Julie Andrews
ON HER ENCHANTED CAREER, HER TROUBLED CHILDHOOD AND THE WICKED FUN OF HER LATEST ROLE
Julie Andrews is so famous for her voice that sometimes it seems like it’s more famous than she is. “I could go anywhere in the world and not be recognized until I open my mouth,” she says with a laugh as she talks to Parade from her home in Sag Harbor, N.Y.
It’s the voice that had a four-octave range when she began performing as a child, and that led to her iconic roles on stage ( My Fair Lady and Camelot) and screen, including Mary Poppins, The Sound of Music and Victor/Victoria, as well as narrating and voicing characters in Enchanted and the Shrek and Despicable Me franchises. Now, the mother of five—and grandmother to 10 and great-grandmother to three—puts her distinctive British voice to work in a wickedly funny role as the narrator of the new Netflix series Bridgerton (available Dec. 25).
In Bridgerton, she’s Lady Whistledown, “a mysterious and rather sharp-tongued gossip writer of the day,” says Andrews, adding that her character’s very first line “is something like, ‘Of all bitches, human or otherwise, there’s none worse than the gossip columnist.’ ” The stylish period drama is based on the best-selling historical romance novel series about marriage, manners and morals in and around London in the early 1800s by author Julia Quinn. The story follows the lives of the eight siblings in the powerful Bridgerton family intermingling with other families in their upper social circle.
Andrews, 85, calls her character “a tartar, and a bit of a naughty woman.” And while she doesn’t appear onscreen, Lady Whistledown is central to the drama: By writing a scandal sheet for the highest rungs on society’s ladder, she holds the puppet strings of practically everyone and drives the action. “I occasionally guide it, twist it, point it in some direction or another,” she says. “I can make or break anybody, it seems, if I wish.”
Andrews describes the show as “scandalous and romantic and full of intrigue.” No surprise, then, that the book was brought to the small screen by Shonda Rhimes, who created Grey’s Anatomy and Scandal. “It’s glamour, [and] how do the other half live?” says Andrews. “I think it’s all part of the stories that we loved from childhood, really.”