BEATTIE’S NEW MAN IS A PUG CALLED PATRICK
You might not have noticed Beattie Edmondson in Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie, or Bridget Jones’s Baby, but there’ll be no missing her n her third film.
Beattie is the star of a family comedy, being released by Disney, called Patrick. No, she’s not playng the title part. That belongs to a pug.
The actress, who’s in the second week of a five-and-a-half-week shooting schedule (on location in Richmond and Chiswick in London), plays Sarah Francis, a eacher who’s bequeathed a ‘small beast’ by her grandmother.
unfortunately, Sarah is not allowed pets in her flat — a probem she soon finds she shares with her neighbour Celia (played by Gemma Jones), who is concealing a continental toy spaniel (a papilon) in her apartment. ‘Sarah’s not keen to take Patrick on, and he’s not very well behaved,’ Beattie told me, ‘but I think in the end it sort of upsets her life for he better.’ She said she and her ‘snuffly’ eading man got on fine, as long as she remembered to carry treats. She now travels with ‘little bits of sausage in my pockets . . . it sort of draws attention towards me’. Beattie loved doing her tiny scenes opposite Renee Zellweger in the Bridget Jones film and Celia Imrie in Absolutely Fabulous, but said she’s overjoyed to have a movie role ‘with more than two lines’ in it.
‘For me it’s incredible,’ said the young actress, who has starred in two series of BBC Three sitcom Josh, and will start filming a third in early June.
Several other dogs make appearances in Patrick, which is being directed by Mandie Fletcher, who made the Ab Fab movie and many comedies for television — though I remember her from when she worked with Trix Worrell, Charlie Hanson and Humphrey Barclay (way back when) on another TV show — Desmond’s.
There is even a canine cameo from the original Patrick — a black pug belonging to Vanessa Davies, the woman who came up with the idea for the film, wrote the script and now finds herself producing her first picture (along with some others, and with a little help from the folks at Disney).
Davies’s other dog, a malamute called Hera, may also get a walkon (or should that be ‘walkies-on’?) part.
Beattie told me she grew up with two border terriers; one of which had three litters. ‘At times, it was like a puppy menagerie in our house,’ she said. She is presently dog-less, but is happy that her mum, Ab Fab actress Jennifer Saunders (who has a role as a fellow teacher in Patrick) will be bringing her whippet olive with her to the set. ‘Mum takes olive
everywhere,’ said Beattie whose dad is comedian Ade Edmondson.
Cherie Lunghi and Peter Davidson will play Beattie’s screen parents, and Meera Syal will be the head teacher. Ed Skrein, playing a vet, and Tom Bennett (one of the funniest men on the planet), as a dog walker, have been cast as potential love interests.
Bernard Cribbins and Roy Hudd will also appear in Patrick. oh, and two-time oscar winner Jenny Beavan is designing costumes. (Now someone should write a film about her!)