General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Julie's Greenroom

Julie's Greenroom is an American preschool television series about the performing arts, starring Julie Andrews and produced by The Jim Henson Company for Netflix. Andrews co-created the show with her daughter, the writer and educator Emma Walton Hamilton, and the children's television veteran Judy Rothman-Rofé, and it premiered on Netflix on March 17, 2017 with 13 episodes.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Format	Preschool arts-education series, 13 episodes of roughly 26 to 30 minutes, TV-Y rating³^•⁴
Premiere	March 17, 2017, worldwide on Netflix²
Creators	Julie Andrews, Emma Walton Hamilton, and Judy Rothman-Rofé³
Setting	The Wellspring Center for the Performing Arts, where Ms. Julie teaches workshops with her assistant Gus¹
Puppet cast	The "Greenies," original characters built by Jim Henson's Creature Shop, plus a duck named Hugo¹^•²
Season arc	The Greenies create an original mashup musical drawing on mime, music, dance, improv, circus arts, and voice¹
Later status	One season only; the show was canceled after its first season⁵

Spoilers

Premise and characters

Andrews plays Ms. Julie, sometimes called Miss Julie, the director of the Wellspring Center for the Performing Arts, a theater built by her father, who ran performing arts workshops for children before her. Her assistant Gus, played by Giullian Yao Gioiello, is a former pupil who helps her run the theater.¹^•⁶

The students, nicknamed the "Greenies," are original puppet characters built by Jim Henson's Creature Shop. Stony Brook University's account of the show describes the class as five puppet children, a dog, and a duck named Hugo.¹^•² Every Greenie pursues a different passion: Peri (Stephanie D'Abruzzo provides her voice) dreams of stardom, Spike (Frankie Cordero) has a talent for writing rhymes and lines, Hank (John Tartaglia) is a master of the piano, Fizz (Dorien Davies) loves costumes and make-up, and Riley (Jennifer Barnhart) prefers the technical workings of a show.⁷

Riley's gender. One of the puppets, Riley, was described by the show's creator as gender neutral, and coverage at the time identified the character as non-binary. A writer on the show told The New York Times, "If pressed, we'd say that she's a girl, but maybe not forever. We wanted to be as diverse as possible." Andrews said Riley "loves all the technical backstage stuff."⁸

Structure of an episode

Every episode features a guest star who engages the children in a specific area of the performing arts, and most episodes include an original song. Confirmed guest artists announced before the premiere included Alec Baldwin, Sara Bareilles, Joshua Bell, Tituss Burgess, Carol Burnett, Chris Colfer, Robert Fairchild, Josh Groban, David Hyde Pierce, Ellie Kemper, Idina Menzel, Tiler Peck, and the percussion group Stomp.¹ The Los Angeles Times review describes the guests leading "master classes" while eating mini-scones and drinking white grape juice, which does not stain.⁹

The season builds toward a single goal: with Ms. Julie's guidance and inspiration from the visiting artists, the Greenies create an entirely original show that mashes up the performing arts. The first episode establishes the premise when a burst pipe ruins Julie's plans to stage "The Wizard of Oz," and Idina Menzel gives the Greenies a pep talk that inspires an alternative; later episodes cover script writing with Chris Colfer and singing with Josh Groban.¹^•³

Production

Netflix announced the series on June 2, 2016, and shooting began that May in Long Island, New York. The Jim Henson Company proposed the show to Andrews and Hamilton; as Andrews recounted, Lisa Henson asked at a get-together whether she had ever been interested in doing something about the arts, and she said yes.¹^•¹⁰

The executive producers are Julie Andrews, Emma Walton Hamilton, and Steve Sauer, along with Lisa Henson and Halle Stanford for The Jim Henson Company. Joey Mazzarino, an Emmy Award-winning actor and writer, served as co-producer and director, Tom Keniston was producer, and Emmy winner Bill Sherman composed the music.¹ Hamilton, who directs Stony Brook Southampton's Children's Lit Fellows and the Young Artists and Writers Project, had previously co-written more than 30 children's books with her mother.²

Reception and purpose

Andrews framed the series as the fulfillment of a long-held wish to educate children about the arts, and in a 2017 interview she connected it to the precarious state of arts-education funding in the United States, saying the arts are "truly the most vital thing I can imagine to make our lives better, to make a bridge between communities and countries." She also said she hoped parents or grandparents would watch the program with their children.¹^•¹¹

Reviewers responded warmly. The Los Angeles Times praised the show for avoiding the forced giggling common to puppet children in preschool series, and The Guardian's television writer described Andrews's warmth combined with the Henson Workshop puppets as having "all the soothing qualities of a nice cup of tea," noting that the first episode opens with a cheerful song called "Anything Can Happen in the Theatre" in which Andrews sings on screen for the first time in years.⁹^•⁶ Common Sense Media, which rated the series appropriate for ages 4 and up and named it a Common Sense Selection, highlighted its educational value in introducing stage terminology such as "ghost light," "the flies," "the house," and "the wings," and its message that performance art depends on acceptance and inclusivity.⁷ The show later received Daytime Emmy nominations for its creative work.¹²

Only one season was produced.⁵

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Series and fictional screen worlds › Scripted television and comedy series › Miniseries and anthology series

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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