Julia Roberts: Homecoming did wonders for my personal life

Julia Roberts

Hollywoods Pretty Woman Julia Roberts is entering the world of the small screen with the thriller Homecoming. She says she stayed away from television for this long due to lack of offers.

Roberts started her career in Hollywood in 1987 with Crime Story, and walked up the stairs of fame with the success of projects like Pretty Woman, "Erin Brockovich", "My Best Friend's Wedding", "Notting Hill", "Runaway Bride", "Ocean's Eleven", "Valentine's Day", "Eat Pray Love", "Money Monster" and "The Normal Heart".

Why did she stay away from the small screen for so long?

"The lack of being offered a TV show probably. This (‘Homecoming') was such a great piece of material. I wasn't making a choice to do TV. I was making a choice to go where I thought the work was interesting," Roberts told IANS in a group interview on the sidelines of Prime Video Presents 2018 event here.

"My request was to have one director for all the episodes and that's what I needed. I didn't want to have a different person every week trying to understand the way my brain works. It seemed unfair to the society," she added on a lighter note.

However, Roberts said the makers didn't think about TV while working on the show.

"Sam Esmail really set this up like a movie and I like to think, for me. It was not dissimilar in the process of creating it from a film," she added.

The show, adapted from a podcast with the same name, follows the life of case worker-turned-waitress Heidi Bergman (Roberts) as she struggles to remember her time working at a facility that treats soldiers returning from war. The trailer also shows how Heidi begins to suspect something more suspicious at the heart of the program with one of her patients Walter, essayed by Stephan James.

Created and written by Eli Horowitz and Micah Bloomberg, the show is directed by Esmail -- the man behind "Mr. Robot".

"The show did wonders for my personal life. I was so happy that I am me and they are them," said the Oscar-winning actress.

Now, the actress is looking forward to opening the "complex and fascinating" world in front of the audience with the show, which will go live on Amazon Prime Video in November.

"It is a whole package. The whole story is so complex and fascinating with really interesting ideas in characters that reveal themselves in very unique way. Playing two different characters was interesting -- what are the differences, and what are the things that she is aware of and not aware of... Sometimes I would think that I am telling the truth, and Sam would be like, ‘No, you are lying'."

Other cast members of "Homecoming" include Bobby Cannavale, Shea Whigham, Jeremy Allen White, Alex Karpovsky and Roberts' "My Best Friend's Wedding" co-star Dermot Mulroney.

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