Julia Roberts Knits Personalized Blankets for Emmy Rossum’s Kids & Calls Herself Auntie Juju

Oct 26, 2026 by apost team

Julia Roberts sits on the floor and does Legos with her friends’ children. She knits them blankets by hand. And when she finishes one, she sews in a label that reads: “From the Knitting Needles of Auntie Juju.”

Emmy Rossum shared this on “The Jennifer Hudson Show” on October 22, 2026 — and added one more detail that completed the picture. “She is so down to earth,” Rossum said of Roberts. “Doesn’t have an assistant.”

Roberts, 58, has been a close friend of Rossum’s husband, filmmaker Sam Esmail, for years. Their professional relationship — he directed Roberts in his 2026 thriller “Panic Carefully” among other projects — has evolved into something that extends well past the set. “He is very close with her, and she is such a kind person,” Rossum, 40, said.

Roberts has visited their home to spend time with Rossum’s two young children — a daughter born in May 2021 and a son born in April 2023. “She has come to my house before and sat on the floor with my kids and done Legos,” Rossum said. “She has knitted them blankets, and she’s very crafty. And she has a little thing that she knits onto the blanket that says ‘From the Knitting Needles of Auntie Juju.’”

Auntie Juju. No assistant. Legos on the floor.

Roberts has spoken across multiple interviews about how deliberately she has constructed a life that does not look like what people imagine a movie star’s life looks like. Rossum’s account suggested the approach extends to how she shows up in other people’s families too.

The friendship between Roberts and Esmail began through work. Esmail is the writer and director best known for creating “Mr. Robot,” the critically acclaimed USA Network thriller that ran from 2015 to 2019 and won the Golden Globe for Best Drama Series in its first season. He has since directed several projects with Roberts, including the psychological thriller “Homecoming” and their most recent collaboration, “Panic Carefully,” which opened to strong reviews earlier this year. “It’s hard to see Julia anything other than just this giving and generous mom and friend,” he told PEOPLE.

What Rossum described is consistent with everything Roberts has said publicly about the life she has built away from the screen. She has spoken at length about organizing her days around her three children — twins Hazel and Phinnaeus, and son Henry — and about how deliberately unglamorous her domestic existence is. She has said she cooks, she drives, she is present. She married cinematographer Daniel Moder in 2002 and has been with him ever since.

Roberts has been one of the biggest movie stars in the world for more than three decades — “Pretty Woman,” “Erin Brockovich,” “Ocean’s Eleven,” “August: Osage County,” the Oscar, the five times PEOPLE named her the most beautiful woman in the world. None of that, by Rossum’s account, arrives with her when she comes over.

She brings knitting needles. She sits on the floor. She signs her work Auntie Juju. That, apparently, is the version of Julia Roberts that Sam Esmail’s children know — and by every account, it is the real one.

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