Why Joanna Lumley wanted to quit Ab Fab as cast reunite

Patsy Stone was a career-defining role for Joanna Lumley. The champagne-addled, chain-smoking, beehive-wearing fashionista in hit 90s sitcom Absolutely Fabulous re-invented her career and launched her second act as a comedy colossus.

So it’s a huge surprise to discover that Joanna very nearly quit the show before it even got started. While making the pilot episode in 1991 Joanna was unnerved and unhappy acting opposite Jennifer Saunders, who created the show and starred as PR guru Edina ‘Eddy’ Monsoon.

‘As there was no description of what Patsy was like in the script, I didn’t know,’ recalls Joanna, 78, of those early scenes. ‘And because Jennifer was not at her most communicative in those days, she gave me no hint, except she looked sadder and crosser at every word I uttered.

‘I thought, “This is a dead loss.” I didn’t know what she wanted. I rang my agent and said, “I don’t think Jennifer wants me, but she’s too polite to say anything. Do you think you can get me out of this?” My agent said, “It’s a pilot. Just do it. It might not take off.” So I nearly wasn’t Patsy!’

Jennifer agrees. ‘We didn’t know each other,’ she says. ‘It’s hard, isn’t it. I didn’t quite know what I wanted.’

Given the TV gold Joanna and Jennifer generated as hard-bitten Patsy and chaotic Eddy, soulmates in their desperate need to stay hip and get attention, it’s unthinkable now that their double act almost never was. So crack open the Bolly and the Stoli, darling, because Gold has reunited the pair for Absolutely Fabulous: Inside Out, a two-hour tribute to the ground-breaking sitcom that ran for six series between 1992 and 2012 and spawned a 2016 movie.

Jennifer and Joanna became great mates during their time as co-stars, and when reunited on a sofa to watch old Ab Fab clips they often collapse into giggles recalling what they got up to while making the series. They and co-stars Julia Sawalha (Saffy) and Jane Horrocks (Bubble), who join them on the sofa, agree that it felt like one big family. ‘We had to do a bit of filming, yes, but we just had the best time,’ says Joanna. The quartet also raise a glass to June Whitfield, who played Edina’s sharp-tongued mother and who died in 2018. She got the role because Jennifer grew up watching her sitcom Terry And June.

The tribute is packed with former co-stars and celebrity fans. Tom Hollander (who played Saffy’s boyfriend Paolo), Meera Syal (Suzy, Patsy’s underling at her fashion magazine) and ex-Spice Girl Emma Bunton (who played herself) enthuse about their time on the show, while producer Jon Plowman and script editor Ruby Wax reminisce about their roles.

Ab Fab grew out of a French & Saunders sketch in which Jennifer played an Eddy-like character called Adrianna and Dawn her priggish, studious daughter. Jon Plowman remembers Jennifer’s agent calling him to pitch the sitcom idea. ‘She said, “Jennifer’s written a pilot for a series,” and sent me what became the first script of episode one,’ he recalls. ‘It had partly come about because Dawn French and Lenny Henry were adopting a child, which meant Dawn couldn’t do another French & Saunders series.’

But writing didn’t come easily to Jennifer. ‘I hadn’t had that much of a writing career before Ab Fab,’ she says. ‘I’d written with Dawn, but just sketches.’ Jennifer unearths old papers on which she’d scribbled ideas for Ab Fab, which she then knitted together into episodes, before sending them to Ruby Wax to hone into scripts and add jokes. ‘Ruby was incredibly useful,’ says Jennifer, 66. ‘She’d go, “Better line here”, and, “Something here”, and she’d come up with them, or write six alternatives.’

In fact it was Ruby who was responsible for getting Joanna to play Patsy. ‘I saw her in a play, went backstage and said, “You should be in a comedy”,’ Ruby recalls. ‘She was thrilled because her career had plummeted – she doesn’t mind me saying that – it was under the floorboards. So I put her on my show, and then when Jennifer and I were talking about Ab Fab I said, “I have Patsy!”’

Jon Plowman thought the show was doomed even before the pilot was filmed in the autumn of 1991. ‘At the dress rehearsal I saw Robin Nash, the then BBC Head of Comedy, and asked what he thought of it. He said, “I have never found women being drunk very funny.” I thought, “That’s it, it’s over”.’

Jennifer was notoriously late with Ab Fab scripts and that proved daunting for the other actors. ‘Julia and Joanna would often be given a lot of lines at the last minute, which wouldn’t have kept me happy at all,’ says Jane Horrocks. ‘But they had a great capacity to learn very quickly.’

Joanna recalls having to improvise a whole scene to fill an episode. ‘In the scene we were smoking a joint in Edina’s bathroom upstairs,’ she says. ‘Mother was tapping at the door and we were stoned out of our minds on the floor. We made that scene up! It wasn’t written down, but Jennifer said, “Patsy and I will do something here,” so we did.’

Despite Patsy and Eddy’s debauchery, they were rarely tipsy on set. ‘Once in the first series we gave them red wine while filming in France, but never again!’ recalls Jon Plowman. ‘Jennifer couldn’t remember what we’d filmed when she was sober, so drink on the set would have been fatal.’ The cast weren’t party animals off set, then? ‘To be honest there’s only one party I can remember, which was drinks at the end of what we thought was the last series,’ says Jon. ‘And for some reason Robbie Williams turned up in a kilt.’

Edina’s personality was encapsulated by the ill-fitting designer outfits she wore – if she had any catchphrase, it would be, ‘It’s Lacroix, sweetie! Lacroix!’ referencing the French clothes designer Christian Lacroix, who had a cameo in the series and who appears in the tribute show.

‘They were improvising,’ he recalls of those scenes. ‘I realised on set. They were laughing at their own gags, and I couldn’t stop laughing either, especially when Eddy – without warning me – kneeled and snaked on the floor, grasping my ankle.’

Eddy’s clothes were crucial to the show, according to Jon. ‘They tell the story,’ he says. ‘Jennifer would go to Harvey Nichols to look for outfits, and try on a size smaller than she’d normally take. She’d come out and say, “What do you think?” And the shop assistant would say, “Madam might like to try a size larger?” “No, no, no, I’ll take this one!” Eddy was always wearing a size too small.’

Julia Sawalha was at the opposite end of the spectrum as Eddy’s square daughter Saffy in hopelessly frumpy clothes. ‘Julia always wanted that,’ says Jennifer. ‘I said, “You could move up to Benetton,” but she just said, “No, it’s got to be the worst; it’s got to be Eddy’s nightmare.”’

As Ab Fab took off, guest stars queued up to be on the show – Whoopi Goldberg played a counsellor at an LGBT drop-in centre. ‘She was fantastic, but she did not do a single line that was written,’ recalls Jennifer. ‘Because she’d grown up with comedy and improv, you present her with a script and she went completely off it. Honestly, I just sat there aghast at her genius.’

Nerves set in for Rev star Tom Hollander though, who was a rising actor when he joined series three as Paolo. He’d never filmed a sitcom before a live audience and was very anxious. ‘So I went to a doctor and said, “Could I have some beta blockers?” because I’d heard they stop you getting hysterical,’ he recalls. ‘The doctor said, “No, I can’t just hand out beta blockers. They’re for people with heart conditions.” And I said, “No, no, I’m on Ab Fab later today,” and he went, “Really?” and pulled out his drawer and said, “Here!”’

Joanna discloses she kept a bizarre souvenir from the show – videos showing Patsy acting in soft porn movies before she became a magazine editor. On Ab Fab, clips were shown of Patsy wearing enormous fake breasts for a starring role in a movie called Booberella. The scene had an unfortunate impact on some fans though. ‘Occasionally people have taken screen grabs of it and sent them for me to sign,’ says Joanna. ‘That they honestly thought they were my breasts! I say, “Look, it’s not me” and I sign them Patsy Stone.’

Ab Fab was a cultural phenomenon, a nearly all-female operation that revelled in the chaos created by two deeply flawed middle-aged women who swigged Bolly for breakfast. They weren’t good mothers or wives, but were incredibly funny in their doomed search for happiness.

Above all, Ab Fab was a clever farce, and it seemed the actors were having as much fun as the audience. The outtakes we see in the tribute show reveal the cast dissolving into laughter at each other’s antics, particularly in scenes between Eddy and Bubble. ‘Me and Jennifer, we were awful together,’ recalls Jane Horrocks. ‘We’d have to do our scenes not looking at each other!’

• Absolutely Fabulous: Inside Out, Thursday, 9pm, Gold.