The Advocate Interview - April 1996
by Gerry Kroll
The relationship between Patsy and Edina has never been sexualized, but it's very clear that their closest relationship is with each other. They seem to have done everything together but have sex.
Jennifer Saunders: That's probably true. The reason they keep it so tight is that no one liked them, so that without each other, actually, they couldn't exist. They support each other. They support their flaws and everything else.
It was quite nice that they ended up together in the flash-forward in the concluding episode.
Saunders: Oh, there's no other way to go. If one would have died, the other would have died in about two weeks.
Joanna Lumley: When Saffy had moved out to get rooms in university, they turned into The Odd Couple.
Saunders: They turned into The Mary Tyler Moore Show.
Lumley: And I went off to work, and she had an apron on. They hadn't really realized they'd got into it until they were just about to kiss each other good-bye. And there's just that hideous moment when they've turned into a married couple.
Saunders: I love that one.
I know that both of you are married, but has either of you ever felt sexual attraction to another woman?
Saunders: I never have.
Lumley: I haven't, but I think I've all my life fallen in love with people. It's not sexual, in actual fact. You just--
Saunders: This is true.
Lumley: You think people are fantastic, and you like to be with them.
Saunders: You get crushes on people. You have to see them every day in that week. They're a fantastic person, and it could be a man or a woman.
Lumley: And either it can last, or it doesn't last. And it can be either male or female. You probably know by the time you've grown up whether you're straight or gay. I don't know how many gay people suddenly find that they've fallen in love in a straight way.
Women seem to be more open to the wider possibilities.
Saunders: Men would find it much harder because men have such odd personal relationships with each other. They don't really emotionally connect, whereas women do. I think women become very close.
Why do you think Absolutely Fabulous has had such an impact on gay popular culture?
Saunders: I haven't got a theory about it, but I'm thrilled that it's happened.
Lumley: It's very flattering. The gay community is usually first to jump onto what's smart and new; they're usually the first to be ahead of the avant-garde. Because the show is satirical and quite sort of catty and biting, it amuses them enormously. And the characters are quite easy to imitate.
In many ways you're holding up a mirror to gay men. Patsy and Edina seem like gay men in the most stereotypical way: substance-abusing, narcissistic, bitchy, completely self-involved faddists. Could these be elements many gay men are picking up on?
Saunders: I'm sure, because that's exactly what Patsy and Edina are.
Lumley: An awful lot of series at the moment are concerned with homey, normal things, and it's just nice to see people who are obsessed with glamour and glamorous things--even if they get it wrong.
These characters seem to have a life of their own.
Lumley: Patsy's about the only character I've played in my long life who has become another person--who, when you get dressed up as her, you become her. I've never had any qualms about anything Patsy does at all. In real life I wouldn't do many of the things. In fact, I don't smoke or drink, as you know [edging the open cigarette package in front of her off the table].
Saunders: They have become part of us in that if we get dressed up as them, we don't actually have to have a script. You can just become them. You just become nervy. [Pointing to the chocolate-dipped strawberries] Edina would have eaten all of these already--this is the truth--and ordered all these bottles of Cristal and put them on your bill and not care.
In crafting a career, I imagine, you steer clear of roles that are too similar.
Lumley: Always. And the difficulty is that all the work you're offered tends to be pale imitations of this. And you can't do it. I'm so much older--so much older--than Jennifer. So very much older than Jennifer that--
Saunders: Well, I'm lucky because, you see, I'll probably bounce back from this role. [They both laugh]
Lumley: I've been here in a different way 20 years ago with The New Avengers. Although it wasn't shown network over here, it was very big in about 138 countries. And whatever scripts I got were kind of Purdey, that character. And I thought, Will I ever survive this? The only way to do it is just to believe you will and to keep on taking different parts, turning yourself around. It takes a little bit of time.
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What do you think of drag queens who impersonate Patsy and Edina?
Saunders: I'm always surprised that they obviously have one image of Patsy, that their favorite episode must have been the one where she was in the fishnet tights and the very short skirt. The Patsy image is kind of slaggy. But in actual fact she dresses incredibly expensively most of the time and looks fantastic.
What makeup tips can you offer for those who want to become the perfect Patsy or Edina?
Lumley: For Patsy it's "think late '60s". I based her makeup on when I was a model. Lots of eyelashes. And the kind of makeup that you keep on and apply more to the next day. [Hysterical laughter from Saunders] It's got to be very thick, nothing subtle there. And make a lot of the mouth. Actually, I chose a drag queen's tip for Patsy, which is to do darker lipstick around the corner of the mouth and put light in the middle. And also big--nothing is big enough, really. So hair can be very, very big. Everything big. Including shoulders.
And what about Eddy?
Lumley: Put on a blindfold when you choose your clothes.
Saunders: Well, that's the truth. The clothes are always bought two sizes too small. Then you have to wear very tight, small G-string underwear.
You seem to be ideal candidates for grand marshals at a gay pride parade, riding in a convertible and waving at the crowds. Have they invited you?
Saunders: [Laughing} They haven't, no.
Lumley: I was invited to the Sydney Mardi Gras, down in Australia--
Saunders: To be a float.
Lumley: To be on the float. They had five floats of Patsy. They sent me photos. Thank God I didn't go. They all look so much better than I do.
Saunders: It's a problem, actually. We had this party in New York, and there were a lot of gay men there dressed up as the characters. I showed up just looking like myself, but it was a real case of shame. They looked so fantastic. We could never quite live up to it.
What are the missing episodes of AbFab? What plots did you eliminate? Anything too far-out?
Saunders: No, anything that is too far-out is generally kept in. There were a lot of areas we didn't cover that I'm hoping to cover if we do some specials. One is to see more of Patsy's home and her home life, which is just the saddest thing. You'd cry if I told you. She lives above an off-license.
Lumley: Jennifer's a very sort of generous writer. We always lose ten minutes recorded off the show. It has to be trimmed out. For instance, when we came back from New York with the photograph of the door handle and it was Saffy's birthday, we went off to her room--
Saunders: With a little present--
Lumley: To cheer her up. And Edina had realized she'd forgotten Saffy's birthday. There are whole scenes that have been cut up because they always run 45 or 50 minutes for a 30-minute show. Lots of Morocco went. Lots of France went.
Saunders: Lots of stuff. I intend to take them skiing. I intend to take them skiing in a big way.
Ab Fab makes reference to many specific products and merchandise: Lacroix, for example. What sort of reaction did you get from the company?
Saunders: Lacroix has been fantastic. He's very nice. He gets the joke, and I think that's a good thing. A lot of people say to him, "You should be insulted. How can you let her in the shop?" Because I actually go into the shop to buy stuff. And he says, "No, it's funny." So he gets the joke.
And Bollinger and Stolichnaya?
Saunders: Not a single free bottle.
Lumley: They extended an invitation to us to go out to Bollinger in Ay, which is a little town in France, and see them. We haven't managed to do it yet. But it wasn't exactly crates of Bolli, darling. Stoli has done nothing at all. And I think some potato crisps arrived for you didn't ;they? That's all.
Saunders: I got some kettle chips.
Lumley: That was it. So all that hard work went for nothing.
Saunders: [Laughing}People are quite mean, actually.
Lumley: Bolli did have the grace to write: "You've done more for our PR than all our PR in the history of PR."
Saunders: But when they thought we were going to do a film, they sent a letter saying, "Listen, if you're going to do a film, we have to see the script before you do it so we can approve all the product placement."
Lumley: Insane!
Saunders: We thought, What are you talking about? Product placement! We used Bolli because of the jolly name; it not like we like it! You know, Bolli and Stoli. Good names.
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Let's move on to some specific questions about puzzling elements of the show. In the Morocco episode it appears that Patsy had once had a sex-change operation. What the story behind Patsy's penis?
Lumley: Tragic!
Saunders: We had a great idea. If we'd thought of it in the first series, it would've been fantastic. We suddenly thought, Patsy was a man! She was a man! She was a man!. It would have been great if we could have constructed it that she'd been changed to a woman in Morocco in 1964. But we couldn't, because in all the flashbacks in the first series she was a woman. So eventually in Morocco we just did it that she had something--
Lumley: Sewn on.
Saunders: And it fell off after a year.
Lumley: And she took the hormones and grew the mustache and formed a singing group.
Saunders: And this was all because Edina had become obsessed with Sonny and Cher and thought that they could be Sonny and Cher if only she were a man.
Did Edina know her second husband, Justin, was gay when she married him?
Saunders: No, I don't think she did. She has such a low self-image. She's one of those people who doesn't think anything of herself and is completely flattered by any attention. And I don't think he probably knew he was gay until he married her.
Lumley: The wedding pictures were just tragic!
Saunders: Just tragic! He got her pregnant by mistake and had to marry her because he's a decent kind of guy, and that's what you did in those days.
I think Edina tells Patsy at one point that the reason she split up with Justin was not because he is gay.
Saunders: That's because she can't believe that's the reason--she's the reason.
Does Edina hate sex?
Saunders: I think she hates herself. And she has very little experience. She probably only ever had sex with the two people she married. She missed out on a lot. Edina lives through Patsy, you see. Patsy does all these things. Edina probably never did the hard drugs even. But Patsy did. And in the end she just fell asleep in the corner.
Next question: How old is Patsy? In an effort to get an exact answer, several Univac computers have been put to work and, consequently, blew up.
Lumley: When Patsy went to London and eventually ended up at the same school as Edina, she was probably about 15, and she was in with 8-year-olds. [Hysterical laughter from Saunders]She'd never really learned to write or anything, and she was kept down every year because she still couldn't manage it. Eventually she was ready to move on. By the time Edina had worked her way up through school, Patsy was just about ready to move on. I thought to myself, She might have been 22 or 23 when the rest were 13--nobody knows. Hmmm. It's not really good, is it, because Edina was pretending to be 40--
Saunders: Edina's 40, so at the end of the series she would have been--
In one flashback to 1964--as spelled out in the published script--Patsy is identified as being 14.
Lumley: That's before we thought hard enough.
Does it surprise you that people pick apart details like this?
Saunders: No, because I pick it apart. Patsy would be about 56.
The show's bible doesn't have all the answers?
Saunders: No, sometimes we just have to take liberties because the idea was so good. I wish we'd just gone with the idea that Patsy had been a man. It would have been fantastic.
Lumley: I know. There was some very famous model girl who'd been a man in the 60's--
Saunders: In that era they just went to Marrakech and came back--
Lumley: Amanda Lear and people. They were so famously beautiful and so famously Norwegian sailors.
Is Edina's son, Serge--whom we never see--gay?
Saunders: No, very, very dull. And very straight. I try not to think about it, because if I think about it, you want to write him in, and I just don't think he should be written in.
Why Lulu?
Saunders: Lulu is perfect. Lulu can act, and she'll do anything. She's a really good laugh.
She'll like her plate?
Saunders: She'll do anything. And Lulu--it's such a great name.
Lumley: Lulu's still a rocker! She goes out on tour, doesn't she? She still sings "Shout!"
Last question: Why, as Edina says, are all her friends gay?
Lumley: She hasn't got many friends.
Saunders: Again, it's the extreme thing. If someone says, "Do you have any gay friends?" "All my friends are gay!" It's just not ever to be done down. I mean, obviously, they're not all gay, but she probably does employ a huge amount of gay people just because they can tolerate her. It just seems right, especially in PR.
Lumley: Also, the glamour of it too.
Saunders: Gay is more glamorous.
Lumley: The ideas that she wanted Saffy to come out is because it's more glamorous than just being a girl in an old knitted jersey.
Saunders: And Edina would love to hang around gay people. It's more exciting. And they're like them. That's the truth. They're like them.
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