Julia Roberts On Her Transition From Film To TV: ‘I Just Go Where The Parts Compel Me’

From the big screen to the small screen! Julia Roberts is one of the biggest Hollywood actors, so it was a little bit of a surprise when her next role was going to be on a TV series. The A-list movie star made her small-screen debut on the Amazon original TV series Homecoming, and Julia opened up about what made her decide to make the transition from film to television.

“This was such a great piece of material — I wasn’t making a choice to do TV, I was just making a choice to go where I thought the work was interesting,” the 51-year-old told the Daily Express. “I mean, I’ve never called myself a film actor. I’m just an actor. So, I think, for me, I just go where the parts compel me.”

The show is based on Eli Horowitz and Micah Bloomberg’s popular podcast, and it’s a psychological thriller that is set both in the present and in the future in the year 2022. Julia plays Heidi who, in 2018, is a caseworker at the Homecoming Transitional Support Center in Florida. Homecoming is a government facility that helps soldiers transition from the military back into civilian life.

But in 2022, Heidi is working as a waitress in a small town and living a quiet life with her mother and she gets tracked down by an auditor from the Department of Defense. The auditor tries to investigate why Heidi decided to leave her old job, and that’s the question that the show will attempt to answer in the 10-episode series. Julia explained that it was the story and the character that really drew her to the role.

“It was the whole package, the whole story. It’s so complex and fascinating and has all of these really interesting ideas and characters that reveal themselves in unique ways,” Julia continued. “I liked the idea of playing to different characters. It was interesting to see the differences and the things that she’s aware of and not aware of.”

Homecoming is now available to stream on Amazon Prime.