Both roles are complicated women but hinge on Roberts' innate likability.
Roberts filmed both projects within weeks of each other, and now they’re being released in similar proximity.
BEN IS BACK: FAMILY MATTERS
It all began with a soccer game.
Remembers Roberts: “I said, ‘Before you come to my house, take down this address.
It’s a park.
Why don’t you meet us there at 8:30?’
My older son, Finn, had a soccer game.
We had such a blast.
Peter was the best sidelines cheerleader.
And then we went to our house and cooked a bunch of food.”
Lucas and Newton surfed with Roberts' kids while the actress and Peter talked about the film.
The group grew so close that Lucas spent Thanksgiving with Roberts' family.
“It really was a family Thanksgiving dinner.”
To give them life.
To keep them alive.
And who better to go into the underworld to bring her child back than Julia Roberts?"
“I damaged my hand, actually,” remembers Roberts.
[Laughs] Recalls Lucas, “Oh, yeah, I think I actually got bruised.
She went hard, so credit to her.”
Roberts hopes that the movie puts a human face on a crisis that can so often seem inaccessible.
“I think it just shows how truly impossible it is to judge.
HOMECOMING: A NEW CONSPIRACY THEORY
Welcome home, bro!
It’s good to see you!”
Production is about halfway through the 10-episode first season, withMr.
Robot’s Sam Esmail helming all of the episodes.
Creators Eli Horowitz and Micah Bloomberg sit behind the monitors, clearly in awe of their leading lady.
What happened to Heidi?
And what’s Homecoming’s real goal?
you could feel the tragedy of this woman being caged.
We’re not used to seeing Julia Roberts get intimidated or bullied."
“It was so evocative.”
Shadows be damned, the pair hit it off.
“We connected in this deeper way…. We just had this instant friendship,” says Esmail.
Says Roberts ofHomecoming’s final scene: “It’s like, ‘Who shot J.R.?’
You want to spend all summer talking about that kind of thing.
“For people to have a voice in any capacity is paramount,” says the actress.
“But it is so, so challenging to find any kind of clarity in these times.
There’s so much mire and bulls.
And you feel like it’s five steps forward with #MeToo, Time’s Up.
Then [there’s] this whole Kavanaugh mess, and people are being so disrespectful and unkind.
“I direct all day, every day,” she jokes.
Be home for dinner.
All day, every day.”
The actress at least feels satisfied and energized by her current work.
Beaming about theHomecomingexperience, Roberts says: “Everything really came together in this dreamlike way.
I don’t know.
Maybe I’m just done.
I should just retire.”
How about in another 30 years?
