Comedy genius Jennifer Saunders shares her thoughts (and complaints) while shooting the Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie, and spills the beans on all those celebrity cameos…
October 11th 2015
I am here in the South of France. Sun’s out, as promised, the rosé’s cold, just as I’d hoped, but I left my new iPhone in Heathrow airport. Probably no bad thing, as it means I have to concentrate on work. Because, dear reader, the reason you are reading this I hope in the future is because we start filming tomorrow. Filming. A film. An Absolutely Flabbulous (note from Chloe: this is not a typo!!) film what I’ve wrote. The reason I haven’t done one before was because of the pressure, but in the end it was the pressure what made me do it. In fact It was Joanna Lumley who made me do it. Yes, Jack Lumpley as I likes to call her. It was all her idea, so don’t blame me. ‘We’ve got to make the film, darling’ she said. ‘Because otherwise we’ll all be dead and we won’t have made the film.’ So here we are. Just 105 of us. Hangin’ out in the South of France and makin’ a film. A film that’s been twenty five years in the making. What could be nicer? Ooh yes how lovely – I do like filming. An early night is the thing. Nice early night before filming starts tomorrow, then wake up nice and fresh and start filming. Love a bit of filming, me. No pressure at all. I mean, it’s already written; we just has to act it and put it in a can.
October 12th 2015 – 4.30am
This is MADNESS!!! It’s not going to work. We must STOP IT NOW!!
October 12th 2015 – 6.00am
Good morning! It’s dark. I can see the lights on the sea as we drive to location. I am very very nervous and clutching black coffee (in a cup, not just in my hands; someone put it in a cup) I don’t know what makeup can do with my old crumpled face this morning after much rosé and no sleep but I have the excuse that I am playing a character. It’s not me.
October 12th 2015 – 10.30am
It must be time for lunch. Isn’t it about time for lunch? We’ve been filming for hours. We are very close to shops with baguettes. I could eat whole baguette in one go like a human shredder. I need food.
Today I am driving a Piaggio Ape in a kaftan, so I can eat. And, anyway, I am a character. She is fat. The weird thing is that Edina can still look fat in a kaftan which is supposed to cover all that and Jack Lum looks thin in a kaftan which is supposed to cover all that. Weird. The mysteries of a kaftan.
An Ape , that’s ah-pay, not ay-p, is a tricky little bugger to drive, and that’s if you can even get it actually started in the first place. It won’t always start. It’s a bit hit and miss. That’s why we have stunt women and special Ape drivers to do all the hard bits. It’s like driving a sewing machine but it’s a van. We just have to sit in it when it’s stopped and make faces. Or ‘acting’ as we like to call it.
The face making goes well and the first day is a considerable success
Why was I panicking?
October 14th 2015
Emma Baby Bunton Spice is on set today, smiling and sparkling and always a perfect shade of tan. One of the best things about making the Ab Fab film is getting all the old faces together again. Not that hers is an old face. Why, her face is young and lovely.
Today, we are filming just behind the Croisette in Cannes. ‘What is the Croisette?’, I hear you cry. ‘Is it a giant croissant? Is it a cruciform modern sculpure?’, I hear you thinking. No you fools! It’s a street what runs along the seafront at Cannes and it is crowded with tiny old women holding small dogs in pink jumpers ( the dogs) and men holding cigarettes and tiny cups of coffee and Segues and joggers and of course the odd person looking for the giant croissant… It really is too good to be true to be filming here; it seems to me that the Cote d’Azur is the only place in the world where the reality is even funnier than the idea.
For today’s scenes, Jack Lumley is looking impossibly elegant in a Giles Deacon ruff. Unfortunately for her, this means she can’t really talk, smoke or eat. At least she doesn’t have to do all the hard work though. As well as working, I actually have to work. Mandie Fletcher, our director, is trying to lock down the casting of cameo roles between takes and sometimes I have to sit with her in a nice chair, eating a delicious brie baguette, and throwing out names like ‘Benedict Cumberbatch’. Although Benedict Cumberbatch, it turns out, is busy for the next five and a half years. What is it with actors? We are offering tiny tiny tiny roles that will take up minuscule amounts of time and it’s ‘ Oh no, sorry, I’m busy doing films’ or ‘ So sorry I am going round the world with all my actor friends for the next 2 years’ or simple ‘ I am dead’.
October 16th 2015
This is the life! This afternoon’s filming takes place on ‘Thumper’, a Sunseeker yacht so big that I can’t actually fit it onto the screen of my iPad to take a picture. Just getting her out of the harbour probably costs the production about £1,000 in petrol but, hey ho, whaddya gonna do?
While Mandie and her crew go up in a helicopter to film us, Joanna, the marvellous Marcia Warren (who plays Patsy’s ‘wife’, spoiler alert!!!!) and I do some very hard work drinking champagne on the sun deck. So life ain’t so bad, Benedict Cumberbatch and all you other Unavailables.
October 22nd 2015
The Palais Boules in Theoule-sur-mer is one of the most strangely weirdest, most uncomfortably furnitured places you will ever see in your life. Before filming started, I was flickin’ through Hello! mag, as you do, and had to ring our art director, Harry Banks, immediately to tell him what I’d seen. The villa, if you can call it that, is made up of lots of little balls – that’s what boules means, you know – clustered on the side of a cliff, like a gang of ovarian cysts. It was built by Pierre Cardin, who should really have known better, and fashion people, especially French ones, think it is simply marvelleux (it’s on the market for a cool 350 million euros if you’re interested). Today, it is providing the perfect backdrop for the film’s climax, when Edina and Patsy drive the Piaggio Ape into the swimming pool.
To perform this stunt, Joanna and I are wearing wetsuits under our kaftans (this is so not flattering but I don’t mind because it’s a character) and doing the Times crossword while Frank and Cyril, our two absurdly handsome French stuntmen, do all the work. When the time comes for us to get in the water, Joanna – naturally – gets the more handsome of the two helping her to her seat, but then she is a great deal older than me and therefore very fragile and in need of much reassurance and comfort.
All the J’s are now in France; all the original Ab Fab gang – Julia Sawalha (Saffy), Jane Horrocks (Bubble) and June Whitfield (Mother) – although June isn’t here today. And let’s not forget Jon Plowman, our producer. He produced ever single episode of Ab Fab ever made – and there were quite a few, let me tell you. Oh, and Lulu is here too. Good old Lulu. I would never dream of making an Ab Fab film without Lulu in it. She is our tiny little lucky leprechaun charm. We’re all showing off a bit (more than usual) because Robert Webb is here today, playing Nick the policeman and Saffy’s love interest. We are all trying to look like it really is hard work – which it isn’t – and we really are professional – which we aren’t.
As I deliver my lines, the Ape gradually sinks. Joanna is having trouble keeping her cigarette alight and I wish I’d gone to the toilette before I got into the pool but, apart from that, everything is going swimmingly. Days like these, I can’t think why we haven’t made a hundred films. If I didn’t know better, I’d have a celebratory glass of wine tonight. But I won’t, of course. Because I’m working (although of course we all will as soon as we get back to the hotel or possibly even by the time we hit makeup to be de-wigged).
October 23rd 2015
It’s all Jack’s fault (again). Quick dinner in our favourite Japanese, discussing upcoming London scenes and how to make them as hilarious as possible, ended up with us crying with laughter and going to bed too late. We were laughing on the other side of our faces when the old alarms went off when it was still dark. Still, it’s the last day of French filming today and we’re all in merry mood. Lunch is a French affair – long trestle tables heaving with bread and cheese served by Frenchmen in sunglasses. As the afternoon’s filming wraps, everyone does lots of clapping and kissing. Even the Mayor comes to say bonjour and au revoir. We’ll all be very sad to leave France but then there’s going to be a little wrap party at the hotel tonight – eight minutes of footage and eight bottles of wine each, type affair – so, chances are, we won’t actually know that we’re leaving.
October 28th 2015
Damp, autumnal London. The Cote d’Azur seems a dream away. We’re all rather reeling from the change of atmosphere. No more long lunches and kissing; just a soggy egg roll (eaten as the character) and a parka to keep the wind out.
Tonight, we’re filming a fashion show in the Penthouse of a huge, luxury skyscraper called the Neo Bankside, just by the Tate Modern. Once you get to the top, it’s breathtakingly beautiful; but that’s if your vertigo can take the lift ride up. This place is For Sale too and has been for a while which is why we get to film in it. Sometimes places are incredible but utterly unlivable in. It would be like living in a huge hotel lobby of a very unpopular hotel. Yes, that personal.
Our brilliant costume designer, Rebecca ‘Becks’ Hale has, amongst many other wonderful things (like getting Vivienne Westwood to custom make several of my costumes), persuaded Giles Deacon to stage the fashion show for us. The clothes and the models are all his; all we have to do is turn up in character and fall about a bit. The premise is pretty simple; Edina and Patsy arrive late, and smoking, at the show and force their way onto the front row. And this isn’t just any old front row, I can tell you. It’s full of actual real people, like Sadie Frost and Abbey Clancy and people who work at Vogue and other people who were Made In Chelsea. And some fashion bloggers too (some of whom are wearing Mickey Mouse ears, for no apparent reason). Yes, you heard. Fashion bloggers. Or Floggers if you’d rather. And no, I don’t know what they do either but I love the idea of working from home too…
Gwendoline Christie is here too. Yes, Brienne of Tarth off of ‘Game of Thrones’. I met her at a party and she said she was a fan of the show so I signed her up on the spot. Once I’d signed her up I watched some ‘Game of Thrones’ in which she was quite brilliant but I couldn’t keep up with the plot and gave up after a dwarf had sex with his sister. It’s her birthday today and Joanna and I give her a cake. She screams and cries.
October 29th 2015
My feet hurt. I just can’t wear high heels like I used to. It’s like I’ve actually lost the ability with age. I hobble. Actually I have a ‘condition’. I have a bone spur that makes it uncomfortable so my foot is full of cortisone that eases the hobbling. Vivienne Westwood shoes are very bad for hobblers like myself and they are seemingly all that I wear in the film.
Celia Imrie is here today. Another original gang member. She plays my arch rival, Claudia Bing, who has become even more successful in the social media age. Part of the reason that I wanted to write the film now is because I often feel pathetic about the supposed advantages and joys of the modern digi-social media world. Keeping up with Facebook and Instagram and Twitter is a whole day’s work for me. I don’t know how not to trail through other people’s worlds of children and dead friends and dog videos before I get to someone I actually know.
Celia plays Claudia so brilliantly, that I sometimes forget I actually really like her. And Jane Horrocks, as Bubble ( not Bubbles as so many people seem to call her. Bubble. Singular), seems to have become even funnier and more surreal than she was in the original series. Jane actually first auditioned for the part of Saffy. She wasn’t right, but I couldn’t let someone as funny as she is go without giving them a part. I rewrote the role of Bubble for her – Bubble was originally meant to be posh and pointless – and I think it might just have been one of the most sensible things I’ve ever done. Today, Bubble is wearing a hilarious plastic emoji costume, covered in inflatable hashtags (one of which – #patsyisaslag – is particularly hilarious). We spend a large part of the day wondering what all the acronyms stand for.
We are filming lunch scenes, and – stumped by the acronyms – I end up stuffin’ the contents of the bread basket in my mouth. Kate Moss is on set next week. KATE MOSS! Little Kate wouldn’t eat so much bread that the runner had to be sent downstairs to buy some more now, would she? But then I am IN CHARACTER eating.
November 4th 2015
The Thames shoreline in all its austere greyness. Kate Moss arriving to film. There’s a whippin’ wind, and a tiny, flappin‘ gazebo for a green room but fortunately Kate’s game. She is in fact amazed at the fuss made of her – the worrying about her happiness and comfort. She says that if this was a fashion shoot she would be told to stand all day in the freezing water without complaint and then not shiver. She is a total professional. Puts us to shame. We demand tea and biscuits .
I first met Kate Moss exactly one hundreds of years ago, when she and Dawn did some ‘modelling’ in an episode of French & Saunders, and then she agreed to be in the Olympics Special of Ab Fab in 2012. She has now agreed to be in the movie. I worry about her long term memory but it’s working to our advantage. The thing about Kate Moss – which is why Eddy and Patsy love her so much – is that she has FUN, whatever she does. She doesn’t play by the rules, she doesn’t do fads or tantrums or eating goji berries, and yet she gets cooler, and more beautiful with every day that goes by.
She arrives on set in a floor-length green sequined dress, looking a million dollars. She lights a fag, takes a swig of champagne and wades into the freezing cold Thames. There are paparazzi literally dangling from the hangman’s gibbet that still stands on the river bank by the Prospect of Whitby, but she is utterly unphased. She’s laughing, smoking, looking luminous, drink and fag in hand. Apparently the pictures will earn the paps enough money to feed their families for a month. There are of course more honourable professions available.
November 5th 2015
Good mornin’. Much warmer today in the Bentley Hotel in South Ken. We’re filming a Casino party, as thrown by Edina’s rich aunt Violet (Mother’s sister, as played by the marvellous Wanda Ventham , Benedict Cumberbatches mother in actual real life) in the South of France. The assembled extras all look lovely and smell of lavender (not formaldehyde as Patsy says). In such company, Jack Lum is second only to the Queen. She does lots of smiling and stroking of arms while I finish the crossword on my own.
June Whitfield – who will be 90 next week – is on particularly sparkling form today. She looks beautiful and can still deliver a withering one liner better than the rest of ‘em. When I first wrote the pilot for Ab Fab all those millions of years ago, I wrote the part of Mother with June Whitfield in mind. I always felt that, while being straight and lovely on the surface, Mother had to have an edge, just the tiniest bit of madness. That’s what June carried off so beautifully in Terry and June; she was the slightly downtrodden housewife, with this wonderful twinkle of knowing. Today, she is as funny and sharp as she ever was.
November 8th 2015
Day two of night shoots, filming the red carpet for one of the film’s big scenes, the Huki Muki party. There’s a cold wind whipping off the Thames and hair & makeup tell me that they are averaging 6 or 7 cans of hairspray trying to keep celebs hair from being flyaway.
Jerry Hall is here today, fresh from her first public outing with her now husband, Rupert Murdoch, and so is Richard Arnold. Tomorrow, Anya Hindmarch, Gwendoline Christie, Baby Bunton Spice, Maquita Oliver, Alex Jones, Jeanette Tough, Lulu, Alesha Dixon, and many many more and even more whose names I don’t know are filming on the red carpet. Stella McCartney couldn’t make it today, so her lines are going to be filmed next week. That’s the joy of film versus television; just roll out the red carpet in a B&Q car park in Cricklewood, and drop it in to the final cut. It’s a marker of how down-to-earth Stella is that she doesn’t bat an eyelid at this suggestion.
On tonight’s actual red carpet, I seem to spend most of my time falling over or hobbling. This is part of Edina’s remit. Only problem is, I’m not sure how much more me old knees can take.
But Kathy Burke is here – hurrah! – so everything is OK. Kathy played Magda, Patsy’s boss, in the original series and was it hard tempt her back for the film. Kathy was worried that women don’t look like her in fashion. How wrong. I googled and produced many pictures of those behind the glamour; most of whom are simply normal-looking women dressed well. We assured her she would be dressed well and she agreed.
I have no idea what time we finally wrap but it’s unbelievably late, or early. Thank goodness I’ve driven myself to work so I can get home without talking. I like the mindlessness of driving.
November 10th 2015
Jon Hamm’s in today. No big deal. Just Jon Hamm. Mad Men Hamm. The Mad Hamm. JON BLOODY HAMM!!!!
I have to admit that I have seen less of Mad Men than Game of Thrones but love him anyway. JON HAMM!
Now, as cameos go, you’ve got to admit that’s a winner. Jon Hamm meet Kate Moss….It’s good isn’t it?
No one is playing it particularly cool, I have to say (Becks Hale admits to having had to have a little lie down after his costume fitting). No one except Olive, that is. Olive is my whippet, and she is the only one who seems genuinely unphased by the star in her midst. At one point, she sniffs the Hamm’s leg rather disdainfully and moves on.
Moss and Hamm are a pretty intoxicating combination. There are so many people crowded around the monitor that it becomes a health and safety hazard. MOVE AWAY ! NOTHING TO SEE HERE.
Days like these I’m glad to have a front row seat and have to go in and give notes. Notes like ‘Hey, you guys. Wanna go for a drink on wrap?’
Kate has wrapped by lunchtime and encourages a gang of us to the pub. Joanna, myself, Lulu, Gwen Christie, Baby Bunton, Bruno Tonioli , Celia Imrie, Jeanette Tough, and the Hamm of course. Damian Jones, our producer, is invited too. And so is his credit card.
November 12th 2015
8.30am, The Vauxhall Tavern. I have never seen such an Ab Fab sight in all my life as the arrival, through the commuter mist, of 80 drag queens in full costume. Behind them, traipse the commuter suits, rubbing their eyes as if someone slipped some acid into their porridge.
We are filming a scene in a gay club today, in which Saffy goes looking for Edina’s hairdresser (as played by the fabulous Chris Colfer from Glee) – in the hope that he knows where her mother and daughter have gone – and ends up singing a sad karaoke song. In all the years that she has been playing Saffy, Julia has never once failed to hit the nail on the head. She can judge a scene perfectly and always has the right tone and energy. She also, it turns out, can sing like a dream.
The drag queens are genuinely captivated. These girls are so gorgeous that they have to be seen to be believed. Jack and I, despite not being on camera today, have come down to set because we couldn’t possibly resist. If there’s one thing she and I have learnt to love over the Ab Fab years, it’s a gay club. From the very beginning, Ab Fab seemed to really strike a chord with the LGBT community. ( Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender. Obviously. Not BLT you have to remember the G) I’m always asked by journos why I think they are such a hit with the gay community. I don’t actually know. Perhaps Patsy and Edina are divas, with a mix of bravado and vulnerability. Plus, they simply don’t care what anybody thought of them.
As soon as I arrive, I wish I’d worn more makeup. I look like a little brown mouse next to a whole tribe of six foot Mickey Mice and every single one of them seems to want a selfie. Some of these great people have traveled far – some from as far away as Glasgow – many in leathers and many have slept in full make up in order to be ready by the early call. I could not love them more and, in my dreams, the red carpet at the film’s premiere would be flanked by this gang, all dressed as Edina and Patsy.
November 17th 2015
Supermodels galore today. Suki Waterhouse, Alexa Chung, Daisy Lowe, Lily Cole, Lara Stone, Jourdan Dunne, Stella McCartney, Kate Moss and Nick Grimshaw are all on set, filming Edina’s dream sequence in which they beg her to go with them to Goa. There’s a lot of candles, dry ice and sheepskin rugs. Olive doesn’t know whether to have her nose put out of joint, or just settle down on the sheepskin and be more beautiful than all of them put together (she eventually opts for the latter). I feel like a slightly sweaty sausage wedged on the sofa next to all of them, but they are all so really very lovely that I soon forget myself. I realise quite quickly that this isn’t just Edina’s fantasy.
Before she leaves, Stella asks if Jack and I will switch on the Christmas lights at her shop in character. Of course we will. A few days later, we are due to present her an award at the British Fashion Awards. Of course we will. We love Stella.
Is it nearly Christmas yet?
November 27th 2015
Last day of filming, in an aircraft hangar in somewhere near somewhere that might be Ruislip. It’s a long way from Cannes, but Rebel Wilson is here, so it’s not all drudgery. Rebel used to watch Ab Fab back when she worked in a video store in Australia. I gave her an award one day and she said she would like to be in the film. I signed her up immediately. She didn’t warn me at the time that she was in fact about to go stratospherically famous and would only be available for one day, but we coped.
She is hilarious; ad libbing some lines which are so filthy that even Patsy is shocked. It’s a cold, bright day and there’s a jolly carnival atmosphere. And then, suddenly, it’s all over. It’s a wrap. It’s actually a whole big actual wrap. Last day. I stand for a moment and take it all in; everyone drinking and laughing and celebrating the end of filming the film that I didn’t think we’d ever make.
I’m not going to cry. I’m not. Oh, I am leaking a bit…In fact, I go. I’m gone.
I’m going to go home, and sleep. And then I’m going to sleep some more. Wake me up when it’s Christmas, will you?
This season’s must have on Digital HD from November 23 and Blu-ray & DVD from November 30.
