Julia Child's PA calls NZ 'home'
05 Nov 2009
New Zealand movie-goers flocking to see the recently released Julie and Julia, based on the life of Julia Child, have discovered that the US celebrity chef’s former personal assistant is now living on their doorstep.
Stephanie Hersh, who worked alongside Julia Child for nearly 20 years, has made her home in the South Island city of Christchurch.
The 48-year-old, who joined Julia Child in 1989, lives in relative anonymity but has New Zealand residency, works as an education manager at a science centre and runs cooking classes for children from her home.
One month visit
Miss Hersh came to New Zealand just after Julia Child died in 2004, when a Christchurch chef and friend of Mrs Child - Michael Lee Richards - suggested she spend a month in New Zealand, to clear her head.
Early on in the holiday, Miss Hersh decided she'd found a new home and moved here permanently in 2005. "I thought, 'this is where I’m meant to be'," she said.
Julia Child was an iconic TV chef in America from the 1960s, and Meryl Streep’s portrayal of her in Julie and Julia was "phenomenal", says Miss Hersh.
The film also accurately showed Child’s competitive nature and lack of driving ability, she said.
Dream job
The dream job of working as PA to the famous cook came about by chance.
With a long-held desire to become a chef, Miss Hersh trained for two years at culinary school before working in hotel kitchens in Boston and Massachusetts while in her early twenties.
While her goal was to learn from the best chefs in the country, she couldn’t afford the cost of moving, she says.
"So I thought I’d get a job in corporate America and get a transfer, then I could quit and get a job in a kitchen in the place they moved me to," she said.
Secretarial course
Luck intervened when in 1989, a day before Miss Hersh finished a three-month secretarial course in Boston, Julia Child rang the school, looking for a student with a culinary background.
"I was happily in the right place at the right time," said Miss Hersh.
Initially, Child was reluctant to hire Miss Hersh because she accurately assumed the young woman was more interested in working her way into the kitchen rather than being a PA, but took her on trial.
A television crew started filming A Day in the Life of Julia Child the next day and, with her culinary background, secretarial skills and even an understanding of film and television from a university degree, Miss Hersh was exactly what the chef was looking for.
"I was the perfect fit for what she needed."
Miss Hersh was 28, and Julia Child was 77.
"Sometimes it was like being with my grandmother and sometimes it was like being with a colleague and sometimes it was like being with a friend," Miss Hersh said.
Silly but serious
Miss Hersh says Julia Child was the same person on and off camera - "just fun and silly but she was also serious."
The two also complemented each other as cooks.
"Julia preferred savoury food. And my thing was pastry - I trained as a pastry chef."
Despite her many culinary abilities, Julia Child’s preference was for simple dishes.
"She loved to eat tuna fish sandwiches. And she loved stuffed eggs."
During her career, Julia Child pioneered cooking on camera and appeared in three television series. She also wrote 13 cookbooks, with a 14th underway when she died at the age of 91.
'Julia's Stephanie'
Miss Hersh said her employer’s death meant both the loss of a "dear friend" and her own identity. "Everyone knew me as ‘Julia’s Stephanie’ - it was overwhelming."
Of all of her memories of Julia Child, the most enduring was her sense of gratitude.
"She used to thank the kitchen staff for their hard work. She didn’t forget that we were a team; that it isn’t just the person at the top."
"She taught me it’s nice to be important, but it’s more important to be nice," said Miss Hersh.
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