Joanna Lumley says she enjoyed playing a ‘beastly mother’ in Finding Alice

Joanna Lumley has said that she enjoyed playing a ‘beastly mother’ in ITV’s upcoming series Finding Alice.

Talking in a new interview with Radio Times, the Absolutely Fabulous legend, 74, also praised the show for ‘normalising’ discussions around death.

Joanna stars as Sarah in Finding Alice with Nigel Havers as her on-screen husband, Roger, and Keeley Hawes as their daughter, Alice.

The series starts with Alice, her husband Harry (Jason Merrells) and their daughter Charlotte (Isabella Pappas) moving into their dream home which Harry, a property developer, has been building for years, he falls down the staircase and dies. 

The six-part series then focuses on how Alice slowly picks herself up and finds her inner strength, especially as the police are investigating exactly how her husband came to fall down the stairs. 

Talking about her ‘beastly mother’ character, Joanna admitted that she has enjoyed being castes against type.

The first time fans see Joanna’s character Sarah is when she and her husband Roger arrive to comfort Alice, to which she asks her grieving daughter: ‘What on earth are you wearing?’

Talking about the role, Joanna told Radio Times: ‘My character Sarah is tricky, and I think this may be my new role in dramas: rather beastly mothers. I’m hoping it’s cast against type! 

‘She’s rather a stickler for how things are usually done, where the undertakers come and do it all properly and it’s done and dusted with the body taken away from you.’

Praising the show for ‘normalising’ discussions around death, Joanna added: ‘The series isn’t encouraging people to go out with a spade and dig a hole in the garden. 

‘But what I like about it is that for Alice and her daughter Charlotte, the chances are that they can feel closer to Harry while they’re preparing what to put on the top of his coffin and how to make the little service at home. 

‘It might be part of the grieving process, I think.’

Joanna added that during the AIDS crisis, people found ‘great comfort’ in helping to ‘lay out and view the body’.  

The star recalled how an old friend of her mother’s ‘sat with her deceased husband every day for a week’ in a bid to feel closer to her late spouse and get solace.  

Joanna added that nobody can ‘escape’ death so it’s important to ‘talk about it’, she added: ‘What the series does is open up the whole idea of talking about death. 

‘Joan Bakewell, a great heroine of mine, is always saying, ‘We have got to talk about it. It’s completely normal — dying is just as normal as being born, and it’s going to happen to each and every one of us. Nobody can escape it.’

‘So for goodness’ sake, let’s think about it and let’s talk about it!’ 

Co-produced by Keeley Hawes, who also stars as the Alice of the title, it sees Joanna steal every scene she’s in as Alice’s rather brutal mother Sarah. 

Joanna and Nigel were always Keeley’s first choices to play Alice’s parents in the show, which she has co-produced with The Durrells creators Simon Nye and Roger Goldby.

‘A few people have said Joanna and I are kind of similar, which is incredibly flattering,’ Keeley told Daily Mail’s Weekend Magazine. 

‘She is a brilliant actress and nobody does comedy like her. It’s a dream come true to be working with her.’

The idea for a contemporary light drama about loss was first discussed when the three were working on The Durrells.

In that hit period drama, Keeley’s character Louisa had been recently widowed, and in this new series co-writers Simon and Roger wanted to explore a world in which everything had changed and yet the mundanity of life continued.

‘Death is something that touches everyone’s life,’ said Keeley, 44.

‘We wanted to look at what happens when someone dies, especially when they’re young; what happens to all of those people they leave behind. It can be like a grenade being thrown into a family, especially because of who Alice is.

‘She’s someone – and I think we all know people like this – who is almost completely reliant on the other person in their relationship. Harry is the breadwinner and she’s been at home looking after their daughter and just existed within their family.

‘At one point she says, ‘I haven’t got any friends because I only needed Harry.’ First she has to learn how to cope without him, and then she discovers all this other stuff about him.’

You can read the full interview in the latest issue of Radio Times. 

Finding Alice starts later this month on ITV.