29 August 2023 , 13:01
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Mrs Brown's Boys star Brendan O'Carroll has taken the opportunity to give a nod goodbye to the late Barry Humphries and Paul O'Grady while writing the new four part series of the hit comedy show.
Barry Humphries, who played the iconic Dame Edna Everage, passed away in April this year aged 89 and Paul O'Grady who shot to fame playing Lily Savage, sadly died a month before, aged 67. Brendan, 67, is set to reprise his role and the cheeky matriarch Agnes Brown in the series, alongside Jennifer Gibney who plays Cathy Brown, Paddy Houlihan as Dermot Brown, Eilish O’Carroll as Winnie McGoogan, Dermot O’Neill as Grandad and Pat Shields as Mark Brown.
Mrs Brown's Boys star Brendan O'Carroll pays tribute to legendary TV stars Barry Humphries and Paul O'Grady (BBC)The show has been a staple on the Christmas TV schedule for more than a decade but this is the first time the new episodes will run as a mini-series since 2013. Speaking ahead of the new show which is set to air on September 8, Brendan said: "I always try and put a little message, if I can, into every one of them (episodes). In this whole series, I wanted to say goodbye to Dame Edna and to Paul. So it was hard to find that spot but I did find it, within the series, I did find it. I don’t tell the BBC these things, I just do them.”
Australian star Barry Humphries entertained generations with satirical characters including Dame Edna Everage and Sir Les Patterson during his seven-decade career, while Paul O'Grady hosted a string of TV programmes, following his rise to fame as the Liverpool born star Lily Savage. Brendan also claimed that he found it easier to write the new series instead of the Christmas special as he felt more free to explore different storylines.
He added: "The reason that I wrote this one is that I’d never done Agnes as depressed, and everybody gets depressed at some time. But I thought it’d be nice to see what she’s like, or what the family’s like when she’s depressed, and also to have the family ignore the fact that she was depressed." He continued: "In other words, ‘Ah come on Mammy, get a grip on yourself’ and so there was that end of it.There was also (the fact) to make sure that I got the message across that Agnes is depressed, but she sought help, she did contact the doctor. That’s what you’ve got to do when you’re depressed. You can’t handle it on your own, it’s difficult. So I wanted to put that across, but as well as that try and be funny."
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And for the first time since Covid social distancing restrictions, Brendan and the cast were able to film in a TV studio with a live audience and he claimed it felt like a "rebirth." He explained: "We love a live audience. It always feels like a compliment to me that we had four episodes to do, we had 400 seats in the studio so it gave (the BBC) 1600 tickets to give out, and we had 96,000 requests for tickets."
He added: "It’s just incredible that people want the experience of just being at a Mrs Brown (recording) and it is an experience because we don’t stop, even when we’re not on camera, we don’t stop." The cast of the show includes members of Brendan's own family. But he has always stated that his character is no reflection of his own mother.
He went on to say: "So I used to go, ‘No, no’. But actually, the longer it goes on, I start to realise, Agnes is my mum, but without the education my mum had. My mum had a great education. Agnes didn’t, but she has the wisdom. And she has that turn of phrase – mum would have a turn of phrase for everything, but Agnes has that turn of phrase that she doesn’t always get right – ‘Well, that’s the way it goes, the cows come home to roost’. But you know what she means, and she knows what she means."
He added: " I think the freedom of being Agnes comes from, I learned a lot from my mum. I’m the youngest of the 11 kids – she was 46 when I was born. By the time I got to formative years, the other family had either emigrated or got married. So I had the uninterrupted attention of this genius of a woman. So I soaked everything up from her.”