Yes, the darlings are back

JENNIFER SAUNDERS TALKS ABSOLUTELY FABULOUS: THE MOVIE We round off women’s month with the ultimate rule-breaker.

Strapped for cash and hounded by the paparazzi after an “incident” involving supermodel Kate Moss, PR guru Edina “Eddy” Monsoon (played by Jennifer Saunders), and her best pal, fashion editor Patsy Stone (Joanna Lumley), flee London to the south of France where they hope to enjoy the champagne lifestyle the Rivera is famous for – and find some wealthy men to pay for it. For nearly three decades Eddy and Patsy have been loved duo in contemporary TV comedy Absoluty Fabulous – and now they make their hilarious big screen debut. It promises to be fabulous, darling! And Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie is that indeed. A: Not really. I thought it existed on television to such a degree, and that every time we’d ever taken them out into the real world – like when we took them to New York or Morocco – it felt kind of strange. Also I think the energy you get from an audience’s laughter seemed to me what the show was built around. To be honest, it was because things like The Inbetweeners and Mrs Brown’s Boys happened, and we thought, ‘everyone is making these films now, and they’re doing quite well. Why not?’ In fact, it was Joanna Lumley who said, ‘Just do it! Why don’t you just bloody do it?’ A: Yes, but I don’t see what’s wrong with that – especially if you have a rehearsal. It’s harder with film because you have to do so much in advance, because they have to book so much stuff. But if you know you’ve booked six studios and you’ve got the sets, I don’t know why anyone needs to know what they’re going to say until the day, as long as they know where they’re going to stand? People want far too much information sometimes and you think, ‘Why don’t you just wait until rehearsal?’ Everyone’s going to make more stuff up anyway. All it means is that they can interfere more and can ask you to change it, or they don’t like it, or they have an opinion. If you want something to be your own, the fewer people you show it to, the more likely you are to actually get what you want. A: The thing with a film is that they want you to write it for people who haven’t ever seen them before, so that’s the hardest thing. That would be my dream, that only people who’ve seen ‘Ab Fab’ can come and see it, but it has to appeal to people who don’t necessarily know the show. So that again changes it a bit. Not too much, and I don’t think it’s compromised; it was just another thing to think about when I was writing the script. And it’s quite a nice thing to think, ‘we can’t presume they know that person is an idiot.’ You have to constantly reassure people we haven’t gone mad. A: Compared to writing a TV show, you’re constantly dealing with notes, notes, notes, which I’ve never done in my life before. I think it’s quite odd because you go, ‘no, I know how that’ll be, it’ll be fine. Really, I think people will quite like that.’ But sometimes the notes are good – I haven’t made a film before, and they have, and they understand the format better. It was quite an interesting sort of learning curve, really. A: Sacha Distel! That was honestly one of the most extraordinary things because even we didn’t expect that. We were shooting in Paris and Bob Spiers, Mr Summertime Special, was directing it, and he said, ‘Oh, I’ll get my mate Sacha to walk by,’ and I went, ‘No you can’t.’ He said, ‘I’m going to call him.’ And before we knew it, we heard, ‘’Allo! Patsy…’ A: Yeah, Harry Styles was supposed to be in it, apparently. But that was never going to happen. Well, we never asked him, so that was never going to happen (laughs). I suppose there was a lot of expectation. I think the thing is that people have to be confident that they can be funny and that the part is funny enough. The film changed so much, so there were people we asked, but actually the part changed. When it comes to comedy, I think people do get a bit nervous. They go, ‘they’re quite funny aren’t they? I wonder if I can do that? Let’s just say it’s not for me.’ A: She’s not in it. The amount of Twitter hate you get! ‘I can’t believe you let Kim Kardashian in. That’s it, I’m not going to see the film!’ You go, ‘we haven’t even done it yet. What are you talking about?’ The amount of silliness! A: Patsy is still smoking. As we were doing it, we noticed how much less they smoked. It’s a weird thing, and I think it’s just crept in. I mean, Joanna still smokes. I don’t really smoke, and I found it quite hard actually. Even the vaping was horrible. It’s not like you’re doing it for two hours in a studio one night and then bam, there you go. If you start a scene smoking, that could be the rest of your day smoking, and so what you do is you sort of judge it – when’s good and when’s not good to smoke. I mean, they still smoke all the time, and they still take drugs and still drink too much, but I’ve got a feeling it does look a bit sadder now. I mean, we didn’t plan it that way, it just sort of happened that way. I was 36 when I played Eddy as 40 and I’m now 57, so she’d be now in her early 60s, and Patsy is beyond that – I don’t even know anymore (laughs).