Ignored, insulted, breastfed by strangers, sold into white slavery, exposed from atop the Eiffel Tower . . .
Julia Sawalha had finally had enough.
“When I was asked to do the 20th anniversary special, I was reticent about it,” confides the actress who has, as Safflower “Saffy” Monsoon, barely tolerated the antics of her fictional mom Edwina (Jennifer Saunders) and chain-smoking nemesis Patsy Stone (Joanna Lumley) in several seasons and specials of Absolutely Fabulous, the cult-hit Britcom about the rich and toasted.
“I felt I had put Saffy to ‘sleep’ and wasn’t sure if I could resurrect her,” she says. “It was kind of like she had turned into a ventriloquist’s dummy that was lying in a dusty old box, and if I got her out I would just be working her like a puppet.
“But as Jennifer emailed me a couple of ideas she had planned for Saffy, I immediately roared with laughter and everything sprang to life.”
The first of those ideas, and the starting point for the first of two half-hour AbFab specials airing on Vision TV this Thursday and July 5: Saffy has just spent two years in prison on fraud charges.
Sawalha, like Saffy, takes these things in stride. “I don’t have a reaction to storylines, as we have quite a thin grasp of the text/plot when we first start,” she says. “I never get attached to certain lines or plots, as things get cut and changed right up to the last minute.
“Though you can get a recurring joke that pops up in the next script, then gets cut again, that always makes me laugh.”
Laughter sets the tone on the AbFab set. “There is an awful lot of laughing that goes on during rehearsals . . . what I really love is seeing Jennifer laugh; it is very infectious. Also, when she is laughing, of course it is going to be at something very funny.”
Memories of those days made the decision to come back a no-brainer. “Jennifer’s enthusiasm to work with us all came across very clearly,” she says.
“I thought, ‘Are you crazy, Julia? You love working with the girls, Go have some fun.’
READ MORE:http://www.toronto.com/article/734561--saffy-s-back-and-absolutely-fabulous
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