Dawn French has revealed she quit her iconic French & Saunders sketch show with comedy partner Jennifer Saunders after one skit left her ‘humiliated’.
The actress, 66, recalled how the 2008 scene with singer Anastacia saw her become the butt of the joke before she ‘wept all the way home’ and called time on the series after a decade.
Speaking in a new BBC documentary about the duo’s career, Dawn explained how the show’s costume designer ‘fell on her back laughing’ when the Vicar Of Dibley star dressed as the American singer.
Saying: ‘I looked in the mirror and I thought, “Yes, this isn’t it, this isn’t what Anastacia looks like” But instead of finding it funny, I just thought “Oh I don’t like it”‘.
Adding: ‘It just felt like I wasn’t in control of the comedy. The joke was on me. I hadn’t controlled it in any way,’
Jennifer, 65, hearing the story for the first time said: ‘[I] didn’t realise it was so dramatic that you decided to end the whole act’.
Dawn went on: ‘I hated everything about the day and I said I’m never going to do that again. I’m never going to feel humiliated like that again’.
‘I could’ve just been hormonal, but I just hated it, and I hadn’t ever hated it.’
Jennifer then went on to say how their show had ‘ended on TV long before’ the infamous sketch with TV bosses ‘cancelling everything’.
Dawn branded Sketch shows a ‘young person’s game’ while her pal said: ‘We sort of thought well, nobody really wants us anymore and the truth is you need a break’.
French and Saunders, which was written by and starred the pair, first aired in 1987 and famously saw them parodying famous films including Titanic and The Exorcist.
It comes after Dawn revealed she was plotting a return to the small screen.
Speaking on Tonight with Andrew Marr on LBC, Dawn told how she hopes the show will air in either late 2024 or early 2025, and vowed she’ll ‘fight for people to be as offensive as they want to be.’
She said: ‘There are plans afoot. I can’t tell you too much about it at the moment. But at the end of next year or beginning of the following year there will be a sitcom and I will be in it.’
Dawn spoke about the state of comedy today and recalled how much difficulty her and Jennifer had in getting Absolutely Fabulous on screens.
She said: ‘I remember Jennifer [Saunders] telling me how difficult it was to get Absolutely Fabulous off the ground, because her characters were smoking, drinking, and falling over and being complete eejits.
‘But you know, it all seems so mild now… Let’s be inappropriate, let’s wear purple, let’s just push the edges a little bit and laugh at ourselves when we get it a bit wrong.’
Asked whether comedy has become a ‘bit too vanilla’ these days, Dawn replied: ‘No, because there’s everything. There’s everything for everyone. I would fight tooth and nail for people to be as offensive as they want to be.
‘Hatred? No. I think we do know when something sneaks into completely unacceptable incitement to hatred. I think we all know when that’s the case.
‘And of course, it’s just not funny. That’s the facts. It is just not funny to anyone except for the one person who thinks it is, who usually has lost their marbles.’
James Parker is a UK-based entertainment aficionado who delves into the glitz and glamour of the entertainment industry. From Hollywood to the West End, he offers readers an insider’s perspective on the world of movies, music, and pop culture.
