What Goldfarb does know to be true is that all the series’ components spoke to real moments in Child’s life, from the chef being embraced by the counterculture to her well-documented friendship with Beard. It could have happened, but we don’t know if it necessarily did.” “But it’s based in fact,” he quickly adds, explaining that the episode, like the entire season, “is all based on facts, but it’s sort of like the Amadeus version of Julia’s life.
When it comes to this moment between “the two huge American food icons,” Julia creator and writer Daniel Goldfarb tells T&C, “their fun weekend in San Francisco, that’s all fiction.” It’s one of those moments that begs to be Googled: Did Julia Child and James Beard, the openly gay pioneering chef whose notoriety spawned the annual culinary James Beard Awards, spend all night partying with drag queens? But the results won’t pull up an archived news story or entry from one of the many biographies written about Beard or Child.
As the evening progresses, Child meets an adoring fan and drag queen named Coco, who is dressed just like the chef and pulls her idol up on stage for a rendition of Frank Sinatra’s “It Had to Be You.”
