From Absolutely Fabulous to The Comic Strip Presents, Jennifer Saunders has created some of British comedy’s most unforgettable characters. As she returns to the Theatre Royal Bath in Edward Bond’s The Sea, Melissa Blease talks to her about playing formidable women, reuniting with Dawn French – and why she still doesn’t quite understand what it means to be an icon.
It’s a routine I’ve been familiar with for years: research done, questions prepared, background noise quelled; recording function fully operational, cup of coffee to hand, adrenaline pumping just enough to keep the verbal ping-pong bouncy.
But during this particular interview build-up, I’m having to add “pinch myself several times” to the list. Eek! I’m getting ready to talk to Jennifer Saunders: the actress, comedian, writer (and more!) who’s earned herself National Treasure status over a fascinating glittering career.
To take a speedy stroll through all that stardust, Jennifer was, alongside fellow contemporary luminaries including Dawn French, Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson, a pivotal cog in 1980s groundbreaking, pioneering Comic Strip Presents… team. She moved on to be the bossy half of French and Saunders and the self-obsessed, narcissistic fashion PR pariah Edina Monsoon in Absolutely Fabulous. She wrote (and starred in) Women’s Institute-centric comedy drama Jam & Jerusalem, penned the script for the Spice Girls-based jukebox musical Viva Forever!… and in 2019, having already aced the role of The Duchess of Berwick in Lady Windermere’s Fan in London’s West End, she rocked Bath with her take on Noël Coward’s eccentric clairvoyant Madam Arcati in the Theatre Royal Bath’s production of Blithe Spirit.
My life is just my life; I just do things, and if I really enjoyed doing that thing then it was a highlight.
Jennifer is returning to Bath this month to star as authoritative aristocrat Mrs Rafi in the first major revival of Edward Bond’s complex social satire/comedy-drama The Sea for almost two decades – and The Bath Magazine is one of the first publications to talk to her about it. So! Am I forgiven for being a bit… daunted?
The voice – refined but warm, effortlessly articulate – is uniquely, unmistakably Saunders. But there’s an unexpected timbre in the mix that puts me at ease from the get-go.
“It’s turning into a beautiful day here!” she says, talking to me from her family home and out-of-London bolthole on Dartmoor. “It’s been raining hard but now the sun is poking through the clouds and everything is all a bit… well, glisteny!”
Straight away, I can tell that this is a woman who, despite her awe-inspiring CV, has absolutely no ‘showbiz side’ to her at all – but much as I’d love to discuss the beauties of the autumn season with her all day long, we do indeed have business to do. Sorry to disturb your reverie, Jennifer – but why The Sea… and why now?
“I’ve never seen The Sea, and I’d never even read it before director Jonathan Munby sent it to me,” she says, keeping that Caramel Bunny vibe going despite my dragging her off the path of peace. “I haven’t done many plays but I really enjoyed my Blithe Spirit experience and I thought well, if this one’s in Bath too, I’ll say yes!”
So it was Bath that swung it for her! “The Theatre Royal is a lovely place to do a play, and Bath audiences are so appreciative; being there is just a lovely experience,” she says. “But of course, the play is great too! Bond wrote it in 1973, but it’s set in the early 1900s. My part, Mrs Rafi, sort of represents that era: she’s the top rung of the upper middle class types at the height of the Empire days: bossy and arrogant. And she’s really quite horrible to people; very cruel, but deliberately so. She thinks that people expect her to boss them around, and shout at them, and bully them – so she does. I don’t hate her for that; she’s doing what she was brought up to do. But she’s definitely quite mean, and has no sympathy for anyone except herself.”
Might Mrs Rafi be the Edina Monsoon of the early 20th century aristos? Sadly, it didn’t occur to me to put that to Jennifer during our chat (blame that on my own performance anxiety.) The Sea, however, has a very different kind of theatrical depth.
“It’s quite a strange play because it tells two different sides of the same story,” Jennifer tells me. “There’s a death by drowning right at the beginning and everything sort of spins out of control after that. It’s quite difficult at times – it’s not all comedy; it’s really intriguing.”
I expect nothing less, either from playwright Edward Bond (who drew some of his inspiration for The Sea from themes within Shakespeare’s The Tempest but somehow – and I kid you not, here – managed to weave the character of a draper with a belief in alien invasion into the mix), the domineering, manipulative hypocrite Mrs Rafi… or, of course, Jennifer herself. Might this eagerly-anticipated revival be on track for an upper-eschelon rating on Saunders’ ‘highlight of career to date’ status?
“Hm, that whole highlight thing,” she muses. “My life is just my life; I just do things, and if I really enjoyed doing that thing then it was a highlight. I loved doing Ab Fab, for example; it was such a joyous thing. And I still love working with Dawn!”
That’s just as well, really, because when The Sea’s tide rolls away, Saunders is reuniting on stage with French for the first time in 17 years when the duo star as the Ugly Sisters in the prestigious London Palladium’s 2026 pantomime production of Cinderella. Jennifer is no stranger to the pantomime genre, having made her Palladium panto debut in the 2023/24 season starring as Captain Hook in Peter Pan. If Jennifer starring alongside Julian Clary as Seaman Smee resulted in a witmeister wonderland experience, surely French and Saunders version 2.0 is set to be an ad-libbing riot?
“Dawn and I are actually very disciplined!” Jennifer insists. “You’ve always got to know exactly what’s going to happen next in any given production, and it’s actually very difficult to be impromptu, especially in comedy.” Okay, let’s take the panto prospect down another possible outcome track: will Jennifer – perhaps the most beautiful ‘ugly sister’ to date – make her role ‘iconic’, as she had done with previous characters she is today so well-known for?
I can’t wait to be back in Bath…it’s just the loveliest city.
Jennifer’s response to this question is positively, spontaneously raucous. “I don’t think I’ve ever done that!” she exclaims. Oh yes she has; Edina and Madam Arcati to name but two – Jennifer takes a role and owns it. But… “I don’t really understand what an icon is!” she says; “I just do the role I’m doing, and hope that people want to watch me doing it!”
Okay, so we declare a stalemate on Jennifer’s icon/not-an-icon status. The producers of Steve Martin and John Hoffman’s massively successful American murder mystery comedy/drama Only Murders in the Building, however, might take my side.
Jennifer is starring in Only Murders season 6 – informally dubbed Only Murders in London – joining existing superstars in their regular roles of Charles-Haden Savage (Steve Martin), Oliver Putnam (Martin Short), Mabel Mora (Selena Gomez) and Loretta Durkin (Meryl Streep) alongside a star-studded British cast including Olivia Colman, David Tennant and Martin Freeman. See: icons!
But nope: Jennifer will not concur. “Murders was just a lovely job,” she says. “Everyone involved was so chilled out, and easy going, and nice; the whole thing was just like a very well-hosted party. And I didn’t hear a single person get stroppy or shout at anybody during the whole process, which is actually quite rare.” Is Jennifer herself ever drawn to shouting while working? “No, I don’t think so!” she says and I totally believe her – Caramel Bunny, remember? And might ‘not shouting’ also be one of the secrets to the success of her long marriage to Adrian Edmondson? Jennifer married Ade in 1985, around the early Comic Strip era, and the couple went on to have three daughters (and, to date, five grandchildren). “Ade answered this question quite well himself in an interview once: he said, the secret of a good marriage is not to get divorced,” she says. “You can take that in many ways, but I think he’s right – you just work through it all together.”
And together, Jennifer and I have worked through our interview – and my pre-interview nerves were, it seems, entirely redundant.
“I can’t wait to be back in Bath,” she says, before we say goodbye. “I’m so looking forward to it; it’s just the loveliest city. The shops are great, the cafes, bakeries and parks are great. I just love walking around it all, constantly thinking, gosh, how has it kept so beautiful? It’s like a dream!”
And talking to Jennifer was a dream in itself… no self-inflicted pinch-bruises necessary.
The Sea, Theatre Royal Bath,
Thursday 22 October – Saturday 7 November
For tickets and details see: theatreroyal.org.uk