Joanna Lumley thought Absolutely Fabulous co-star Jennifer Saunders hated her

Joanna Lumley has admitted that her first meeting with her Absolutely Fabulous co-star, Jennifer Saunders did not go to plan and she believed the sitcom would never get made.

In the popular 1990s comedy series, Lumley played Patricia “Patsy” Stone, a hard-partying fashion director, opposite Saunders’s public relations mogul Eddie Monsoon.

However, despite its success, the star thought that the show wouldn’t see the light of day as she and Saunders got off on the wrong foot.

Speaking to broadcaster Emma Freud at the Cheltenham Literature Festival, Lumely said that she’d asked her agent to “get me out of this because I know she hates me and she’s too polite to say”.

Lumely jokingly added that Saunders looked like a “sphinx with a migraine” and was only persuaded to continue with the show because she thought it wouldn’t be made.

The actor said that Patsy, who is her best-known character, now follows her around and new roles often involve her having a cigarette and a glass of gin. “Most of my characters, frankly, drink quite a lot. Which is lovely,” she remarked, via The Times.

“Most actors just like changing,” she continued. “­Presenting a moving target, so you can’t be shot down. And also so you don’t bore yourself to death.”

Last year, Lumely said that Saunders planned to kill off their Absolutely Fabulous characters until she intervened to stop her.

Speaking to My Weekly, Lumley recalled how Saunders wrote to her and asked, “Shall we just kill them off and bury them?” in reference to Patsy and Eddie’s fate.

“I wrote back the fastest email return I’ve ever written. I said, ‘No, we’ve promised the world we will never die!’” she said. “‘And to be honest, if all that vodka and champagne they’ve necked over the years hasn’t done the job, then why on earth would their creator be able to do it?’"

The series, which aired from 1992 to 2012, was followed by the 2016 film Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie, where Patsy and Eddie go on the run in the south of France.

Lumely, meanwhile, is promoting her new book A Book of Treasures - a collection of her poems, writings and thoughts. She told the festival that she had planned to dedicate the book to the late Queen Elizabeth II, but Buckingham ­Palace had refused.

The actor, though, did receive a royal seal of approval in 2022 when she was made a dame in the 2022 New Year’s Honours List.