Meet Anneliese Judge on Fable
Jan 24 2025
In the last few weeks of 2024, I had the amazing opportunity to interview Anneliese Judge. Not only is she the incredibly talented actress who plays the role of Annie Sullivan in “Sweet Magnolias,” but she’s also the host of the Who to Judge? book club right here on Fable. During our chat, Anneliese was kind enough to share some of her favorite book recs, how she got into reading, how she started her book club, and more. Let’s get into the interview!All readers have their origin stories. Whether you first got into reading as a child, or if you recently picked up a popular book just to give it a try, everyone has their own story. For Anneliese, it all started with family:“I've always loved to read. I grew up around readers. My mom loves to read. My dad loves to read. He's more of an audiobook guy, which is still reading. Though I've seen that debate around the internet, it's still reading. And my Grammy loved to read, so it was very natural, I think, for me to also love to read. Some of my earliest memories are with the book in my hand, or listening to a book being read to me in my elementary school library. So it came very naturally [to me].”I asked the hardest question: “what are your top 5 reads?” and Anneliese recommended the following: 1. “The Mysterious Benedict Society” by Trenton Lee Stewart. This was a childhood favorite for Anneliese: “I think I may have been in late-elementary school, like fourth or fifth grade, and it’s probably the first book I ever remember really reading, and I remember it being a very thick book, which is funny, because I reread it [as an adult], and it was just like a normal book, size book.”2. “Everything I Know About Love” by Dolly Alderton.3. “Funny Story” by Emily Henry4. “Love of my Afterlife” by Kristy Greenwood. This was a recent Who to Judge book club pick, which was a favorite amongst Anneliese and her book club members: “It was fantastic. I knew it was going to be super fun, and I anticipated that. And I went into it expecting to enjoy it, but it blew me out of the water. [...] I feel like it kind of changed the way that I look at certain aspects of my life. Like how am I subconsciously holding myself back and reinforcing things about myself that I don't need to be doing. This really gave me something to journal about.”5. “Big Magic” by Elizabeth GilbertAfter chatting a bit more about books, we got to the topic of how Anneliese started her book club:“I started Anneliese’s Book Club in December of 2022 technically, as part of my New Year's resolution. Our first book wasn't until January of 2023, though. I had realized that year that I couldn't remember the last time I read a book for fun, and it made me really, really sad. Like I mentioned, I was such a big reader growing up, and I decided that year that I was going to set a goal for myself to read one book a month, every month, for the whole year. So I created a page on Instagram and invited the Internet to join me in my read every month as a way to keep myself accountable, and it's now evolved into interviewing the author of each book pick every month and having over 4000 members on Instagram alone. It's been a really fun journey, and I'm really, really excited for the year ahead. I have a lot of fun things planned, including, you know, a little bit of a rebrand and a change in the name. So I think that I see it going in a lot of different directions, but kind of keeping at its core the idea that reading is so fun and so important. [...] It's bringing people together to enjoy the fun of reading.” And of course, I had to ask more about her role as Annie Sullivan:“It’s interesting, because our show doesn't actually follow the books, so with the complete trust and supportiveness of Woods, of course, our writers have taken the town and the characters in new directions. So if you've read the books, you'll find some things that are the same, but a lot of the characters have been created by our writers, and there's been a lot of news story elements.“I read the first book in this series ahead of season one, but I did so kind of knowing that we wouldn't be following the books very closely. So, I did really my work with Annie within the pages of our scripts and her relationships to the other characters as they were and are written by our writers. It's funny because I know that I couldn't read the books now without knowing and envisioning Annie as myself and who I know her to be, like with the memories that I've created for her that aren't in the show or the books. [...] I think it's also interesting, because the Sweet Magnolias books are also books that I would have read and a show I would have watched, even if I hadn't been cast as Annie. So I have a very vested interest in all of the characters and their stories. As a huge fan of romance, I do think it's been a dream come true.”As someone who’s been a part of Anneliese’s book club for some time now, I can’t recommend joining her community enough! She puts in so much love and care into everything she does, whether that be acting or hosting her book club, and you can truly feel it whenever you’re within a shared space with her. If you’ve been looking for a new book club to join this year, I do hope you’ll consider joining the Who to Judge book club!
