“I chanced my arm”: how Julia Roberts wound up narrating an Irish TV show
People often get asked who would play them in the story of their lives, but a twist on that might be, ‘If you wrote a book, who would you get to narrate it?’ You might think, ‘well, one of the world’s most popular actors would be good,’ and for one Irish writer, that’s basically what happened after Julia Roberts sent him an email.
Well, that’s not strictly true, Julia Roberts’ ‘people’ sent him an email, and that’s because the book that Rónán Hession had written called Leonard and Hungry Paul back in 2019 had made its way over the Atlantic and landed in the hands of the former Pretty Woman herself, who asked her PA to send him a missive to let him know how much she enjoyed it.
Apparently, very much like she did in the film Notting Hill before Hugh Grant took about a thousand attempts to finally ask her out, Roberts discovered Hession’s book in a local shop in the US and liked it so much she felt it important to get in touch with the author, albeit being a Hollywood start she couldn’t just do it herself.
Hession actually wasn’t even an author by trade, he worked in the civil service and still does, but had decided to put pen to paper because he felt the divided world we live in was getting more and more polarised and wanted to focus on a story that had some gentle positivity and kindness at its core. He settled on penning the story of two board-gaming friends living in Dublin, one a solitary writer of children’s encyclopedias and another an easy-going chap who takes on odd jobs.
Hession told the BBC: “We know what confident people think because they never stop telling us, and they speak with such certainty. It’s the people who are maybe standing back and the people who are still reflecting on life. I just wanted to write about that and celebrate it”.
Things went quiet for some time after the initial excitement of having a legitimate A-lister pass on her compliments, but then a few years later, Leonard and Hungry Paul was commissioned by the BBC to be made into a comedy drama, starring Laurie Kynaston, Jamie-Lee O’Donnell from Derry Girls and Alex Lawther, who played one of the leads in the Alien: Earth series.
The series needed a narrator, however, and Hession’s publicist floated the idea of contacting Roberts in the unlikely scenario she might step in. “I chanced my arm”, said Hession, and was astonished when the reply came back within just a couple of hours, saying: “She’d love to do it”.
And so, last October saw the release of the series on BBC Two to excellent reviews and a nomination for ‘Best Drama’ at the Irish TV and Film Awards, with a delighted Hession saying of his Academy Award-winning narrator: “Julia Roberts, of course, what can you say? You’re used to seeing her on screen, and it’s interesting, she’s got such a good voice.”
Roberts herself has several projects in development, including Ocean’s 14 with George Clooney and Matt Damon, plus she’s finished filming on a movie called Panic Carefully, a conspiracy thriller starring Eddie Redmayne and Elizabeth Olsen.
