The first three episodes are now available to watch on Sky Atlantic and NOW TV but the eight-episode dramedy is inspired by Child’s extraordinary life. Most notably, though, it will also explore her long-running television series, The French Chef, which pioneered the popular cooking-show genre.

Julia has been hailed as a comedy drama but Lancashire has revealed that, when filming, she’d never considered the series to be such. Speaking to RadioTimes, she said: “When I was approaching this, I never approached it as a comedy. I wasn’t convinced it was a comedy, to be perfectly honest. I thought, ‘If everybody else wants to treat it as a comedy they can do… I’m just going to do my Julia Child in the only way I know how.’

“And maybe that was a degree of fear or insecurity, but I just had to cling on to everything that I knew in terms of character development.”

But while Childs was an undoubtedly witty character, Lancashire didn’t have any desire to turn her into a comedic character. It’s the reason why the actor remained firm in her decision to portray the celebrity chef in a truthful, non-eccentric way.

HBO Max’s Julia: Sarah Lancashire stars as iconic chef Julia Child in the new series but pushed back against producers for this reason