The Story She Was Meant to Tell

Julia Fisher Farbman (left) found inspiration in Audrey Evans’ remarkable life to write and produce her first feature film, “Audrey’s Children.” Photo by Alicia Slough.

Julia Fisher Farbman, BS communications ’12, has interviewed His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, Michelle Obama and the Duchess of York, but she’s losing sleep over how to portray a woman most people have never heard of.

The feature-length movie she’s producing and for which she wrote the screenplay represents her first foray into scriptwriting. With a seven- figure budget and starring the incandescent British actress Natalie Dormer — of “Game of Thrones” fame — the film was shot on location in Philadelphia in fall 2022.

What worries Fisher Farbman most, however, is making sure that she does justice to protagonist Audrey Evans, a pioneering pediatric oncologist, a determined philanthropist and a longtime family friend who passed away at age 97 on Sept. 29.

If Fisher Farbman has her way, “Audrey’s Children” will make Evans a cherished household name.

Evans has already touched millions of lives, both by revolutionizing the treatment of children with neuroblastoma and by co-founding the Ronald McDonald House Charities at its flagship location in West Philadelphia in 1974. But her heroism unfolded in relative obscurity.

Recruited by C. Everett Koop, who was at the time surgeon-in-chief at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), Evans in 1969 became the first chief of pediatric oncology at the hospital, where she founded the Children’s Cancer Center. There, she developed the groundbreaking Evans Staging System for analyzing cancer progression, enabling doctors to determine the best course for treating children with neuroblastoma. The system has been credited with cutting patient mortality rates in half.

Evans also sought to care for the families, who often had no place to stay while the children were hospitalized. Toward that end, Evans advocated for development of the first Ronald McDonald House, for which Drexel alumnus Stan Lane (BS business administration ’61) was instrumental in raising funds.

Making a movie about Evans became an obsession after Fisher Farbman produced a 10-minute video featuring the physician as part of the biographical “Modern Hero” series she created and hosted, which aired on Amazon. Not only did the episode about Evans receive 17 million views, but many people left comments crediting the physician with saving their lives, inspiring them to become doctors or maintaining ties to their families long after their children had died.

“I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was meant to tell this story,” Fisher Farbman says.

Writing and producing “Audrey’s Children” represents a ripe opportunity for Fisher Farbman, who previously produced for the Disney ABC Television Group. While at ABC, she collaborated with U.N. Women to produce a three-part special, “Celebrate Equality: The Future of Women’s Rights,” which received an Emmy nomination in 2020.

“I had a million ‘no’s’ but they feel my passion, and the time is never wasted.”
— JULIA FISHER FARBMAN

The project also poses more than a few challenges.

“It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” Fisher Farbman says. “I’m a perfectionist. I’m hard on myself.”

There’s the fact that she desperately wants her portrait of Evans to inspire audiences, while also fulfilling the expectations of a feisty family friend who was instrumental in getting her the care she needed at CHOP during a bout of appendicitis.

“She was very vocal about how she wants it to be told,” Fisher Farbman says.

And then there’s the business side of producing a feature film, which requires her to work through a to-do list that is “many pages long, every day.”

“I thought raising the money would be the hard part,” she says. “Every part is.”

This past summer was dedicated to the decidedly unglamorous pre-production process, working with her team on scouting locations, figuring out insurance, maintaining myriad partnerships and filling out the cast — a task that became easier once Dormer signed on.

Fortunately, she got assistance from Matthew Chan, a senior at the College of Engineering who wanted to try something completely different by completing a co-op with Fisher Farbman. Chan did wonders with tasks like archiving thousands of images shared by CHOP.

Raising funds for the project represented an enormous hurdle, which Fisher Farbman cleared with a combination of determination and creativity.

“I had a million ‘no’s’ but they feel my passion, and the time is never wasted,” she says. “Most people who said ‘no’ pointed me in a direction to somebody else.”

In a flash of innovation that should make any Dragon proud, Fisher Farbman approached Susan Campbell, CEO of the Ronald McDonald House Charities in Philadelphia, to solicit support. The two devised a strategy whereby the nonprofit would provide an opportunity to raise grant funds to offset certain production costs. In return, some proceeds from the film will return to the charity. The arrangement allows smaller donors who are not able to meet the equity minimum to get involved in supporting the project.

“For the film, that is a huge thing,” Fisher Farbman says.

To navigate the challenge of making the film, Fisher Farbman says she took advice from Evans herself.

“One of the things that Audrey taught me is that you take it one step at a time,” Fisher Farbman says, balking at the suggestion that her ambitious journey echoes the one that Evans completed.

“She was an icon,” Fisher Farbman argues. “I’m just trying my best over here.”

On top of a job well done, making the movie will give the filmmaker the satisfaction of introducing the public to an iconoclast who married at age 80, bore no children of her own, transformed cancer care, helped launch a charity that has served millions of families and co-founded the St. James School, which provides tuition-free education to students in North Philadelphia.