Jennifer Saunders

Intro

Jennifer Saunders is an English comedian, actor and writer whose work includes the sketch partnership French and Saunders and the sitcom Absolutely Fabulous. As Edina Monsoon, she created a character driven by fashion, status and an extraordinary capacity for self-justification. Her career also includes ensemble comedy, animation and dramatic film roles. Writing and performance have frequently been closely connected in her work: the person shaping a comic situation is also the person testing its rhythm, exaggeration and emotional logic in front of the camera.

Career snapshot

Saunders and Dawn French met while studying at the Central School of Speech and Drama. BAFTA's account of their partnership traces their early public work to London's Comic Strip club and their television appearances to The Comic Strip Presents in 1982. Their own programme, French and Saunders, began in 1987. Film, celebrity and popular culture became recurring subjects for parody, with the two performers frequently exposing the absurdity of the act of performing itself. The partnership depended as much on their reactions to one another as on costume or imitation.

The entry point

Absolutely Fabulous began in 1992, with Saunders as Edina and Joanna Lumley as Patsy Stone. In a 2023 ABC interview, Saunders explained that she had not initially conceived the programme as a double act, but that finding a colleague with a shared sense of humor and mutual trust made the work more enjoyable. Their contrasting characters gave the series a durable comic relationship. Edina's family and professional world supplied further resistance to her behavior, allowing Saunders to build stories around the gap between her character's self-image and what others could plainly see.

Screen identity and style

The work extended beyond those two best-known programmes. Saunders wrote and appeared in Jam and Jerusalem and The Life and Times of Vivienne Vyle, exploring different social settings and comic personalities. In 2009 she and French received the BAFTA Fellowship in recognition of their body of work. That honor recognized a sustained contribution to television, rather than a prize for a single episode or performance. Their support for Comic Relief also gave the partnership occasions to revisit parody in short, concentrated pieces made for a broad public audience.

Collaborations and patterns

Animation introduced Saunders to another audience. In Shrek 2 she voiced the Fairy Godmother and performed songs including Holding Out for a Hero. The role placed a familiar fairytale figure inside the film's comic reversal of romantic convention, combining reassuring manners with determined self-interest. Her later voice work included Nana Noodleman in Sing and Sing 2. Those performances differ from appearing as Edina in person, but they similarly depend on recognizable vocal decisions: authority, impatience and theatrical emphasis can establish a character even when the performer herself is never seen.

Era reflection

For Allelujah, released in Britain in 2023, Saunders took on a very different assignment as a nurse in a hospital facing closure. In the ABC interview she described working on a Yorkshire accent with recorded examples, including a nurse's voice, and drawing on her observation of care work. The production filmed in a disused hospital, which she said contributed strongly to the atmosphere. Based on Alan Bennett's play, the film placed her within an ensemble and a story combining humor with more troubling questions about institutions, age and care.

Legacy and rediscovery

The photographs here show Saunders at two Australian appearances. The first is a Melbourne portrait dated April 23, 2014; the second records the Australian premiere of Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie on July 31, 2016. The premiere photograph preserves the event around her rather than presenting a crop as another production image. Together they connect the public performer with the continuing life of her work beyond its original broadcasts. Her career can be followed through the different demands of writing a sitcom, sustaining a comedy partnership, voicing animation and interpreting another writer's dramatic material.

Selected screen roles

• French and Saunders: Various characters; writer — from 1987
• Absolutely Fabulous: Edina Monsoon; writer — from 1992
• Shrek 2: Fairy Godmother, voice — 2004
• Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie: Edina Monsoon; writer — 2016
• Sing: Nana Noodleman, voice — 2016
• Sing 2: Nana Noodleman, voice — 2021
• Allelujah: Sister Gilpin — 2023 UK release

A career in pictures

Distinct photographs document a 2014 Melbourne appearance and the 2016 Australian film premiere.

Melbourne portrait (2014)

Public appearance

Jennifer Saunders in Melbourne on April 23, 2014; photograph by Diggies99.

Absolutely Fabulous Australian premiere (2016)

Premiere appearance

Saunders in the foreground at the Australian premiere on July 31, 2016; photograph by Eva Rinaldi.

Rewatch notes

• She and Dawn French received the BAFTA Fellowship in 2009.
• She voiced the Fairy Godmother in Shrek 2.