It’s easy to assume when you see two actors together such as, oh I don’t know, let’s say for argument’s sake, Jennifer Saunders and Joanna Lumley, that they’ve always enjoyed brilliant on-screen chemistry and off-screen friendship.
But in this delightful clip from The Graham Norton Show, promoting the new Absolutely Fabulous movie, we learn amid much laughter and some benignly rueful recollection that the brilliant partnership that gave full-blown sitcom life to Edina and Patsy didn’t have the most auspicious or warm and fuzzy of beginnings.
In fact, so less than stellar was their first meeting that Lumley came very close to pulling the plug on being Patsy at all.
But, talked into giving into giving it all another chance, she and Saunders hit it off, Patsy as a character found her groove and the rest of hilariously dysfunctional history.
Hurrah! Now pass me the champers and some of those salmony-beluga things will you sweety?
Loved those interview clips. Ab Fab was the first film I went to see at the Cinema in a long time – released on my birthday it seemed rude not to.
Rebel Wilson fitted in the show so well, too.
Great effort.