Homecoming Queen

With the release of her first TV series and Oscar buzz around her latest film, Julia Roberts is ready for her standing ovation.

Julia Roberts was never a big podcast fan. It wasn’t until she listened to Homecoming by Eli Horowitz and Micah Bloomberg that she became an addict. “I hadn’t heard very many podcasts [when I started listening to Homecoming] and I certainly hadn’t heard one that consisted of one continuous storyline. I was very taken with it,” says Roberts, down the line from LA. Even from 12,000km away, you can hear the warmth in her voice and feel her trademark smile.

In the TV adaptation of the podcast by Amazon Prime, Roberts checks her smile to play Heidi Bergman, a single woman who is overcome with paranoia and haunted by resurfacing memories of her time as a caseworker at the Homecoming Transitional Support Center for returning war veterans.

When a Department of Defense auditor tracks Heidi down four years after leaving the facility and starts asking questions about her work, she realises things were not as they seemed. Dun dun dun…