About

Julie Taylor Test is a method used to gauge the quality of a television actor's performance by imagining the character's inner life compared to the rest of the cast. The test was inspired by the perceived bland portrayal of the character Julie Taylor from the television drama series Friday Night Lights.

Origin

On February 3rd, 2013, the news site Salon^[1] published a recap of the British period drama Downton Abbey by staff writer Willa Paskin, which criticized actress Elizabeth McGovern's portrayal of the character Cora Crawley in the series. The author claimed McGovern failed what they referred to as the "Julie Taylor test":

"The test is as follows: Is it possible to imagine the inner life of this character? If no, is it possible to imagine the inner life of the characters surrounding him or her?"

Spread

On May 5th, 2013, Salon published an article titled "The Julie Taylor Test: How to tell if a TV actor is bad," which listed several other examples of characters who failed the author's Julie Taylor test, which included Daenerys Targaryen from Game of Thrones. In the coming days, several news site published articles about the test, including Jezebel,^[2] Refinery29^[3] and Clear Eyes Full Shelves.^[4]

Search Interest

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External References