Dawn’s new comedy partner

IF Dawn French’s recent marriage breakdown is affecting her, she’s hiding it well behind that famously wide smile and flirtatious giggle.

The brave face is especially admirable given that she’s promoting her new project, Roger And Val Have Just Got In, a twoperson comedy which explores the intricacies of a marriage.

She plays Val to Alfred Molina’s Roger in the show, in which each episode charts the first half-hour the couple spend together at home after getting back from work.

Not only is it her first project since the split from Lenny Henry after more than 25 years of marriage, but it’s also the first thing she’s done since her professional split with comedy partner Jennifer Saunders, making its focus on a partnership bittersweet.

But, tucked into a cosy corner of a central London hotel, the 52-year-old is focusing on the positive.

“I wanted to do comedy with just one other person and I wanted to do something about marriage. I wanted to look at the minutiae of marriage and I knew that would be a challenge,” French says in that soft West Country lilt we all know and love.

“There are lots of comedies about married people but there’s nothing like this. There are moments here which I’ve never seen on TV, where we have a thought and we just look at each other for a while.

Just the way comfortable people do.”

French is certainly comfortable with co-star Molina, the actor who’s graduated from the British small screen to the Hollywood big screen, but who retains his down-to-earth demeanour, and who French refers to affectionately as Fred.

They nod vigorously at each other’s descriptions of the show. “That’s exactly right, Fred, that’s exactly right,” French says at one point – and giggle when recounting various scenes.

French admits she was determined to cast Molina as Roger, despite being advised against it by the show’s producers.

“They said, ‘But Fred is a movie star, Fred is living in America, come on Dawn think properly’. And there was a moment when I went through a list of other suggestions, but then I said, ‘Please make a call to Fred, just to see, humour me’,” she says, looking at her co-star and laughing.

Luckily, it took Spider-Man 2 actor Molina just two days to decide he wanted to take part, thanks to encouragement from his wife, actress Jill Gascoigne.

He recalls: “I did what I always do when I get a good script. I read it, then hand it to my wife. She was in bed – she was ill at the time – but read it in one go and loved it.”

French and Molina had only met once, by chance, before filming Roger And Val, but now French declares: “I have started an enormous friendship with Fred which will never end.”

French is used to working in a strong partnership, having found her way into the spotlight alongside comedy partner Saunders. The duo have now gone their separate ways after doing their last standup tour together last year, although they’re still firm friends.

Roger And Val Have Just Got In represents a different kind of comedy partnership for French, as the humour is gentler and the themes deeper than in her previous shows such as French and Saunders and The Vicar of Dibley.

It is also a brutally honest depiction of a relationship. Roger and Val squabble like toddlers and sulk like teenagers, but they have no children of their own. French, who adopted daughter Billie, now 17, after a string of failed IVF attempts, says this is crucial to the nature of their relationship.

“I think that’s a very central theme in this marriage,” she says.

“A defining thing happened in their lives many years ago, 18 years ago as it happens, and the rest of their lives have been about distracting themselves from that and just getting through.”

The pair confide in one another about the events of their day, but, over the course of the half-hour, their stories often unravel to reveal they haven’t been exactly truthful in their descriptions.

“Their stories are often hugely exaggerated,” French says with a chuckle.

“But it’s what they share with each other and they look for the comfort of the other person’s help.”

Roger is a botanist and Val a food technology teacher, but they did once have bigger dreams.

“When they met 20 years before, I think they had dreams of travelling around Europe and I think they very quickly settled into a more domestic, suburban lifestyle which they’re both very happy with, but I think with it has come a shrinking of their horizons,” Molina says.

As a consequence, Roger and Val face some tough challenges in making the marriage work, and French hints that their relationship is tested as the series moves into darker territory.

“What the writers have managed to achieve is this: everything is funny, it’s careful, funny, clever comedy. And then they drop you off a cliff like that.

Occasionally, Roger and Val fall away from each other and it’s heartbreaking,” she says, gazing profoundly into the distance.

Both actors admit they were moved by the fact the couple do truly love each other despite their disagreements.

Molina says: “What Roger and Val are saying to each other is, ‘You’re this, this and this, but you’re my this, this and this’.

One of my favourite bits in it is when Roger gets hold of Val and says, ‘It’s so much better in here than out there’. This thing about just needing each other touches me so deeply. The first time I read it, it hit me and when we played it, it did the same thing again.’’ French agrees. “We all long to be in a marriage where you are that loved,” she says, sadly.

■ Roger And Val Have Just Got In begins on BBC One on Friday, August 6