Dame Joanna Lumley is embracing her dark side in new series of Netflix’s Wednesday show later this year, admitting it’s always ‘thrilling’ working alongside iconic Tim Burton
From sexy spy Purdey in The New Avengers to Patsy in Ab Fab, and now a starring role in Tim Burton’s Netflix smash, Wednesday – there is no stopping Joanna Lumley.
Aged 78, age is no obstacle to Dame Joanna, who loves playing Morticia’s monstrous mother Hester Frump in Burton’s gothic Addams Family drama.
The devilish part isn’t much of a stretch along the six degrees of separation from Ab Fab’s Patsy.
She says: “As Wednesday’s granny, I get to wear many, many huge wigs, one on top of the other – and lots of quite constraining clothes – so I love it. There’s always something thrilling about working for Tim Burton.”
She’s also preparing to launch her new TV travel series – Joanna Lumley’s Danube – in June on ITV.
Exploring the river from its source in Germany to its mouth in the Black Sea, she stops in Bavaria, Slovakia, Hungary, Vienna and Budapest. She visits a brewery run by nuns and stays overnight at King Charles’ “shabby chic” retreat in Transylvania – home of fictional vampire Count Dracula.
Joanna, who received her Damehood from Princess Anne in 2022, loved the King’s nature reserve retreat in the Zalan Valley, where members of the public can stay from just £120 a night.
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She tells The Mirror: “It is in Romania, the most extraordinary old farm house which King Charles rescued with small farms and cottages.
“Because he loves the wildness and everything is butterflies, bees and birds. There were beautiful crops and there was a wild natural beauty about it. It was kept pretty sparse and spartan. It was quite lovely.”
Then, among the holy drinkers at the nuns’ brewery, she recalls a Sister Doris telling her: “If Jesus Christ were Bavarian he would have drank beer instead of wine”.
The new Danube travel series comes on top of Joanna’s adventures across Russia, Siberia, Japan, Berlin, Paris, Rome and India – all filmed for ITV.
She says her ancestors were well travelled and her grandfather was once a “gun runner” to the King of Bhutan.
She adds: “My grandfather was a diplomat and his remit was Bhutan and Tibet. He was invited, I like to think by King George V, to go to Bhutan which was a completely closed country in 1930, to give the very young King of Bhutan the KCIE (the Knight Commander of the Indian Empire).
“It was a huge honour. He took my grandmother and she took her dogs.
“When they arrived, they had to entertain the King and his court so they took presents from the west – and things that were useful like a box of guns. There were rifles there.”
Former Sixties model Joanna says there is no time for glamour on her travels. But playing Purdey in The New Avengers – her big break – alongside Patrick Macnee as Steed, prepared her for DIY glam.
“I remember the haircut was unbelievable,” she says, of the Purdey cut. ”I said I wanted my hair cut short and they said ‘Well, you will have to do it yourself.’ It was extraordinary.
“When I began as a model you had to do all your own make-up and your own hair, eye lashes, your own fingernails. You had to provide all your own accessories.”
She is equally resourceful when travelling – when she faces extremes of temperature and terrain.
She says: “You have to have clothes that will work. The camera does not see dirt and it does not see rain and it does not smell.
“I always take tough clothes if I have to wade through a river or something grand if I have to meet a king or a president.”
Unlike celebrities who demand champagne on tap, Joanna’s riders are as down-to-earth as her personality.
“The only thing I put on my rider when travelling is that I don’t eat meat or fish in case I get an upset tummy,” she says. “So if I am presented with meat when I visit somewhere I just say ‘Oh it is against my religion.’”
She does insist on the chance to engage with animals and not to face extreme heights.
She explains: “I always say ‘Can we please see animals’ as they do share the Earth with us.
“I won’t do heights. It harks back to the time when myself and Jennifer Saunders were at the top of a skyscraper in New York on Absolutely Fabulous.
“Being in New York, that was the worst height terror I’ve ever had. I remember we took Concorde over for the day and back again.
“We were filming at the top of this huge building and I could not leave for about 20 minutes. I just had to stand there, breathing, breathing. We were 57 stories up with Central Park spreading out in front of us. It was terrifying.”
Her fear of heights was triggered filming The New Avengers when she once had to do her own stunt by clinging onto a helicopter like Mission Impossible star Tom Cruise.
She recalls: “I had to get onto a moving helicopter. They let down a ladder. They told me to step onto the first rung and I had to hold this glass of champagne and up we went.
“I hung on and up it goes. I said ‘Where am I going?’ and they said “’Across Oxfordshire’. I was swinging underneath the helicopter for about 40 miles. My arms were dead as I was hanging on. When we landed this stunt boy said ‘You are now an honorary member of the stunt team.’
Enjoying a massively varied career since her modelling days in London’s Swinging Sixties, she’s appeared on stage and TV in everything from Steptoe & Son to Coronation Street and Are You Being Served? – also being a Bond girl alongside 007 star George Lazenby in the 1969 movie On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.
Seeing it all as one big adventure, she says: “I did not want to work in an office and I decided to become a model. In those days if you were not literally dead or 4ft1 you could become a model and I had the happiest time for three whole years.
“The good thing was it was the Sixties and London was alive with photographers, The Rolling Stones, The Beatles and nightclubs full of rock stars. Nobody was rich in those days, so it was fabulous.”
With no career path planned and just wanting to “do good work with good people,” she says: “In those days, as a model, you were absolutely the bottom of the pile. They knew you could not learn lines or speak.
“They knew you would be terribly vain and would not be prepared to change your look or dress up. They could not have been more wrong with me. The only thing to do is to grab, grab, grab.
“Actors are like painters and decorators. We are given a job just like a painter is told to paint a room dark purple. You do what others tell you to do and you learn a great deal from doing odd things.
“When you do get to work with giants in the business it feels as if you are playing tennis with Rafa Nadal, someone so gifted they make you feel gifted.”
And her advice?
“I say to youngsters wanting a start in this business, ‘Don’t be too special but always be on time, be prompt and learn your lines,’” she says.
She employs the same down to earth charm when travelling.
“Do not show fear, always show friendliness so you say ‘Bonjour’ to everyone you meet,” she advises.
Just going to places and talking to people in a “warts and all” fashion is, Joanna says, responsible for her travel shows’ success.
“I am a rufty tufty person so it does not matter too much,” she says, while admitting there can be challenges.
“Some of the loos I have been to defy description, as they are just holes in the ground, or they are long drops with a seat on a mountain top.
“I have seen cockroaches the size of terriers crawling across the floor!”
While Joanna says the Sistine Chapel is “the best thing I’ve ever seen,” she hopes her new show will inspire more people to find hidden treasures off the beaten track.
She says: “This world is so full of glories once you explore. I do love it when I see tourists in London look at Big Ben. I see the joy on their faces. But what is extraordinary is to get off the beaten track.”
Despite being 80 in 12 months, Joanna is not slowing down. She says: “I guess being asked if you can still cut your own toenails is a technical medical test. But I usually reply ‘No. I usually have servants.’”
She laughs, recalling an Ab Fab episode when Eddy and Patsy wore bald wigs.
“We dressed up bald,”she says. “I remember we were shooting near Reading and we were out driving dressed up as old people.
“When we stopped at the traffic lights a car pulled up beside us and someone recognised us despite all the make-up and said ‘Oh look, it’s Joanna Lumley!’”
