Chicago Med alum Julie Berman talks Casual season 4
Julie Berman’s Casual is back for its fourth and final season, and the Chicago Med veteran spoke about saying goodbye to the Hulu sitcom.
One Chicago alum Julie Berman is back on our small screen this week, as her current series Casual is now streaming its entire fourth season on Hulu.
It’s also the show’s final season, so we caught up with the former Chicago Med actress to discuss saying goodbye to her current project and how it’s been to work on the quirky comedy for the last few years.
Her role as Leia on Casual is incredibly different from playing the hard-charging Dr. Sam Zanetti during Chicago Med season 1, and it changed more this season because the show introduced a time jump several years into the future.
Fans discovered that Leia was still married to Leon (Nyasha Hatendi), but their marriage was in a tough spot, while Leia had gone from being an assistant to opening up her own therapy practice alongside former boss Valerie (Michaela Watkins).
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Did Julie know how much her character was going to evolve when Casual fast-forwarded this season?
“They told me nothing,” she explained. “I had to piece things together episode by episode…It was a good launching point because we needed to do whatever the writers had in store for us and go for it.”
One of the great scenes in the season premiere is Leia dispensing advice to Valerie, essentially turning the tables on their relationship. But as Julie told us, that’s not as huge a difference as Casual fans might think.
“Early on they had a rapport,” she reflected. “Even in the first season, Val sat down with Leia and noted the fact that she may have slept with her brother’s girlfriend and it was someone that was very important to him. Leia was the listening ear even back then, and I think it’s always been a part of their realationship.
“Sometimes Leia’s advice is a little too contemporary for Valerie, but I think their relationship has this mutual respect from day one. It just evolved into a stronger trust.”
While Leia’s professional life is going swimmingly in Casual season 4, her relationship hits a speed bump when she and Leon disagree on whether or not to have children. How was it for Julie to play the next step in their life together after they impulsively got married?
“I was happy to see that this might be where they really confronted a major obstacle in their relationship,” she said, “Leia and Leon represent this fantasy love and happiness, as opposed to all the misery and self-deprecation of all the other characters; they were a nice counter-balance.
“It was good to infuse them with a realistic relationship, and this season we get to see them work through a very realistic challenge, which is discovering one partner wants to have children and one partner doesn’t and what you do. How complicated and painful that can be.”
These eight episodes are full of not only changes but emotion as the story of Casual winds down, and fans have to say goodbye to the characters that they’ve come to know and love. Likewise, the actors had to walk away from these stories they’ve told for years. Julie reflected on what it meant to let go of Leia.
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“We worked so hard on every season of course but this one, even the table reads got emotional,” she reflected. “It was a really beautiful, heartwarming, funny season and I think it’s just going to be so wonderful to watch.
“It’s going to wrap up everything so well in such a satisfying way, especially with the Valerie relationship. How their lives evolve at the end is just the most perfect ending. I’m really excited to see it and I’m excited for all the viewers to see it as well.”
She doesn’t know what’s coming next just yet (maybe the Chicago Med writers can give us an update on what’s happened to Sam Zanetti?), but she does know what Julie Berman will take away from her Casual experience.
“This was an incredible experience because I was forced to go against a lot of my instincts when I was in Leia’s brain,” she told us. “She operated very differently and said things off the wall that seemed out of nowhere.
“But as an actor, it’s my job to have it come from somewhere realistic, so all of that was such a big challenge for me. It was really fun for me to stretch myself out of my comfort zone to play someone that was pretty different from me.
“The producers and the whole team behind Casual made such an incredible experience, where I realized the value of having good people and how that changes everything in a working environment. I’m so grateful to have been part of that, and witnessed it, and the success of it.”
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Catch Julie Berman in Casual now on Hulu. For more on what other Chicago Med actors are up to now, follow the Chicago Med category at One Chicago Center.