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