David Walliams has vowed the new version of Little Britain will be as edgy as the original.
The 52-year-old former Britain’s Got Talent judge wrote and appeared in the controversial BBC Three sketch show – which ran from 2003 to 2006 – alongside Matt Lucas, 50, and has promised the newly-revived programme will include non-PC jokes akin to what had come before in the original and their other popular comedy Come Fly With Me.
He did however insist the content would not be conveyed in ‘terrible taste’, after the original episodes were taken down from iPlayer and Netflix.
During an appearance on The Therapy Crouch podcast, he said: ‘We’re writing again but we want to do entirely new characters like Come Fly With Me.
‘It’s a little bit edgy, there are jokes in it that are like, not in terrible taste, but, you know, like Little Britain was and Come Fly With Me.’
Chatting to Abbey Clancy and Peter Crouch, Walliams clarified: ‘No, it’s not trendy, it’s edgy.
‘It’s walking a line between… like some people might be a little bit shocked.’
Talking about ‘toeing that line’, he pointed out controversial Netflix specials, including those of Ricky Gervais, Dave Chappelle and Jimmy Carr, calling them ‘edgy’ too.
‘They’re all really, really edgy, they’re very exciting and funny and shocking and all these things,’ Walliams went on.
‘And a lot of people, not everybody, but a lot of people like it that way, don’t they?
‘I grew up watching Life of Brian, which at the time was banned in certain countries and people protested outside the cinemas.’
He added: ‘I’ve always liked things that are on the edge, but I do think it depends where you’re doing it and what time you’re doing it, I mean, I like edgy comics, Jimmy Carr, I think he’s amazing, Frankie Boyle, he’s incredible.’
Walliams went on to say that he’s ‘always’ liked ‘the rude stuff and the dangerous stuff and the shocking stuff’, calling things like that ‘explosively funny’.
Little Britain came under fire for its stereotypical ethnic and social portrayals which were deemed derogatory to groups from the LGBTQ community to wheelchair users.
When the reboot of the comedy programme was announced last year, former Bake Off host Matt emphasised it would be ‘different in many ways’ from what was originally seen in an effort to avoid backlash, with discussions over having ‘diverse talent’ on screen and in the writers’ room.
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.’
The comedian insisted he and his co-writer didn’t want to cause any ‘further upset’ with the new version of the programme.
He explained: ‘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.’
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