Speaker 1: This is the most dramatic podcast ever, an iHeartRadio podcast.
Speaker 2: Everybody, Welcome to the most dramatic podcast ever. Lauren Zima
Speaker 2: and Chris Harrison coming to you today with the story
Speaker 2: of a woman who has literally time traveled and I
Speaker 2: really mean that. Julia Hart of the show My Unorthodox
Speaker 2: Life on Netflix spent the first forty two years of
Speaker 2: her life in an ultra Orthodox Jewish community, living without TV.
Speaker 2: She had never seen movies, she had never worn the
Speaker 2: clothes that you and I wear every day. She had
Speaker 2: not grown up in America, even though she was technically
Speaker 2: in America. This community was located in New York. At
Speaker 2: age forty two, she left with her kids, and, as
Speaker 2: she describes it, was an eleven year old even though
Speaker 2: she was an adult trying to figure out the world
Speaker 2: on her own. She went on to build multiple multimillion
Speaker 2: dollar businesses, get her own net fie show. Now she's
Speaker 2: got a new shapewear line and a new TV show
Speaker 2: in the works, And Chris and I are going to
Speaker 2: talk to her about dating from her perspective, getting married
Speaker 2: and divorced from her perspective, because she is in the
Speaker 2: middle of a very high profile multimillion dollar divorce right
Speaker 2: now and much much more. I actually have met Julia
Speaker 2: once before, interviewed her for Entertainment Tonight at her home
Speaker 2: in New York before her Netflix show premiered, but at
Speaker 2: that time she was married. Still, I met her husband
Speaker 2: in their penthouse. Since then, they've split up, so we
Speaker 2: have a lot to catch up with her on Babe.
Speaker 2: Were you a little blown away when you first heard
Speaker 2: her story?
Speaker 1: Reading her story? I really wasn't aware of it, and
Speaker 1: I have so many questions I cannot wait to dive in,
Speaker 1: So let's get to it. Julia Hart, Hi, Thank Julia.
Speaker 2: Julia, Hi, Hi, Julia. Do you remember me? I came
Speaker 2: to your house with et your penthouse and interviewed you
Speaker 2: before the first season of My UNORTHODOXYG Oh.
Speaker 3: My goodness, no, wonder you look so familiarly, so good
Speaker 3: to see you.
Speaker 2: Great to see you too, and we were in your
Speaker 2: fabulous closet.
Speaker 3: Are you Are you in la now?
Speaker 2: No, we live in Austin, And again I'm Laurence. This
Speaker 2: is my husband, Chris. It's so good to see you.
Speaker 3: Great to see you. You know I grew up in Austin.
Speaker 2: No, did you really?
Speaker 3: I left Moscow? When I was three, I spent two
Speaker 3: years in internment camps, was like seven months in Vienna, Austria,
Speaker 3: and almost nine months in the Vatican in Rome. And
Speaker 3: then IBM hired both my parents and the first place
Speaker 3: we came to America was Austin, Texas, and I lived
Speaker 3: there until I was eleven.
Speaker 2: In that ten seconds you get a glimpse of the
Speaker 2: wild life Julia has led I. When you speak and
Speaker 2: you tell your story, it's like you don't know what
Speaker 2: this woman is going to say next. You have done
Speaker 2: so much and seen so much. So where did you
Speaker 2: go after Austin.
Speaker 3: To the eighteen hundreds?
Speaker 2: Yes, you know what I couldn't remember. Chris was asking
Speaker 2: me where was that part of your life? Physically? The
Speaker 2: what state were you in?
Speaker 3: Rock and County, New York state? Rock and upstate New York,
Speaker 3: Rock and County Muncie suffering.
Speaker 1: And when we say that state, this was so how
Speaker 1: old were you when you entered the ultra Orthodox Jewish?
Speaker 3: Ten?
Speaker 1: Ten years old? So up to this is like zero
Speaker 1: to ten. What was life you were just, I mean
Speaker 1: just Jewish life was.
Speaker 3: First Moscow and then it was you know, living in
Speaker 3: the tent in Rome and having my first cherry and
Speaker 3: my first slice of pizza, you know, and then coming
Speaker 3: to Austin, Texas, as you could imagine a five years
Speaker 3: I've been already been in four countries, four different languages,
Speaker 3: and you know, I got to go to public school.
Speaker 3: I learned English, and the first year that we were there,
Speaker 3: there was some kind of state tests because they were
Speaker 3: still trying to segregate blacks and lights to the seventies. Right,
Speaker 3: Austin when I came in, was still not segregated, so
Speaker 3: it was still SegReg Yeah, I'm sorry, it was still segregate.
Speaker 3: They hadn't done and so the federal government forced desegregation,
Speaker 3: and so Texas came up with their idea of, well,
Speaker 3: if we can't divide them by color, we'll divide them
Speaker 3: by test score, because they thought they were wrong, but
Speaker 3: they thought that black kids would score worse than white
Speaker 3: kids and then they wouldn't have to be bussed, and
Speaker 3: blah blah blah blah. And the end it failed. Yeah,
Speaker 3: in the end it failed, and busting worked and the
Speaker 3: schools became integrated. But that all happened when I came
Speaker 3: to Texas. Of course, I didn't know any of this.
Speaker 3: I was a child. I was five years old, but
Speaker 3: I take the state test and I get the highest score,
Speaker 3: and I'm this little immigrant kid from Russia, and I'm
Speaker 3: the first person in all of Texas that comes from Russia.
Speaker 3: Because this is before Peter Stroika, this is before Gorbachev.
Speaker 3: This is still ussr Resina, right, this is cold family,
Speaker 3: this is cold war. This is my parents and I
Speaker 3: were traded for grain through the Jackson Vanekvild. So this
Speaker 3: is real, full on cold war. And so it was
Speaker 3: first birthday in free world, you know, because it was
Speaker 3: so unusual. I was I think we were the first
Speaker 3: Russian family in the entire state of Texas.
Speaker 1: I never intended for this interview to go this direction,
Speaker 1: but so I grew up as a kid in Texas
Speaker 1: also in the seventies and eighties, so I remember those times,
Speaker 1: and I imagined being Russian at the time, Like were
Speaker 1: you mocked where you pointed out.
Speaker 3: I was just like this exotic plant, you know, So
Speaker 3: like people just wanted to like they were just fascinated
Speaker 3: because I was the only Russian they'd ever met. Totally,
Speaker 3: So it was kind of like, oh, let's go look
Speaker 3: at the Martians so far. But I have to tell
Speaker 3: you that I felt more at home and more comfortable
Speaker 3: and more myself when I was the only Jew in
Speaker 3: a public private school called Kirby Hall. You know it,
Speaker 3: I was their token Jew and there was one token plaque.
Speaker 3: And like people always say, like did I feel comfortable?
Speaker 3: Did I feel anti Semitism? There? Honestly, not an iota.
Speaker 3: There was this these two twins, they were Germans. I
Speaker 3: think their names were like Ulrick and Deep Trick or something.
Speaker 3: And when we learned about the Holocaust, they came over
Speaker 3: and like they hugged me, like we're really sorry, and
Speaker 3: I'm like, you don't have to about it, but it
Speaker 3: was really beautiful. And then when I left, my math
Speaker 3: teacher costured her kitchen. She was a vegetarian, so it
Speaker 3: was actually very easy for her because at that point
Speaker 3: I was already kosher. She costured her kitchen so that
Speaker 3: she could give me a going away party that I
Speaker 3: could eat at.
Speaker 1: That's amazing. Well, and so you moved to New York,
Speaker 1: and I guess obviously your parents are the ones that
Speaker 1: dictate this. They decide we're going to move into this
Speaker 1: ultra orthodox Jewish community, and this is like stepping back
Speaker 1: into the eighteen hundreds, right, I mean this is no TVs,
Speaker 1: no devices, no radios.
Speaker 3: I always tell people I'm a time traveler. I lived
Speaker 3: in the eighteen hundreds until I was forty two years old.
Speaker 3: I am eleven years old in this century.
Speaker 1: But what I didn't get was that you lived in
Speaker 1: the nineteen hundreds for quite some time, you know, almost
Speaker 1: until your teenage years. Then you joined this.
Speaker 3: Yeah well no, no, no, we became religious much earlier. We
Speaker 3: became religious when I was around let's see six or seven. No, yeah,
Speaker 3: around six or seven. So we became religious in Texas.
Speaker 3: Yeah right, my parents. My mother started wearing a wig,
Speaker 3: I started keeping kosher. I wasn't allowed to hang out
Speaker 3: with any of my non Jewish friends. I wasn't allowed
Speaker 3: to go on the weekends. I couldn't watch cartoons anywhere.
Speaker 3: So it started before I actually came to Monseya. However,
Speaker 3: when it got to monsey just the doors of the
Speaker 3: outside world closed completely.
Speaker 2: So were you mad at your parents for moving you
Speaker 2: out of Texas?
Speaker 3: At the time, I was fully indoctrinated, and that's what
Speaker 3: God wanted. And I shouldn't be with non Jews. They
Speaker 3: want to kill us. And by the way you look
Speaker 3: at what's going on today and you say to yourself,
Speaker 3: they're not wrong. I just don't think the answer is
Speaker 3: hiding and separating yourself from the rest of the world.
Speaker 3: But I mean, there is a lot of hatred for
Speaker 3: the Jewish people, and so you know, I was brought
Speaker 3: up to think that every non Jews dangerous and wants
Speaker 3: to turn me into a lampshade and burn me in
Speaker 3: an oven. So you know it was us and them.
Speaker 2: Wow, Well, I'm glad that you found some warmth and
Speaker 2: welcome in Austin. I am despite all of these.
Speaker 3: I love Austin. I really do. Like Austin is one
Speaker 3: of They're my only happy childhood memories. They're all in
Speaker 3: as before we became religious. They're the only ones I got.
Speaker 2: We've found there. There are such warm and loving people here,
Speaker 2: and so I'm glad to hear that despite the turbulent,
Speaker 2: to say the very least times that you and your
Speaker 2: family had lived through. Wow. Okay, yeah, I know I
Speaker 2: interviewed you before, but I'm like, I didn't know this
Speaker 2: origin story. Oh my gosh. And Chris is wrapping his
Speaker 2: head around it all.
Speaker 3: There's a book I wrote because this show is my present.
Speaker 3: The book is my past. It's it goes to the
Speaker 3: whole story. And know, it's real interesting. It's in English, obviously,
Speaker 3: you know the other language it's been translated in so
Speaker 3: far German, German.
Speaker 1: That's interesting.
Speaker 3: It's interesting, right.
Speaker 2: Can I bring up a similarity you guys have really quick,
Speaker 2: because I feel like you should talk about this. Well,
Speaker 2: Chris is Jewish. Chris's whole family is Jewish, and he
Speaker 2: grew up in Dallas, and you were really the only
Speaker 2: Jewish family you knew in Dallas.
Speaker 1: There was a there's a very tight knit Jewish community
Speaker 1: in Dallas. Same thing here in Austin. It's it's a
Speaker 1: small it's a small community in the seventies and eighties. Yeah,
Speaker 1: my parents, my family had been there for three generations,
Speaker 1: four generations now, and so yeah, there is a very small,
Speaker 1: tight knit group. And but yeah, they were you know,
Speaker 1: ostracized and persecuted in their own ways growing up in Dallas.
Speaker 1: It was Texas and the seventies for sure. You know
Speaker 1: the story. My parents tell me stories about it all
Speaker 1: the time. But what's interesting is, I'm what I'm trying
Speaker 1: to wrap my head around is then this young girl
Speaker 1: goes into something that I think we would all like
Speaker 1: into a third world country where you disappear from Earth,
Speaker 1: but this is in New York. You're not this is
Speaker 1: this is happening in the United States, where there is
Speaker 1: this community that is not watching TV, not listening to
Speaker 1: the radio, not engaging with the outside world. And then
Speaker 1: you emerge three decades later. You go in as a
Speaker 1: ten year old, you come out as a forty two
Speaker 1: year old woman.
Speaker 3: You know which movie? When I saw it, I was like,
Speaker 3: oh my god, that's me. It's a movie with Hugh Jackman.
Speaker 2: And Meg Ryan.
Speaker 3: Meg Ryan. Yeah, what was it called, you know, Trying
Speaker 3: to Leopold. Yes, oh my god.
Speaker 1: Well one and only time that movie was ever mentioned.
Speaker 2: I like that movie. It's cute.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so that that that's what I was trying
Speaker 1: to think of, Like what's.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's what it felt like. It's you know, how
Speaker 3: he he The story is of Kate and Leopold. He
Speaker 3: falls through a wormhole in time from the eighteen hundreds
Speaker 3: and he lands in twenty first century New York City,
Speaker 3: and he's discombobulated and completely lost because it's it's like
Speaker 3: going tomorrows such a different planet, and that those first
Speaker 3: days of his in the city. That's what it was
Speaker 3: like for me. Everything I was like, you know, my
Speaker 3: eyes were like giant saucers, Like I thought everything was
Speaker 3: super exciting. I'd never been to a bar, I never
Speaker 3: kissed anyone I chose it. I'd never slept by myself,
Speaker 3: you know, like just things that people just so much
Speaker 3: take for granted. I never watched without permission. There's just
Speaker 3: so many things that you know, I'd never done, and
Speaker 3: I knew so I knew nothing about the outside world
Speaker 3: except when I read and watched.
Speaker 1: You were a mom at the time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I know, Miriam.
Speaker 1: You had your daughter.
Speaker 3: Did you just for children?
Speaker 1: Four kids at the time?
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, kids, all my four kids were. My last
Speaker 3: child was born when I was thirty five.
Speaker 1: So and but man, you up and moved out of
Speaker 1: this community and the safety net you had with four
Speaker 1: kids to take on the world. Yeah, that's a badass move.
Speaker 3: Great, it's an insane room to make. Honest, people don't
Speaker 3: make it. Most people can't because you're just not equipped
Speaker 3: to handle the outside world. You're really not. You don't know.
Speaker 3: I mean, I got, you know, roof feed and raped.
Speaker 3: I think the first year that I was out because
Speaker 3: I'd never heard of ro Hipnol. I didn't know you
Speaker 3: can't take a drink from I literally was like a
Speaker 3: five year old child. On one hand, I had this intellect,
Speaker 3: this talent, my herd, crazy work ethic, and on the
Speaker 3: other hand, I was like, what's a Madnum bottle of champagne?
Speaker 3: I don't know. I didn't know anything about anything. You know,
Speaker 3: what do you.
Speaker 2: Think was the key to your survival during that time?
Speaker 2: Because you were so lacking and like being educated on,
Speaker 2: like you said, the world, what was it in your
Speaker 2: inner personality? If there's one quality or one thing that
Speaker 2: made you push through all that, what was it?
Speaker 3: Governess? Governess can be.
Speaker 2: But you know, I think what you're hitting on is
Speaker 2: actually something Chris and I've been talking about so much lately,
Speaker 2: Becau because I just feel like, right now there's a
Speaker 2: lot of research and discussion about how, interestingly, despite all
Speaker 2: of the education and mental health help that we have
Speaker 2: for people, like more than ever before, people are like
Speaker 2: more depressed than ever before, and the suicide rates are up,
Speaker 2: and and it's just interesting to hear because you persevered
Speaker 2: through so much, and I'm like you in your answer,
Speaker 2: interesting me because you're like stubbornness.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: It wasn't like like, oh, had I had, you know,
Speaker 2: a good therapist. It's like, now, I was just stubborn,
Speaker 2: And sometimes I wonder if you know, I'm like, man,
Speaker 2: we need some of that resilience.
Speaker 3: That's the thing. Like, you know, I think, I think
Speaker 3: my biggest strengths were I'm an internal student. I don't
Speaker 3: assume I know anything. So I go and I deep
Speaker 3: dive and I study and I learn. I'm a voracious reader,
Speaker 3: and I have a pretty decent memory, so I tend to,
Speaker 3: you know, retain when I read. But I think, you know,
Speaker 3: my success has all been around the unknown, right every
Speaker 3: industry I've gone to, I've invented something. With the shoes,
Speaker 3: it was an organomically designed shoe with Laperla and the lingerie.
Speaker 3: It was the first ever stretch lace, the first clothing
Speaker 3: that had cup sizes put inside, so you could buy
Speaker 3: things not just by your dress size, but by your
Speaker 3: cup size. I come to WG. It's a modeling agency
Speaker 3: valued at seventy million dollars in two years through COVID,
Speaker 3: I built it into a billion dollar business by transforming
Speaker 3: it into a media conglomerate, using my talent as brands
Speaker 3: and networks and building them up so that they can
Speaker 3: shift the power dynamic there in control now and they
Speaker 3: can elongate their career because to me, I didn't care
Speaker 3: if you walked, you know, a runway, or it was
Speaker 3: a tennis court or a football stadium. I didn't care
Speaker 3: what your area of expertise was. I just understood that
Speaker 3: social media is the new television, it's the new magazine,
Speaker 3: and so if we can put the power in the
Speaker 3: hands of our talent, the power dynamic, and now it's
Speaker 3: the magazines and the editors and the creative director's chasing
Speaker 3: after them because they have the audience. They're the media.
Speaker 3: So everything I've done has always been to disrupt whatever
Speaker 3: industry I've gone into, turn things upside down, and do
Speaker 3: things the way that I think they should be done
Speaker 3: instead of the way they're currently being done. And I
Speaker 3: think that my not being educated in a certain way
Speaker 3: where I was, you know, like this is fashion, this
Speaker 3: is this. So it's always been going into industry turning
Speaker 3: it upside down, finding the spaces and the holes in between,
Speaker 3: which is again what I did with my plus body
Speaker 3: shapewear brand. Right, Why did I start a shapewear brand
Speaker 3: for the same reason. It's the same idea, always innovation,
Speaker 3: always helping women. Because I saw Bridget Jones's diary much
Speaker 3: later than most people. Okay, but I watched that scene
Speaker 3: where she's sitting on the on her bed and she
Speaker 3: has to decide does she wear the shapewear. She'll look
Speaker 3: better in her dress, she'll get grant, but then she
Speaker 3: can't bring him home because no woman wants to get
Speaker 3: caught dead in shapewear beije white and black. It's super ugly.
Speaker 3: So I started thinking, I say, okay, I don't want
Speaker 3: women to ever feel ashamed or humiliated. How can I
Speaker 3: make shapewear sexy so that if you take it off,
Speaker 3: nobody's going to realize that it's shape or to begin with.
Speaker 3: And that's how Plus Body started. So everything I've done,
Speaker 3: it's always about going into an industry, figuring out what
Speaker 3: women need and giving it to them.
Speaker 1: To think about where you came from. So you're forty
Speaker 1: two years old, and first of all that starting life
Speaker 1: and starting business and starting an entrepreneurship at forty two
Speaker 1: crazy like you kind of took everything and turned it
Speaker 1: upside down right. The modern I guess diagram of this
Speaker 1: is I get my undergraduate degree at an institution of
Speaker 1: higher learning, I go to a business school, I network,
Speaker 1: and in my twenties and in my thirties, I get
Speaker 1: here and then maybe by the time you're in your
Speaker 1: forties you start making these moves. You basically were birthed
Speaker 1: at forty two without all the other stuff. How do
Speaker 1: you figure that you were able to accomplish what it
Speaker 1: took others decades of schooling and grinding and networking to do.
Speaker 3: Two answers. The first one's kind of embarrassing, but it's true.
Speaker 3: And I started my shoe brand. I had no idea
Speaker 3: how hard like. If I had actually known what is
Speaker 3: entailed in starting a brand, I never would have tried it.
Speaker 3: But I was so incredibly ignorant that my basic philosophy
Speaker 3: was I've time traveled from the eighteen hundreds and survived
Speaker 3: shoe brand. That's going to be easy. That was literally
Speaker 3: my thinking. I just had no clue how difficult it
Speaker 3: would be. And then again, part two, I would say,
Speaker 3: is the fact that I had time traveled, I had
Speaker 3: done the unthinkable. And most women who leave my community,
Speaker 3: they end up committing suicide or going to drugs because
Speaker 3: you aren't equipped to handle the outside world. You're really
Speaker 3: not equipped to handle the twenty first century. I know
Speaker 3: over twelve people who have committed suicide. Leaving right it's
Speaker 3: an almost impossible thing to do, it really is. So
Speaker 3: when I survived that, and I was still smiling and standing,
Speaker 3: and my children were with me, which never happens. Basically,
Speaker 3: you leave, you leave without your kids. So the fact
Speaker 3: that I had managed to bring my children along and
Speaker 3: I was still standing, I was like, Julie, you're just
Speaker 3: time traveled. You can do anything. And so I went
Speaker 3: and did it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it's beyond culture shock. You time traveled,
Speaker 2: it's world shock. You stepped away from something like you said,
Speaker 2: you'd been indoctrinated into. So, I mean, Julia, you've reinvented
Speaker 2: yourself on a level that people would aspire to. I think,
Speaker 2: not just once, but multiple times. Because then not only
Speaker 2: did you leave that world, but and you succeeded in
Speaker 2: so many businesses. And then you got a Netflix show,
Speaker 2: My Unorthodox Life, and you wrote a book. So and
Speaker 2: now I mean, I know you've even got a new
Speaker 2: show you're working on with Jill Zarin, former Real Housewife
Speaker 2: of New York and I think you're single and you're
Speaker 2: dating again.
Speaker 3: Now, yes, I am no any does.
Speaker 2: What if you learned in this kind of second round
Speaker 2: of reinvention of like becoming getting divorced, becoming single and
Speaker 2: now doing reality TV?
Speaker 3: What a great question. Thank you. I think you're the
Speaker 3: first person to ask me that I love this question.
Speaker 3: I have learned a lot because I think, oh gosh, again,
Speaker 3: I don't have a filter. One of these days I'm
Speaker 3: going to learn how to not tell everything out. But
Speaker 3: you know, look, if the purpose of what I'd done,
Speaker 3: of telling my story is to help other people, I
Speaker 3: gotta tell it I like it is, with all the
Speaker 3: bumps and words and bruises. Otherwise it doesn't help anybody.
Speaker 3: As fierce and independent and confident as I was in business,
Speaker 3: until I went through the monstrously horrible divorce that I've
Speaker 3: had to go through, I did not knowledge and recognize
Speaker 3: that I was still that woman in my personal life.
Speaker 3: I was still trying to please the man, make the
Speaker 3: man happy. It was so indoctrinated into me that the
Speaker 3: man is always right, and that it's my job to
Speaker 3: be pleasing that as much as I had eviscerbated that
Speaker 3: from my brain when it came to business, and I
Speaker 3: was fierce and fearless. When it came to my personal life,
Speaker 3: I was still little miss homemaker. And I didn't recognize
Speaker 3: that until the blank hit the fan, right, and then
Speaker 3: I realized, Okay, here's my theory. I'm curious to hear
Speaker 3: what you think about it. Okay, people can to be
Speaker 3: divided into two categories. Okay, here's my dating philosophy. Gardeners
Speaker 3: and flowers. Gardeners are people like me. We nurture, we grow,
Speaker 3: we build, we water, we feed, people who take care
Speaker 3: of others. Right, I've been mommy my entire life. I
Speaker 3: have seven siblings and I was ten years older than
Speaker 3: the first one after me, so my youngest brother is
Speaker 3: younger than my eldest daughter. I literally raised them. They
Speaker 3: called me mommy. I'm not kidding. And then I had
Speaker 3: my own four So I've raised like eleven humans in
Speaker 3: my life. And you know, I'm a garden I'm always
Speaker 3: going to be a gardener. However, I dated married flowers men,
Speaker 3: and it can be a man or a woman. A
Speaker 3: flower can be each give me, give me, give me,
Speaker 3: water me give me some light. I'm just going to
Speaker 3: sit here and look beautiful, and I want everything given
Speaker 3: to flowers, right, And so I realized that if I'm
Speaker 3: going to be a gardener, I have to be very
Speaker 3: careful who I allow into my garden because I'm tired
Speaker 3: of flowers. I want someone who guardens back of freaking on.
Speaker 2: You need a succulent, for lack of a better word, suculent.
Speaker 1: She needs a hoe, a garden hoe. Everybody, come on,
Speaker 1: that's good.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 1: So this is interesting then because Lauren kind of sets
Speaker 1: me up for a question I was going to ask anyway,
Speaker 1: which is you never had chosen a partner before, you've
Speaker 1: never chosen a date. So you're in New York City
Speaker 1: newly kind of rebirthed. What was that like? Because it
Speaker 1: sounds like you've kind of found yourself now and you've
Speaker 1: had to do a lot of learning and self teaching,
Speaker 1: which means you probably tripped on some hurdles along the way.
Speaker 3: Well, honey, I had a big hurdle two years ago.
Speaker 3: You heard all about it. That was my biggest mistake
Speaker 3: I've ever made in my life.
Speaker 1: Not a lot of discretion on the Yeah, I know,
Speaker 1: the divorce and it's very public.
Speaker 2: And I was.
Speaker 3: Literally three years old when I met him, three years old.
Speaker 3: I was so clueless and he he was like this genius,
Speaker 3: world traveled and elegant. Like there's so many like warning
Speaker 3: signs like looking back now sells a big company buys
Speaker 3: a lingerie brand, and a model eng agency like that
Speaker 3: should have told me everything I need to know. You know,
Speaker 3: so many warning signs, but of course I was literally
Speaker 3: three years old. I didn't know anything. I was such
Speaker 3: a freaking trial. And to your point, you know, I
Speaker 3: actually first started dating dating dating, because when I first
Speaker 3: left the community, I'm gonna be honest, it wasn't dating.
Speaker 3: It was I want to have sex with people. So
Speaker 3: it was like experimentation. And then I met my boyfriend
Speaker 3: and I broke up with him, and then I met Solia,
Speaker 3: So I never actually dated, and so when the divorce happened,
Speaker 3: it was the first time in my life I was like,
Speaker 3: I don't know how to date, Like what do you do?
Speaker 3: And so I started, you know, all the apps, and
Speaker 3: it's been the most extraordinary experience for me. Like I
Speaker 3: know that people's think are going to think I'm crazy,
Speaker 3: but for me, here's the thing that really it shook me.
Speaker 3: So I was on Riya. You know, it's a dating
Speaker 3: app like for people like me, and there's this feature
Speaker 3: there that if you're on Riah Premium or whatever it is,
Speaker 3: you can see who likes you first right, and then
Speaker 3: you can decide as a woman. So I bought that
Speaker 3: feature and I'm scrolling through and I'm going no, no,
Speaker 3: and then I'm about to hit the X button and
Speaker 3: then I look up on top of the screen and
Speaker 3: it says that he had liked me, and I was like, oh,
Speaker 3: do I need to hit the Y button? And then
Speaker 3: I saw myself. I'm like, a second ago, I was
Speaker 3: going to say no to him. The minute I saw
Speaker 3: that he had said yes to me, my monthly brain said, oh,
Speaker 3: the man wants something, you give it to him. And
Speaker 3: I was about to switch to a yes, just because
Speaker 3: that's what he wanted. And I stopped myself and I said,
Speaker 3: Julia Hart, three seconds ago, before you saw what he wanted,
Speaker 3: you were going to say no. And you can stick
Speaker 3: to that note. And it was the most one of
Speaker 3: the most empowering moments of my Again, next iteration of
Speaker 3: I guess Julia Hart three point zero was this realization
Speaker 3: that in my personal life, I have a long way
Speaker 3: to go before I become a truly independent woman who
Speaker 3: doesn't feel like an inferior being to men. And I'm
Speaker 3: always going to garden, so now I just have to
Speaker 3: be much more careful who I allow into the garden,
Speaker 3: and not just flowers. No more flowers, if you know
Speaker 3: any gardeners.
Speaker 2: I think that you're saying something that actually very few
Speaker 2: single people say, which is that you're liking being single,
Speaker 2: Like you're liking the journey you're on right now.
Speaker 3: I am. I'm loving it. This has been so that's
Speaker 3: an adventure. I've learned so much about myself and it's
Speaker 3: really nice to say. No, it's freaking empowering. I love it.
Speaker 2: And I actually think like from what you're saying, your
Speaker 2: story does sound familiar to me in that I think
Speaker 2: when you first got to New York and tell me
Speaker 2: if you agree, but you were almost in that like
Speaker 2: college dating phase. If you'd grown up normally in America,
Speaker 2: high school, college experimenting, losing your virginity, experimenting literally, then
Speaker 2: it was almost like you were kind of the late college,
Speaker 2: fresh out of college, young twenty something, even though you
Speaker 2: were in your forties. Who thinks I found the one
Speaker 2: and I'm getting married and then you kind of are
Speaker 2: married to that person for a while, and then you're like, wait,
Speaker 2: did I ever realize?
Speaker 3: Who?
Speaker 2: Did I ever find myself? And now you're in that
Speaker 2: finding yourself phase?
Speaker 3: I love it and yes to all the above.
Speaker 2: But what's great is you've wound up actually like your
Speaker 2: age is now the same as a lot of people
Speaker 2: who are in this space. I know a lot of
Speaker 2: people do this. I got married at twenty two, divorced
Speaker 2: twenty years later.
Speaker 3: Thing. Yeah, but I think the difference with me is, like,
Speaker 3: you know, I'm eleven years old, right, I'm fifty three
Speaker 3: on one hand, but I'm also eleven. Meaning I'm just
Speaker 3: getting started the Plus Body that we launched it this season.
Speaker 3: It's going to be in thirty stores. We just launched
Speaker 3: it last year. I've got another two brands coming this
Speaker 3: year and another television show.
Speaker 2: Are we going to get more of my unorthodox life?
Speaker 3: Legally not allowed to.
Speaker 1: Say, Well, what it's going to include is allegedly her dating.
Speaker 3: So I'm just getting started, and I found that dating
Speaker 3: guys my age generally obviously there's exceptions. Happy to meet
Speaker 3: the exception, happy to date the exception, but they want
Speaker 3: to play golf and they want to retire, and I'm like,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna help the world. I'm going to make the
Speaker 3: world a better place. I'm gonna change this, I'm gonna
Speaker 3: change that. I'm going to invent this, and like I'm
Speaker 3: just getting started and I need that energy. So you know,
Speaker 3: I got made you people made it so much fun
Speaker 3: of me because I keep dating guides in their late
Speaker 3: twenties and early thirties. But in a way, to your point,
Speaker 3: we're kind of in the same place. I'm eleven years
Speaker 3: in the workforce. If you're in your mid thirties, that's
Speaker 3: where you are. You're eleven years and to your workforce.
Speaker 3: So you know, I need that energy, that excitement. Like
Speaker 3: I have so many plans and I really do want
Speaker 3: to change the world as goofy as that sounds. So yeah,
Speaker 3: I need someone with that of energy to hang out
Speaker 3: with me.
Speaker 2: Anybody special in your life right now?
Speaker 3: No? No, not, you know, I apparently I'm a serial monogamoust.
Speaker 3: I get like very intense and I'm like, okay.
Speaker 2: Goodbye, welcome into my garden. It's not the guard Instead
Speaker 2: and Julia I mean, you know, we talked about it
Speaker 2: a little bit, but you have since the last time
Speaker 2: I've seen you. You are now in the middle of
Speaker 2: this high profile what sounds like a very tough divorce.
Speaker 2: And look, Chris and I are both divorced. We are
Speaker 2: sending you our love. I can't imagine what you're going through.
Speaker 2: But what have you learned in this divorce process? What
Speaker 2: would you potentially advise other women, considering you've spent so
Speaker 2: much of your life kind of standing up. Don't get married.
Speaker 3: Don't put a legal god drag out of love. That's
Speaker 3: my absolute advice. Really do not. I am never getting
Speaker 3: married again. I believe in love. I want to live
Speaker 3: with someone for the rest of my life. I'm a nurturer.
Speaker 3: I need someone to love like that. It's what I do.
Speaker 3: I want someone to choose every single day of their
Speaker 3: life when they wake up next to me, that they
Speaker 3: want to be with me, not because they don't want
Speaker 3: to go through a divorce, and not for any financial reason,
Speaker 3: but because they choose me every day. That's what I want.
Speaker 3: And I think you know, when you're young, I get
Speaker 3: I understand marriage because I think children with children, I
Speaker 3: think there's a lot of benefits in marriage. Your kids
Speaker 3: need to know that you're legally required to show up
Speaker 3: every day, you know, and when you're pregnant and you're
Speaker 3: nauseous and you're cranky, it's nice to know you're married
Speaker 3: to someone, right. I get that. However, I think the
Speaker 3: next stage of your life, once you've had your kids,
Speaker 3: if you're divorced, don't get me married, don't do it.
Speaker 2: Interesting, Julia, this is the first time anyone's ever said
Speaker 2: that on this podcast, so you have this is the
Speaker 2: first time, and I am in awe.
Speaker 3: I think you know, I had this crazy idea, although honestly,
Speaker 3: I think it would solve so many problems and fix
Speaker 3: so much in the court cases and the court system,
Speaker 3: which is not ideal. To put it mildly, imagine if
Speaker 3: a marriage license was like a driver's license and you
Speaker 3: could renew it every seven year.
Speaker 2: Chris and I have said this, Actually we've said it's
Speaker 2: why is marriage the one contract you never renew and renegotiated?
Speaker 3: That's right, exactly, like the marriage contract is the only
Speaker 3: contract that's like forever, you know, we change, we grow,
Speaker 3: and especially think about it, go back a couple hundred years,
Speaker 3: people died the average age of death was thirty six.
Speaker 3: You were married. Even if they you know, they got
Speaker 3: married much younger thirteen, fourteen, fifty. Still you're married twenty years.
Speaker 3: Nowadays we get we're still getting married in our late twenties,
Speaker 3: early thirties, and then we're living into our one hundred twenties.
Speaker 2: I'm with you. I said this, ninety.
Speaker 3: Years with the same person, long time, long, long time.
Speaker 3: And think about how many times we change. Like you said,
Speaker 3: I you know, the phoenix rising from the ads just metamorphouses.
Speaker 3: I'm on Julia three point zero. Who knows what Julia
Speaker 3: four point oh.
Speaker 1: I can't wait to see what that is.
Speaker 2: We are in complete all of your story, so excited
Speaker 2: for your new shapewere line for your new show. And
Speaker 2: it's so good to see you again and thank you
Speaker 2: for sharing all of the ups and downs and triumphs.
Speaker 3: Well, if you guys are ever in New York, you
Speaker 3: let me know, and you know, well, come hang out
Speaker 3: with me. Heck yeah, and I got to get try
Speaker 3: that shape Austin barbecue with you.
Speaker 1: Exactly, yeah, exactly. Julia, thank you so much for the time.
Speaker 1: I really appreciate its pleasure to meet you.
Speaker 3: By guys, take care, great and great to see you.
Speaker 3: Bye bye.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening. Follow us on Instagram at the most
Speaker 1: dramatic pod ever, and make sure to write us a
Speaker 1: review and leave us five stars. I'll talk to you
Speaker 1: next time.