Julia Child never publicly “trashed” Julie Powell, but in private she was skeptical of Powell’s blog and did not see it as very serious work, which later got dramatized into a harsher “Julia hates me!” narrative in the film Julie & Julia.

What Julia Child Actually Said

Most accounts agree that when a food journalist showed Julia Child printouts of Julie Powell’s “Julie/Julia Project” blog in the early 2000s, Child’s reaction was cool but not vicious.

  • She reportedly felt the blog “didn’t seem very serious ,” especially compared with the eight years she had spent rigorously testing the recipes in Mastering the Art of French Cooking.
  • She was puzzled by the idea of someone cooking through every recipe daily and turning the experience into a confessional blog, a format and tone that were foreign to her generation.

Crucially, Child’s remarks were conveyed privately to a journalist and not as a public put‑down; she asked at the time not to be quoted directly, which is why her exact words are paraphrased rather than given as precise quotations.

Did Julia “Hate” Julie Powell?

The movie Julie & Julia amped up the emotional drama by having Powell fall apart when told that “Julia doesn’t like” her project, leading to the famous “Julia hates me!” line.

  • Friends and foundation representatives have since said Child showed no personal animosity toward Powell; she simply did not understand blogging and questioned the project’s seriousness.
  • Later commentary stresses that the idea of a bitter feud is largely a myth built from a few reserved, old‑school comments and then exaggerated by pop‑culture storytelling.

How Their Perspectives Differed

Julia Child and Julie Powell came from very different culinary and cultural worlds, which shaped Child’s reaction.

  • Child saw French cooking as a craft that demanded discipline, repetition, and technical precision; Powell’s blog foregrounded daily life struggles, strong language, and emotional venting along with the cooking.
  • For Child’s generation, failure in the kitchen was something to master and move past; for Powell’s online readers, failure was content—part of the relatable, narrative charm of the blog.

These differences help explain why Child could admire hard, methodical work on recipes yet remain cool toward a project that blended her cookbook with candid, contemporary internet storytelling.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.