New York–Food stylist Christine Tobin knows how a meal is supposed to look. It’s her job, after all. But thanks to Instagram chefs and cooking shows, now Tobin’s viewers do, too.
On “Julia,” HBO Max’s dramedy about iconic chef Julia Child (Sarah Lancashire) that premiered March 31, food isn’t just a prop. It’s the very essence of the show.
“You eat with your eyes before your stomach,” Tobin, who has previously worked on projects including “Little Women,” “American Hustle” and “Olive Kitteridge,” told the Daily News.
“Julia” begins in 1961 as Child launches “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” into the world. Suddenly, it’s not just a book, but a press tour and then her own show on WGBH. In hindsight, it’s easy to say that Child is about to change the world. But for now, she’s just a housewife talking into a camera.
Tobin’s job is to put the food on the table. After the writers scripted each episode, both what Julia would make on her show and at home, from coq au vin to steak frites, Tobin would begin testing the real recipes from “Mastering.” Once she’d got it down, go back to the “Julia” kitchen to teach Lancashire.
“Her recipes were so simple,” Tobin said. “They may be complicated in technique for some, but once you really understand her language, you can accept her words as hand-holding.”
But for Tobin, it wasn’t about how the food tasted, although that helps. It’s about how they looked on camera, how they held up under the lights of the production set, how many versions they would have to make for shoots and reshoots and touch-ups.
“Food,” she said, “is the most temperamental actor.”
With a background in fine arts and sculpting, Tobin easily could have built the food, rather than made it, but she never really entertained the option, she said. It had to be real, not just for her pride and the authenticity for her viewers, but because it felt right. Even for the chocolate soufflé, the most delicate of desserts, Tobin sweated it out until she got it right, working egg whites, powdered sugar and flour until it stood at attention, then collapsed in on itself when the shell is broken.
On a show like “Julia,” where food is the heart and soul, fake just wouldn’t work.
“You know exactly how an omelet breaks when you stick a fork through it,” Tobin told The News. “You can’t do that with a fake omelet.”
