Dawn French has admitted she was jealous of Jennifer Saunders' 'Absolutely Fabulous' success.

Dawn French

Dawn French

Dawn's comedy partner Jennifer, 63, found huge success with the sitcom in the nineties and Dawn, 64, admitted that while she was happy for her pal, she was also extremely envious of her rising stardom.

Speaking on Rylan Clark-Neal's 'RyUnion' podcast, she said: "I got very conflicted about her massive success with 'Ab Fab'. You know when your sister does really well at something? You're like: 'Oh good for you, good for you… f*** you'.

"When you love somebody as much as I love Jennifer, the glee and the happiness and the pride overshadows any other stuff… it does."

Despite her jealousy, Dawn later went on to find her own sitcom success with 'The Vicar of Dibley'.

'Absolutely Fabulous' is based on a sketch the pair wrote on 'French and Saunders', and Dawn has previously spoken about how hard she found Jennifer's success at first.

She quipped: "She had no discernible talent whatsoever until that moment, and then she came through on the inside lane and apparently she was talented all the time. I didn't know that, I thought I was the funny one."

Dawn added: "When I saw that happening it was a huge amount of envy. Right in your belly in a place you don't want it, and its bile-y and it tastes bad and it's all consuming.

"But the good thing is I think you're allowed to own up to it, and that's what I did, I called her lots of words and just said, 'I cannot believe you're this talented, I cannot believe it's this successful, I can't believe I'm not in it ... I'm furious with you and I'm so jealous.' And she loved that that was the case.

"And so in a way that made it alright. And what's more important than the jealousy is that I love the girl."

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