MY, WHAT BIG TEETH YOU HAVE! Richard Ericson, Studios of Key West’s interviewer, reacts to Dawn French’s Zoom entrance for their Between Two Palms interview. ‘Tis the season of the mask.
YOU THINK YOU KNOW Dawn French — and most of us Americans do because she was the co-creator of “Absolutely Fabulous” — but then she walks in with a different face.
For a second, it threw off Richard Ericson, who was about to interview her for Between Two Palms, the new conversation series from Studios of Key West. But she soon took off the bottom half of her face — a relentlessly smiley mask — and revealed herself, relaxing at her home in Cornwall, England.
“It’s very craggy,” she said. “There’s moors. There’s cliffs.” Oh, and the Atlantic Ocean. It’s the southwesternmost inhabited point of the U.K. And on Oct. 28, 2020, she said, it was a dark and stormy night.
COAST TO COAST Cornwall, where French grew up and lives, is the southwesternmost inhabited point of the United Kingdom. Her interviewer was in Key West, Fla., the southernmost point of the continental United States.
CONSIDERING THAT HALF THE world is on pandemic lockdown, French has been exceptionally busy, Her new film, an all-star-ensemble remake of “Death on the Nile” directed by and starring Kenneth Branagh (as Hercule Poirot), is due in theaters in December.
And she had just finished filming “Roald and Beatrix: The Tail of the Curious Mouse,” a family-film about the children’s book author Beatrix Potter and the future children’s book author Roald Dahl, who met her, his idol, when he was 6.
MURDER MOST FOUL French with Jennifer Saunders, her longtime comedy partner, in Kenneth Branagh’s remake of “Death on the Nile,” scheduled to open in December.
Yes, French was filming in the middle of the Covid crisis. “The whole crew was in PPE,” she mentioned, referring to personal protective equipment (but you knew that). For the same reason, when she needed to film a special project related to her hit series “The Vicar of Dibley,” (1994-2007, roughly) the cameras came to her home.
Her newest novel, “Because of You,” was published in October. Most ads and reviews refer to it as a touching story of mother-daughter love. French points out a crucial plot point: Somebody steals a baby.
No theater plans were announced, but then if Broadway is closed until June 2021, why should London theatergoers have all the fun? French’s West End plays have run from “Me and Mamie O’Rourke” (1993) to “Snow White at the Palladium” (2018).
But there were plenty of other subjects to talk about. Did you know that French, a Welsh-born Brit, spent a year at Spence, the prestigious private school in Manhattan? It had something to do with a debating scholarship. Did you know she has a special compartment in her refrigerator for chocolate?
She’s very particular about her Cornish pasties (rhymes with “nasties”). And Annette Bening, who is also in “Death on the Nile,” is her “new best friend.” (Couldn’t tell whether that was truth or wishful thinking.)
MY NEXT GUEST NEEDS NO INTRODUCTION French appeared on “Absolutely Fabulous” in 1992 as a relentlessly upbeat television talk-show host. She did her best to interview Patsy Stone (Joanna Lumley, with cigarette). American audiences first saw this BBC show on Comedy Central in 1994.
“Can you teach comedy?” asked Ericson, a theater producer and director who was a film-industry speech and dialect coach earlier in his career.
French hesitated a little, then decided, “You can unlock people that are a bit tight.”
BETWEEN TWO PALMS is a new conversation series from the Studios of Key West. One-hour live-streaming interviews with notable people in the performing, literary and fine arts. (305) 296-0548. tskw.org. $20, $15 for members. Recent subjects have included Marisa Tomei, Kenny Leon, Kate Burton, Jack O’Brien and Tony Shalhoub. Coming soon: Judith Light, Nov. 18.