When Dawn French started writing a book about death (it’s called Enough, if you haven’t already heard), it made her reflect a lot on both life and the end of it. In an exclusive interview with Good Housekeeping, she opened up about the feelings that surfaced along the way, including who she will eventually leave behind and the heartbreaking worry she has for her grandchild that makes her “really sad”.
“I was thinking about who you leave behind when you go,” she said. “I have my daughter, Billie [with former husband Lenny Henry], and two stepkids [via her husband, Mark Bignell], one of whom has a young daughter. My grandchild has this innocent belief that life is wonderful, but I feel extremely troubled by everything. The world seems hopeless just now.”
She wonders, she shared, “what kind of legacy” we’re leaving behind for our children. “It seems we’ve learned nothing about war and torture. Nothing about being kind to each other,” she said. “Nothing about saving the planet. If anything, we’ve gone backwards.”
She worries, too, about the normalisation of porn and the pressure on young people. “The way sex is represented in porn is not attainable or attractive to me. Lovely, rather wobbly, sweaty, smelly, rather awkward stuff is what I’m attracted to. I love flawed things because we’re all flawed. There’s so much pressure on young people today, in every area.
“It was so different when I was growing up. I didn’t have to learn to take a photo of myself from above so you can’t see my chin or so that you can see my tits… I feel really sad about it.”
Dawn's novel, Enough, is a moving yet darkly humorous take on how we deal with ageing and the end of our lives. The central character is Etta, a seemingly healthy 68-year-old grandmother who has gathered her family to announce that it will be her last day on Earth. She’s made the decision to end her own life because she wants to free her family “from the crap to come.”
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It’s not all morbid and there’s plenty of humour thrown in, too. Etta’s final day is interspersed with flashbacks to her teenage years, with memories of lads smoking in the park and messy sex. And yet heartbreakingly, at one point, Etta says, ‘If there was some way of staying here without getting old, I’d choose that… we all would.’”
When asked in the interview if her daughter, Billie, who’s in her mid-30s, has read the book, Dawn revealed that she hasn’t, nor does she know much about it. “She knows very little about this book. Once Billie and my two stepkids have read it, we’ll have a conversation,” she explained. “I have no intention of presenting them with a decision in the way that Etta does with her kids.
“My motivation was writing about something that would frighten me. And the idea of getting older, of being vulnerable, of no longer being independent – those things are all daunting. I made Etta my age for a few reasons, one of which was laziness; I didn’t have to research the music and politics with which she grew up.’
Despite her somewhat darker venture, Dawn also shared that she won’t be turning her back on comedy any time soon. Next up is a reunion with Jennifer Saunders; the pair will play the Ugly Sisters in a production of Cinderella at the London Palladium and Dawn says it will be “naughtier than anything I’ve ever done”.
“It also means that Jennifer and I will be able to spend all that time together,” she added. “People used to ask us to do panto in the 1980s, but it wasn’t fun back then the way it is now. The script for Cinderella is genius – it will be a kind of festive variety show.’
Read the full interview in Good Housekeeping UK’s July issue, on sale now. Enough (Penguin Michael Joseph, RRP £22) by Dawn French is out now.
