Jennifer Saunders has said that Ab Fab only came about because Dawn French took a sabbatical from French and Saunders.
Speaking to Ryan Tubridy on last night's Late Late Show, she said: “I was very happy working with Dawn, she did most of the talking, she controlled the whole thing and it was nice.
“Then Dawn had the call to say there’s a baby up for adoption and she and Lenny [Henry, French’s then husband] were going to adopt a baby and so she had to take a big time out.
“I thought ‘Great, I don’t have to do anything for a long time’ and then my agent rang and said ‘Love, I think you should seriously think about writing something’ and I went ‘On my own, are you kidding?!’
“She said ‘Yes, we’ve booked the studios, you’ve got to do something' and so I wrote Ab Fab.”
Speaking about working with French, she said: “Dawn [French] and I had gone to college together and we’d got a comedy act thing together
“We happened to gel, we couldn’t believe that people let us do this. [Laughing], I mean, that’s the truth. We were like children at play.
“For the whole of my career…I’ve been allowed to be a child because I think comedy is being allowed to be a child and being allowed to go out to play with your best mate, which I did for all of those years.”
She added: “It was a bit of luck, my whole career has been a bit of luck really. It’s been great fun.
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