Julia Saubier on Identity, Motherhood, and The Magic Faraway Tree

Interview by Isabella Miller

There’s a moment early in our conversation with Julia Saubier that quietly sets the tone and summarizes where she is in her journey. She’s mid-answer, speaking to us about identity, about growing up across cultures, about how experience builds over time, when her son calls out from just off-screen. She pauses without hesitation, reaches for him, soothes him, then slips right back into the conversation. Between actress and mother, there was no hard divide, no performance in the switch. Just real life, happening in real time.

It didn’t feel like an interruption. If anything, it was more like context for the conversation. Because Julia’s story has never been contained to one place, one identity, or one version of herself.

Born to a French father and Filipino mother, she grew up moving, from Lyon, the Philippines, Abu Dhabi, Beijing, now London, each place adding something new, not as separate chapters but as layers that stay with her. That kind of upbringing doesn’t just shape where you’re from; it shapes how you see. “It’s definitely transformed how I interpret the world, and who I’m drawn to in terms of, like, what characters I choose to take on,” she says.

“I definitely say that my identity… growing up in a dual heritage household… has shaped my worldview, my personality, how I interpret the world… and then living across different continents, from, you know, Asia to the Middle East, like, Asia to Europe, North America, and then spending time within there in the Middle East and China. It’s definitely transformed how I interpret the world, and who I’m drawn to in terms of… what characters I choose to take on.”

Which is where her process really begins: not on set, not in rehearsal, but in paying attention. “I think that… my worldview definitely informs my choices when I do act,” she adds. For Saubier, acting isn’t about putting something on. For her, it’s about recognizing what’s already there. Finding the emotional truth inside a moment and letting it come forward, rather than forcing it into place. It’s a quieter approach, but a deliberate one. She says it’s about making sure that she has “a handle on the character,” and that she feels “confident and comfortable” in who she’s playing.”

And it didn’t arrive overnight.

There wasn’t a single defining moment that pushed her toward acting. No dramatic pivot. Instead, it built gradually. Through different schools, different environments, and different exposures to performance. Theater, in particular, became a space where the questions she already carried about identity, about belonging, about connection could exist without needing clean answers. That openness still defines the way she works. "That kind of allows me to move between all these different worlds and landscapes,” she explains.

In conversation, she avoids abstraction, grounding her answers in lived experience and observation. That instinct becomes clearer when she reflects on her path before acting. With a background in journalism and international affairs, she learned to read beyond the surface, to understand how systems, power, and perspective shape real lives.

That awareness carries directly into her work. She doesn’t approach characters in isolation, but in relation to the world around them: the structures they move through and the forces acting upon them. It’s less theoretical than instinctive, shaping how she chooses roles and the responsibility she feels when portraying them.

“It’s made me really aware of, like, the different power dynamics at play… both in the real world and how that’s translated onto scripts and onto cinema… and the potential for change that it has… It’s really important for me to try to… advocate for certain types of characters… and analyze the different power structures that might be at play.”

Because for her, the work lives in that tension between preparation and spontaneity. You do the work, you build the foundation, but you also leave room for something unexpected to happen in the moment. That’s where things start to feel real.

It’s also why collaboration matters so much to her. “You’re all in it together, and it really does feel like a family,” she says.

You can see that same sensibility reflected in the way she talks about moving between projects of very different scales. She points to When Autumn Comes, an early independent film where she carried the lead, as a defining experience, not because of its size, but because of what it demanded from her.

“On When Autumn Comes, it was… an incredible small-scale project… it was everyone’s first film, mine included… I was playing the lead, and my character goes through… such a big… emotional journey… and, you know, given that was my first ever project… I was challenged in that sense.”

The contrast with larger studio work is real: bigger sets, more resources, a different kind of momentum. But for Julia, the core remains the same. Whether the environment is expansive or intimate, what matters is the depth of the character and the honesty she brings to it. It’s that consistency that allows her to move between worlds without losing her footing, grounding each performance in something personal rather than external. That’s where The Magic Faraway Tree marks a pivotal moment in her career, one that marks the crossroads between personal and professional change.

She came to the project at a time when much of her life was in flux. She mentioned that at the time she was four months postpartum and admits that at times she wasn’t in the mood to tape. And yet, something about the project stayed with her. The idea that her son might one day watch it, might see her in that world, became a driving force behind her decision to pursue it.

“I just knew that because it was based on a children’s fantasy book… I really wanted my son to be able to see this film and be like, oh, that’s my mom.”

There was another layer to it, too. The role itself, cast as a French elf, tapped into a part of her identity she hadn’t often seen reflected on screen. “Being half French, I never really saw, like, Asian French people represented,” she says, describing the significance of stepping into a character that allowed both sides of her heritage to exist visibly within a larger cinematic world.

And then there was the scale of it all. Moving from intimate, first-time sets into a production filled with established names and expansive environments brought a different kind of energy, one she describes not as intimidating, but exhilarating. Being surrounded by actors she admired—names like Andrew Garfield, Claire Foy, and Nicola Coughlan—stepping into a world that felt both fantastical and grounded in craft, reinforced her sense of what was possible.

“To be a part of that cast was just… incredible, and I’m super, super grateful.”

If her earlier work laid the foundation, The Magic Faraway Tree represents something else entirely: a moment of arrival, not as a final destination but as a widening of the field. It was where personal meaning, representation, and scale began to converge.

Julia is also drawn to directors and creatives who value nuance, who aren’t looking for something loud or overly defined, but for something more subtle, more down-to-earth. People who understand that the most interesting moments often sit just beneath the surface. At the same time, there’s a clear sense of authorship in the way she approaches her roles. She talks about how she doesn’t simply disappear into characters entirely. She meets them halfway. Questions them. Pushes back a little. It creates performances that feel intimate, specific, and grounded.

That willingness to stay present, to not hide behind the work, also means embracing vulnerability. And that’s something she’s leaned into even more as her life off-screen has evolved.

Motherhood, in particular, has shifted something fundamental.

As she reflects on taking part in The Magic Faraway Tree, the shift becomes especially clear. “I wouldn’t necessarily have been super interested in doing, like, a children’s fantasy before,” she says, “but because I have a son, that was a major pull…”

It’s not just about subject matter, though. It’s about depth. The emotional terrain that comes with it. She speaks about motherhood not as a single experience, but as something layered and evolving, something that resists simplification. “I think there’s just so much complexity, joy, mystery, sadness… in that whole experience,” she adds.

“I think it's also shown me… I'm interested in, like, doing a lot of drama, and also in motherhood roles… just because I think that's such a  life-changing, brain-altering moment in your life… and I'd love to be able to play that on screen.”

She takes on her chapter of motherhood not in a limiting way, but in an expansive one. The emotional stakes feel closer now, less theoretical. Where she once might have approached a scene from a more analytical place, she now describes a response that’s more instinctive, much more immediate, and sometimes harder to control.

But that lack of control isn’t something she resists.

If anything, it’s where work and life open up.

There’s a noticeable shift in how she talks about time, too. A bout choosing projects more intentionally and about understanding what it means to fully give herself to a role while staying grounded in her personal life. It’s not about doing more. It’s about doing what matters. Even at this moment, she was caring for her son while chatting with us. “It is just a juggle, and sometimes you are doing everything at once,” she notes.

The same goes for the stories she’s interested in.

Complex characters. Moral gray areas. Narratives that don’t spell everything out, that trust the audience to sit with uncertainty. For Saubier, it’s less about visibility and more about resonance, whether something lingers after it’s over. “I always want to find, like, a hope within every character that I play,” she says.

Even with that clarity, though, she’s careful not to frame her career as something fixed or fully defined. There’s still a lot she’s figuring out, and she’s okay with that. “It’s just a process that’s going to be ongoing,” she says.

Where that process leads next is something she’s already beginning to define more clearly. Acting may be the most visible part of her work, but it isn’t the only one she’s interested in building. Before stepping in front of the camera, she was drawn to the mechanics of storytelling itself, how projects come together, how ideas are shaped, and how stories are positioned in the world.

That pull hasn’t gone away. If anything, it’s returning with more definition.

“I’d really like to get back into more of the producing side of filmmaking… that was kind of my first love… just being very clear with the kinds of themes I want to work with: family, empowerment for minorities and women… and eventually move to a place where I’m doing both the behind-the-camera and in-front-of-the-camera work too.”

The same instincts that guide her performances now extend into the kinds of stories she wants to help bring to life from the ground up. Not necessarily didactic or overtly message-driven, but grounded in representation and shaped by a clear point of view.

In that sense, her trajectory isn’t about choosing between paths, but about integrating all of them. Acting and producing, performance and authorship, mother and interviewee, each working with the other. And if the conversation begins with a moment of interruption, life folding into the frame and overla, and it ends with something equally telling. For Julia Saubier, the work is still unfolding. And that, more than anything, seems to be the point.

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Team Credits

Photographer: Jemima Marriott

Stylist: Prue Fisher

Hair & Make Up: Megan McPhilemy