Absolutely Fabulous wouldn’t have happened without Joanna Lumley’s agent, who convinced her to carry on when early tensions arose between her and Jennifer Saunders.
While Fleabag bulldozed onto the TV-sphere in 2016 from Phoebe-Waller Bridge’s one woman Edinburgh Fringe show off the heels of Bridget Jones’ single woman chaos, Ab Fab was the original hot mess feminist offering.
In the 1990s Ab Fab’s Eddie and Patsy – played by Jennifer and Joanna – proved women can be hilarious, awful, disgusting, but yet miraculously lovable, just like men. Thanks very much.
These two grown women inject botox into their faces, spout venom, drink like they’re on Peaky Blinders and smoke like they’re in The Godfather, are innately self-absorbed and vain – and ultimately are the antithesis of motherly idyll – but are gloriously feminine and endlessly hilarious nevertheless.
And so a new wave of feminism and comedy was born. But it almost wasn’t.
Metro sat down to chat with producer Jon Plowman, who is also responsible for hits including The Office, The Vicar of Dibley, and who saw this crazy idea from Jennifer come alive on TV screens.
As the documentary Absolutely Fabulous: Inside Out is released today – the biggest cast gathering since the 2016 film – Jon reflects on the beginnings of Ab Fab and the moment Joanna almost walked away.
‘Jennifer was never the earliest deliverer of scripts in the history of the world,’ he says, explaining how they had a mantra on set of, ‘It will be alright by Wednesday.’
After their weekly read-throughs on Sundays, the cast and crew would rehearse for the rest of the week ready for Friday, when they would record in front of a live audience.
While the average sitcom length was around 60 pages, Jennifer would deliver 12 by Sunday with notes saying, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll make this bit funny,’ and Jon reflects how that was a ‘hairy way for cast and crew to work’.
‘At the beginning Joanna found that difficult,’ he revealed. ‘I think she thought, “Jennifer doesn’t like me and she thinks I’m Dawn.”
‘It was tricky because for god’s sake Joanna had played Hedda Gabler, she was an actress. She wanted to be able to rehearse it. Rehearsals were partly a lot of suggestions.’
So the chemistry between Joanna and Jennifer certainly wasn’t instant.
‘Joanna got this idea Jennifer didn’t really like her and didn’t want her in it,’ recalls Jon.
Then, Joanna even tried to pull out – but one conversation with her agent saved Ab Fab and the future of comedy.
‘Joanna rang her agent and said, “Get me out of this!” Her agent said, “It’s only a pilot, it might never happen,’ Jon reveals.
Thankfully by the end of the third episode they all knew what they were doing, and one of the most beloved comedy duos in Jennifer and Joanna was born.
‘The whole business of not thinking Jennifer liked her came from Jennifer being shy, she’s a shy person,’ Jon says.
‘So a new comedy partner comes along and Jennifer thinks she’s got to construct this sitcom and do something worthy of having Joanna in it.
‘We were all hooray, hooray, hooray when Joanna said yes. She said yes very quickly, overnight I seem to remember.’
Initial frictions weren’t the only thing Ab Fab had to contend with on its launch – but reservations from a BBC boss.
‘I asked in the afternoon when we were doing the dress rehearsal for the first episode what he thought and he said, “Well I never thought women being drunk was very funny,”‘ remembers Jon.
‘Yet in the evening the audience was fantastic, there was a sense something different had arrived.’
From then, it was unstoppable.
‘When papers started using, “Oh Sweetie it’s marvellous,” perhaps about politicians, we thought, “Oh hello, we’ve arrived,”‘ remembers Jon, who dubs its quick entrance into the public consciousness ‘extraordinary’.
He also remembers one particular moment travelling to the US, when there was a ‘a sense of Beatlesmania’ around Joanna and Jennifer he’s never encountered before.
But while Ab Fab was undeniably a huge moment for feminism, it never set out to be anything but funny.
‘I don’t think Jennifer ever saw it as a feminist movement,’ Jon says.
‘A. It was a lot of fun, and B. It was a sitcom. It wasn’t trying to be anything particularly political. Though it was feminist along the way.
‘There are remarkably few men in it, most are behind the camera, and maybe that’s the way it should be.
‘It makes a difference in perspective and ideas, but if people are good they’re good, if the writing is good it’s good, if it’s funny it’s funny.’
Among Jon’s stand-out memories of making Ab Fab is Joanna rehearsing by herself in the corner – trying to work out how to act out injecting botox into her face in the Patsy-ist way possible – and Jennifer being the only person he’s ever worked with to arrive on set late and explain: ‘Sorry, I didn’t realise the farrier was coming.’
Jon thinks the success of any sitcom comes down to two things: character and surprise. Both of which Ab Fab had bundles of… sweetie, darling.
Nowadays, unfortunately, the climate sitcoms are trying to survive in means Ab Fab might never have been made if it were attempted now.
‘I think there’s less of that “let’s see” mentality now,’ Jon says. ‘You’ve got to have faith, you’ve got to give it a go. Part of the problem at the moment is that comedy is expensive, and particularly the BBC are thinking times are tight. But people still want a laugh.’
Perhaps we never would have discovered drunk women can be funny, messy, awful and watchable, if the landscape was like that in the 80s.
Okay, we definitely would have (because duh). But the point might’ve been made in a less fabulous way.
As Ben Elton told Jon on first seeing Ab Fab in action: ‘I’ve seen the future of comedy and this is it.’
Absolutely Fabulous: Inside Out airs on UKTV channel Gold tonight at 9pm.
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