Joanna Lumley has said Jennifer Saunders planned to kill off their Absolutely Fabulous characters until she intervened to stop her.
In the popular 1990s comedy series, Lumley played Patricia “Patsy” Stone, a hard-partying fashion director, opposite Saunders’s public relations mogul Eddie Monsoon.
The actor, 78, rushed to stop her co-star and Ab Fab creator writing Patsy and Eddie’s demise as she insisted the characters shouldn’t be destroyed.
Speaking to My Weekly, Lumley recalled how Saunders wrote to her and asked, “Shall we just kill them off and bury them?” in reference to Patsy and Eddie’s fate.
“I wrote back the fastest email return I’ve ever written. I said, ‘No, we’ve promised the world we will never die!’” she said. “‘And to be honest, if all that vodka and champagne they’ve necked over the years hasn’t done the job, then why on earth would their creator be able to do it?’"
The series, which aired from 1992 to 2012, was followed by the 2016 film Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie, where Patsy and Eddie go on the run in the south of France.
Elsewhere in the interview, Lumley recalled filming episodes of the TV series that included flash forwards of their characters in old age.
“We had all kinds of prosthetics made to make us look really old,” she said. “Scraggly necks and bald caps under very thinning hair, awful hands, badly fitting false teeth, little humps on our backs and our bosoms looked like empty sandbags.”
“We could hardly walk because we were laughing so much. We went out on location dressed like that. We drove there in a bus with the crew and the make-up people. Jennifer and I were sat near the front and I was by the window.
Watch Apple TV+ free for 7 days
New subscribers only. £8.99/mo. after free trial. Plan auto-renews until cancelled
Watch Apple TV+ free for 7 days
New subscribers only. £8.99/mo. after free trial. Plan auto-renews until cancelled
“We stopped at a traffic light and an open-topped car pulled up next to us. I grinned at the man who was driving and I heard him say to the woman who was sitting next to him, ‘Oh look, it’s Joanna Lumley!’ It was so funny.”
Back in 2021, Lumley said that Princess Margaret was the “prototype” for her character in Absolutely Fabulous.
Speaking to Gyles Brandreth at an event to promote her book about Elizabeth II, A Queen For All Seasons, Lumley addressed the character’s origins.
“[Princess Margaret] was a kind of prototype Patsy,” she said. “There was something so fabulous about her. So fabulous and so funny.”
Lumley claimed: “At this moment in strange royal life, everybody said, ‘Princess Margaret is not allowed to drink at the moment. Do not have any drink in theatre, and don’t offer her any drink.’
“I thought, ‘You can’t have a reception with Princess Margaret and not offer any drink. This is insane.’ She was looking pretty bored by the time I arrived.”
“She left the party, opened her bag, got out a small bottle of whisky and a packet of cigarettes, lit up, cigarette holder, and sat there smoking.”
