GOSSIP AT YOUR PERIL!
Comedy legend Dawn French talks to GH
Dawn French talks to Jackie Brown about the pleasures and pitfalls of being nosy, as she returns to our TV screens as a village busybody
Who doesn’t love a gossip? After all, it is human nature to be curious about other people. Dawn French admits there is nothing she likes better than a good gossip with her lifelong friend Jennifer Saunders.
‘It is one of our biggest treats,’ laughs Dawn. ‘Sometimes we have the same conversation about the same people over and over again, because we elaborate more and more each time. We sort of know that we are embellishing, but the joy of embellishment is so irresistible that you just can’t help it.’
The way she describes it makes it sound like one of their hilarious sketches on French And Saunders, but the key difference is that no one else is intended to hear it. It is for their ears only, based on the trust that has built up over the 40 years they have known each other.
‘Neither of us would want any of those conversations to be reported back raw to the people we are talking about,’ says Dawn. ‘The embellishments and the fun of it might seem cruel to others.’
ONE TO WATCH
The consequences of what can happen when gossip does get back to the people it is about is at the heart of Dawn’s new TV series, The Trouble With Maggie Cole.
She plays Maggie, a busybody who lives in a seaside village and makes it her business to know everything about everybody. Maggie’s life comes unstuck when she overshares in a radio interview after she’s had a few large G&TS. When it’s broadcast, she finds herself cast out by everyone whose secrets she has revealed – from the local GP’S husband, who’s having an affair, to her best friend who she thinks is a bit dim. It’s a car crash and leaves only Maggie’s long-suffering husband supporting her as she seeks forgiveness from everyone she’s insulted.
Having seen the first episode of the series, I can tell you that it is hugely enjoyable – both dramatic and very funny in places – and Dawn is perfect as Maggie. She manages to convey the fact that while Maggie might
My heart is settled, which is nice
appear a tad overbearing, she is a well-meaning person and a little vulnerable, too.
Dawn is heavily invested in the series, having worked on it with executive producer Sophie Clarke-jervoise. The pair, who have known each other for about 20 years, came up with the idea together, found the writer and pitched it to ITV.
‘I knew I wanted to do something based around this kind of story,’ explains Dawn. ‘I wanted to do something where it could be any of us that this could happen to, where you could see how it could explode a community. I wanted to do something extraordinary in the ordinary.’
BEHIND THE SCENES
‘I wanted Maggie to be very true,’ adds Dawn. ‘I like characters that are only a few inches to the left or right of me. I think Geraldine in The Vicar Of Dibley was a bit like that. I absolutely knew where she belonged in me, but I also knew the bits that weren’t me, and the same is true of this character.’
Dawn was delighted when actor Mark Heap was cast as her husband. ‘I did a little dance of joy,’ she says. ‘I love Mark. I worked with him on Lark Rise To Candleford. He’s such a funny man and I’m helpless with laughter around him. I love his acting and I wanted to see how we would be together, especially in the more serious bits. It was a real relationship and, as far as I’m concerned, a real relationship between a husband and wife has to have fun in it.’
The best friend, who Maggie insults, is played by Julie Hesmondhalgh. ‘Our scenes were devastating to play,’ says Dawn. ‘I genuinely felt her disappointment in Maggie. She is such an authentic actor that you don’t come away from moments like that lightly.’
The gorgeous backdrop to the series is very familiar to Dawn as it was filmed in south Devon and Cornwall, not far from the small Cornish town where she lives with her husband, Mark Bignell. ‘We filmed it over four months last summer,’ explains Dawn. ‘It was fun. People came to visit for lunch and we had a big tea party at my house. Jam went on the scones first, obviously – the Cornish way!’
But she’s careful not to fall into the same trap as Maggie. ‘I don’t get involved in gossip in my own town,’ she says. ‘It’s too dangerous. If I am going to gossip and enjoy gossip, I do it with my old friends.’
Dawn is at home when we speak, working on her fourth novel, which is due to be released in October. She had to have a break from writing it to film the new show and since then, she’s been working on Sir Kenneth Branagh’s remake of Death On The Nile, along with Jennifer Saunders. ‘I’m as busy as ever,’ she says. ‘I know it’s good luck as much as anything. I’ve never sat back and waited for the phone to go. I’m very organised. I look ahead and think, “My year needs to have lots of things in it. I need to be stimulated and challenged a bit. I need to do things that frighten me and I need to be pushing ahead.” I make sure my diary is full.’
Her conversation is punctuated by gales of laughter, and she’s clearly enjoying being in her 60s. ‘I have enjoyed every single thing, bar an arthritic left knee, and even that is fixable,’ she says. ‘All else is good. As you get older, you need to alter and cut your cloth accordingly, but one of the great things is that you can be as outrageously opinionated as you like. I don’t really give a toss about what anybody says about my politics or my take on the world.’
Her contentment is apparent when I ask her for three words to describe herself. ‘Settled,’ she says, immediately. ‘I mean that in a good way. My heart is settled, which is nice. Ready – I am ready for anything.’ There’s a pause as she thinks of the third word. ‘Fragrant,’ she says, finally, with another gale of laughter. ‘It’s because I don’t do any exercise, so I don’t sweat. So I’m always fragrant.’ The Trouble With Maggie Cole airs Wednesdays at 9pm on ITV (from 4 March)