Matt Lucas has spoken out to clarify reports about a project he and comedy partner David Walliams are currently working on.
Earlier this week, the former Great British Bake Off host made headlines when he revealed that he and David were planning to “have diverse talent on screen and in the writers’ room” on their new show.
“[We want to] conceive it as something which is just not about me and David playing absolutely everyone,” he told The Sun.
“That is something we should have done but didn’t do back then. But we were making the show at the same time as many other people who were doing what we were doing and had that approach.”
While the tabloid attributed these quotes to being about a revival of Little Britain, Matt has since set the record straight over on X (formerly Twitter).
“Sorry to disappoint you (or delight you) but the stories in the papers about me and David writing a new series of Little Britain are not true,” he insisted.
“We’re working on a different idea.”
Even while it was originally airing in the early 2000s, Little Britain faced criticism over some of the characters depicted in it.
This conversation resurfaced in 2020, when both Matt and David issued a public apology for portraying characters of different races in both Little Britain and another of their sketch comedies, Come Fly With Me.
Around this time, Little Britain was also removed from the BBC’s iPlayer service, although it has since returned, albeit in an edited form with some scenes removed.
In a statement issued to HuffPost UK last year, a BBC rep explained that comedians Matt and David had made “edits” to their original show “that better reflect the changes in the cultural landscape over the last twenty years since the show was first made.”
Responding to criticisms of Little Britain, Matt added to The Sun: “Because some people are upset about what we do, or what we have done, out of respect to those people I don’t talk about it publicly because I don’t want to cause further upset to people who were upset.
“I totally accept there are different opinions. I accept people feel very differently from others and I respect everyone’s opinion from wherever they come from on this subject. I see things differently now to how we did. Things have changed and I respect that.”