This movie was finalized as part of a bet made on the radio. Jennifer Saunders was determined to get the movie made in order to win a bet with comedy partner Dawn French, and would have to pay her ten thousand pounds sterling or have the script in her hands by the end of 2015. She succeeded in the latter, although when French first properly looked through the script, after page thirty-five, it just said "blah blah blah blah...".
Graham Norton announced his cameo on his Instagram profile. Several years before this movie was announced, he interviewed Jennifer Saunders on this talk-show The Graham Norton Show (2007) and revealed his own excitement for the possibility of this movie.
Despite featuring as a key element in the storyline, Kate Moss hadn't been approached to feature in this movie, when Jennifer Saunders was pitching the story to BBC Films and Fox Searchlight. Saunders admittedly took it for granted that she would be a part of the project.
After years of togetherness, Saunders and Lumley are a particularly sharp double act. "Some of my happiest times have been sitting in costume with Joanna, having conversations in character that just make us pee", says Saunders. "She is a seriously funny person and the joy is that she is not remotely precious. I love working with her. Just being Eddy and Patsy is, to me, like a kind of mindfulness. If I could just do Eddy and Patsy for ten minutes a day, I'd probably be absolutely sorted; getting out all that laughter and all that angst and saying things you are never usually allowed to say. Once I'd done that, I could just continue on a cloud of loveliness. The greatest thing, for me, is that there has never been anywhere we couldn't go with the characters and, on the film, this was amplified."
Barry Humphries: In two cameos, as Charlie and as Dame Edna Everage. Humphries is billed for Charlie while the Dame Edna character is credited for "her" character.