French on Saunders
She’s an actress, campaigner and bestselling author but Hannah Stephenson finds out Dawn French can’t stay away from her old comedy partner
SHE’S got many strings to her bow but funny woman Dawn French is going back to her roots by teaming up with her old comedy partner Jennifer Saunders.
They’ve been reunited for a podcast, are appearing in Kenneth Branagh’s movie remake of the Agatha Christie thriller Death On The Nile and have kept in touch during the pandemic.
Dawn, 63, said: “My first bit of ‘back to work’ was with Jennifer.
“As soon as we were allowed to meet up at a great distance from each other, with a wall of cake in-between, we met up and devised a series for Audible called French & Saunders: Titting About.
“We see each other all the time anyway as friends. We’re not very good on Zoom. I’d rather be on the phone to her or we text each other a lot.
“If we don’t get to see each other much, we just pick up where we left off. There’s never a guilty gap. It’s not a friendship that you have to feed on a regular basis to keep it topped up. It’s very secure.”
During lockdown, Dawn finished writing her first novel in five years, Because Of You, a story of love, identity and belonging as two baby girls born on the millennium New Year’s Day change the paths of the women who give birth to them.
One is stillborn and, in her desperate grief, the bereaved mother steals the other healthy baby from the hospital. Then unfolds the story of what happens to the two couples – and the child – as they face the consequences.
Dawn said: “I wanted to find a story where it was a challenge to empathise with the main character. I wanted to write about someone you would still love when she makes a giant mistake.”
The novel explores the nature-nurture debate and whether a child’s personality would naturally follow that of his or her birth parents or adoptive parents.
It’s a subject Dawn admits she’s thought about a lot – she has an adopted daughter Billie with ex-husband Sir Lenny
Henry - but hasn’t come up with an answer. French spent lockdown at home in Cornwall with her husband, Mark, who runs a drugs charity, Billie and stepdaughter Lily. She dedicates the book to Billie, Lils, as she calls her, and Olly, her stepson. While 18 months of her work schedule went up in smoke and her tour was postponed, she’s missed other things too. Dawn said: “I ’ve missed cuddles with my mates and it proves to me how much that stuff matters. She describes the government’s handling of the crisis as “shambolic”.
Dawn adds“Nobody’s experienced at this. It’s no secret that I’m a ‘ leftie’ and would have preferred Keir Starmer to be guiding us through this.”
It may be no coincidence that her novel features a self-absorbed, pompous ass of an MP.
She said: “Well , we are surrounded by men like that at the moment. I didn’t base his character on a particular MP but on many people I see and listen to on TV and people I come across in my life.”
Despite the restrictions, French recently returned from Wales where she was filming the new Sky One Christmas family drama Roald & Beatrix, about the day when Roald Dahl, aged six, met Beatrix Potter, aged 60. French plays Potter and co-stars include Rob Brydon and Bill Bailey.
Dawn said: “There was a ‘gulp’ moment of, can we manage it? It was one of the first bits of filming that went back into production – you have a Covid person on your crew, you have medicals – I’ve had nine tests in four weeks.
“But every single person on that job was so grateful and happy to be back at work.”
Meanwhile, the release of Death On The Nile has been put back to December.
But Dawn says: “I will always write books because it’s where ∙ my heart is.”
Because Of You by Dawn French is published by Michael Joseph on October 15, priced £20.