Category: Julia Sawalha
Julia Sawalha Was Told Her Voice Was “Too Old” To Reprise Her Role As Ginger In “Chicken Run”
I’ve never actually seen 2000’s Chicken Run, which The Hollywood Reporter calls “the most successful stop-motion animation of all time,” but if I did, I don’t think I’d be all too concerned that one of the chickens didn’t sound her age, especially given the fact that the average life-span of a chicken is 5-10 years. So when I learned that former HSOTD Julia Sawalha, the actress who voiced Ginger in the original wasn’t being invited back to reprise her role in the upcoming sequel, I assumed it must have been because she was a raging anti-Semite with bad breath and a storied history of being a racist homophobe. However, it turns out she didn’t get invited back because she is an ancient 51-year-old and the producers told her they were going to recast a younger actor for the role. 51, can you imagine? That’s like 500 in chicken years!
Dame June Whitfield, Who Played Gran On “AbFab,” Has Died
Dame June Whitfield, accomplished British thespian and “Gran” from Absolutely Fabulous, has left us. She was 93, and the BBC reports that she died peacefully in her sleep. This is sad because anyone related to AbFab dying means they can’t appear in any future episodes. AbFab should be forever. AbFab is what got some of us through the late 90s. And Dame June as the lovable, flaky, “thieving old person” Gran was perfection. It probably wasn’t easy playing opposite comedy icons Jennifer Saunders and Joanna Lumley as acid-tongued fashion desperate Edina Monsoon and her icy, vodka-soaked sidekick Patsy Stone. But Whitfield pulled it off and then some. Gran can’t be gone! *wails*