Julie has participated in red-carpet interviews with Jay-Z, had in-depth conversations with Leigh-Anne Pinnock and Erykah Badu, and spoke to Megan Thee Stallion for an Evening Standard cover story. She is the founder of a creative media house Don’t Trust The Internet, where she produces episodes of Julie’s Top 5. Some may also know her for previously co-hosting MTV’s hit show Catfish UK: The TV Show alongside Oobah Butler.

Hard work and passion for the job are what can be credited for Julie’s consistent victories. She has a CV that many work a lifetime to achieve, and that’s no exaggeration. That considered, Julie is definitely far from done. Every time her name’s mentioned, it’s as if she’s always embarking on an exciting new venture, and this occasion is no different. I meet up with the 35-year-old at a photo studio in North Greenwich on a surprisingly sunny Friday at the end of October. When I greet her, she’s sitting in the hair and makeup chair getting ready for her cover shoot, and naturally, I immediately want her to be my friend. We bond over the music we’ve been listening to recently. 

“Victoria Monet, she’s one of the best artists of this generation,” she states. How could anyone disagree? Julie alarms me of Doja Cat’s latest album, Scarlet, which, at the time, I had yet to listen to. “You need to stop everything you’re doing and listen to Doja Cat,” she demands, insisting she is “one of the most talented artists we will ever know, ever.” Julie also praises Jorja Smith’s new album, Falling or Flying, specifically the track “Feelings” with J Hus. 

Work In Progress

On the day of our interview, Julie was weeks away from announcing her latest project, Work In Progress, her own show that will showcase Julie’s guests through two perspectives. Firstly, through Julie’s research, we follow her as she prepares for the interview where she learns more about the talent. Shortly after that, viewers will watch the interview with the special guest and find out more about them through their in-depth conversation. 

Work In Progress has been three years in the making. The initial idea to form a show with this concept first stemmed when Julie waved goodbye to her career on the radio. “When I left Apple, I was getting mad nervous about the fact that I wasn’t going to be able to interview anymore,” she admits. Julie knew she wanted to do something in the form of a TV show but soon realised there was a lot of work to be done for her vision to be executed how she hoped, especially on the production side of things. After going back to the drawing board several times and balancing her career around the planning process, she finally got to a place where she was able to film the first episode which she is really proud of. However, the concept we see today wasn’t quite how things started out.

“Originally, I was working with Reggie Yates on it,” she reveals. “We had an idea of gamifying it a bit. So it had this element of me not knowing who I was going to interview. I was going to wake up, get an envelope that was going to tell me who I was interviewing that day and the camera was gonna follow me around. I liked that, it was cool, but I didn’t like the idea of it being gamified. I wanted it to be a bit more intentional. I wanted to pick the guests and really want to speak to them. Let’s be honest, some people don’t have anything to say. They give you nothing.”

The unique concept that cannot be compared to any competition is something Julie takes huge pride in. “I was searching earlier and I was saying, ‘Someone must have done this. Someone must have done something like this.’ I couldn’t find anything. So to this day, I haven’t seen anything like it,” she says. Julie credits YouTube stars David Dobrik and Casey Neistat – “I watched them nonstop back to back, just moving through life” – and television host David Letterman for helping her discover a love for vlogging and interviewing. With the aim of finding a middle ground of their qualities, Work In Progress became the minivan of those two things.

At the time of our chat, Julie had only filmed one episode with actor and comedian Munya Chawawa, which dropped on November 19. But, of course, there are interviews she is manifesting for the future. “I’ve always said T-Pain,” Julie says. “Well, I want him to take me to a strip club. I wanna do the interview at a strip club because I’ve never been to one before. I just imagine me and T-Pain talking to each other and some girl is just throwing her ass in my face. It’d be quite funny.” I let her know that I was aware of her admiration for Eminem. “I am a huge Eminem fan,” she declares. “I think if I interviewed Eminem, I’d quit the day after. I’d say I’m done. I think Eminem would probably be at the top of the list. It would be the interview of my life and I think it also be the interview of my career.”

Julie’s Top 5

My love for Julie first occurred when I discovered her show Julie’s Top 5. Shared via her media house’s YouTube channel, “Don’t Trust The Internet,” the premise of the show is quite simple, and pretty genius. Julie and her guests have to debate, discuss, and decide what the top 5 songs are from an artist or particular album. Each person brings their own personal list and by the end of the episode, they have to come to some sort of agreement for what songs will make the final 5. So far, there have been six seasons and they’ve had heated debates on many acts from J Hus, Dave, Lily Allen, Spice Girls, Destiny’s Child, Amy Winehouse, and Skepta to Mariah Carey, Burna Boy, The Streets, Craig David, and Ed Sheeran. As each season has progressed, the show has gotten bigger and better. Starting out as pre-recorded episodes where viewers gave their thoughts in the comments section, Julie’s Top 5 has since become interactive by putting on live events for audience members to watch and react to in real time. 

Sadly for fans who are as obsessed as me, 2023 has been a very quiet year for Julie’s Top 5 as she has been busy preparing for Work In Progress and juggling everything else in between. Julie previously told me in the summer that she hoped to record a special episode in the United States to honour the 50th anniversary of Hip Hop, but wasn’t able to do so. On December 3, however, she is hosting a special Julie’s Top 5 episode for Beyonce’s most recent album, Renaissance, at London’s Islington Assembly Hall. 

As a result of making up for the lack of content this year, Julie has big plans concerning the show in 2024. First up, she’s taking the show on tour. “I knew that by the end of the year, we weren’t gonna have many ‘Top 5’ episodes. That’s mad. I’ve been doing the show since 2018 and a whole year’s gonna go by and I’m not gonna have only done one episode. So now I’m working with my agents and we’re gonna tour ‘Top 5’ next year,” Julie announces. 

The aim to film episodes internationally still stands as she says the goal is to do shows in the US and Africa. Open to recommendations, I offer some suggestions for future episodes – Janet Jackson, Brandy, Prince, Sade, and Whitney Houston. Julie seems to be into all of them, minus one.

“I don’t know if I’d ever do a Prince one. I think to rank Prince is disrespectful to Prince,” she says. “There’s some people that I think are off the list. Prince and Michael Jackson are two. I don’t know if I could do that.” We go over the names again, and Julie is sold on a Brandy episode. She starts to sing “A Capella (Something’s Missing)” from her 2008 Human album, declaring that would definitely make her top 5. The other songs she mentioned? I guess you’ll have to wait to find out!

Humble beginnings

Before entering the industry as a presenter, Julie worked her first job at an IKEA store that used to be open in Tottenham. She looks back on that period with nothing but fond memories.

“Working in IKEA is great because you get the meatballs and chips for 20p and Lingonberry on tap, which was one of my favorite drinks to drink,” she says. “I started out on checkouts but then I ended up in the cash office. I would count up the money at the end of the day and have the radio on and play music. It was just the most peaceful, joyous place. I actually loved that job so much and I’d work there again.”

Even then as a fresh-faced teenager earning her first pay cheque in a furniture retailer, Julie was ambitious and hustling for her dreams on the side.

“If I go back to that time, I was trying to get my chart show to take off, I was a books editor, I was working a dance class thing that I wanted to do. I was always making something. I taught myself how to use Photoshop. I taught myself how to use Logic Pro. I was either recording something or singing, I was doing something creative. I was running my brother’s street team and things like that,” she recalls.

Julie has remained humble along the way and recognises the impact her job can have on others. On a personal level, being able to be present in people’s joyous times is what she finds most rewarding. “I like that I’m given the opportunity to remind people of their happy moments. I think interviews these days can feel very antagonistic, a bit snide. I think you can sometimes sit down with people and think, ‘Oh my gosh, let me just sit there and wait for this person to make me say something’ or try and make me say something revealing or that’s gonna get happening on the internet looking a bit mad or whatever. I like that people don’t associate me with that feeling,” she explains.

“I like that when I see people again after years, I was a person that maybe made them feel good about where they were at in their career because I think being famous isn’t really fun,” Julie continues.

The secret recipe to Julie’s constant rise is that her admiration and appreciation for what she does is transparent in everything she does. If Julie’s involved, you know that she’s going to give it her all. She’s got a magic power. A magic power that exudes positive vibrations and contagious energy. It’s quite hard not wanting to cheer for her all the way.

Despite excelling in her profession, she says building the Julie Adenuga brand as we know it hasn’t been easy. Even now. “Every day’s a struggle at the moment. Every single day because I dunno what I’m doing,” she insists. “I dunno what or how I’m supposed to do it. Every day is a learning experience. Every single day.”

“When you’re building a brand, you think, ‘Bro, there are so many people out there who say that they rate you and they say they like what you do and they’ll be quick to post when something happens and celebrate you.’ But you still feel very alone. You still feel like, ‘Oh, why does no one wanna help me?’ You know what I mean? Or ‘How come no one wants to help me out or give me advice?’ And sometimes I feel like that because I think I’m literally doing everything by myself. But then I have to remember, I think the energy that I give out to people is that I know what I’m doing and that I have my own way of doing it. So when the days are good or bad, you still have to stick with that same energy. You can’t be super independent and give off the energy that you’re confident and you know what you’re doing, and then expect people to say, ‘Oh, do you want some help?’”

“Do you ask for help a lot?” I ask.

“My immediate support is never to ask for help,” she replies. “I try to do everything by myself first. And then if I really can’t do it, I’ll then ask for it.”

Like all of us, Julie is a work in progress. And sometimes her worst critic. She chooses not to measure her success and admits she’s unsure whether it’s a good thing to do so. “I get really upset about all the things I haven’t done. I’ll sometimes be looking for my emails and I’ll see things that never happened and I’ll think, ‘Oh, I didn’t do any of that,’” Julie says.

“It depends how you measure it,” she quips. 

“Work In Progress is coming out and I made it. It’s my idea and I put all the people together that did it, and I executively produced it and I did the interview. When the episodes are out, I’ll think that’s the job complete. And I think that is a form of measurement. That is me measuring my success because the task is complete,” Julie adds. 

“I always have a bit of a reflection on my birthday, even if it’s like 10 minutes in the morning. Or I’ll just sit and think about what happened in the last year, what I’m happy about, what I’m gonna change, what I want to do new in the next year of my life.”

Legacy

If she were able to decide, Julie would like her legacy in 15 years to be someone who set a new standard. Or proved that anything is possible. “I think there’s a big massive gap to what a successful career can look like if you work in entertainment,” she says. “Whether you are anything from an influencer to an actor, to an artist, whatever it is, I’d like to set a bar for what that looks like. Especially for British people.” 

Julie also hopes her privacy will continue to be valued. “The goal for that is to have a really, really flourishing, happy, joyful, personal life that people are not a part of. And it’s not that you keep it a secret, but it’s also you don’t flaunt it but you have a personality, and you’re not boring, but you’re not overexposing yourself to the point that you are your product. It’s kind of like how Beyonce lives, but not as closed off. You don’t need to give everybody everything to make it. It’s okay,” she says. 

Until then, let’s keep rooting for Julie.

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