since I was 13, so she may as well be my mother,’ says Julia. They met through Julia’s older brother Eric, a friend of Sissy’s. And while you may imagine Julia’s star power could intimidate, she insists it is nothing compared to that of the 68-year-old veteran. ‘Everyone was saying, “It’s Sissy!”’
Harrowing as the content of this series was, Julia insists the supportive atmosphere on set meant it was easy to shed her character when she returned home to husband Daniel Moder and their children, 13-year-old twins Hazel and Phinnaeus and 11-year-old Henry.
‘It is not difficult,’ she insists. ‘That’s why it was so great making this. We accomplished so much in a day that you said, “OK, there is that day,” then you went home and had your life.’ Homecoming is available to watch on Amazon Prime now.
‘I go where the parts compel me’