'My Daughter Got Me Obsessed!'

We travelled to freezing Finland to meet Jennifer Saunders and learn of her passion for the Moomins…

- Nick Cannon

The temperature is minus 10 outside in snowy Finland and a lavish party is about to get underway inside a top Helsinki museum. Some Finnish TV bigwigs are sipping fizz alongside the country’s politicians and all are here for the glitzy launch of Sky One’s new, no-expense-spared animated series Moominvalley. But the biggest buzz happens when big-name British actors arrive, including Taron Egerton and Rosamund Pike. Jennifer Saunders has also breezed in looking Ab Fab as she’s whisked up to the VIP area.

There we find time to chat about Finland’s iconic Moomin characters, created by the late Finnish author Tove Jansson and on which the new 10-part Moominvalley is based… Jennifer’s very enthusiastic about the project, but admits it was a nudge by her daughter Freya which threw her into becoming the voice of Moominvalley’s Mymble as she reveals here…

Many of us have grown up reading the iconic Moomin books... so what do they mean to you?

I was never really into Moomins. I remember the books being around, but it was my youngest daughter Freya who just took to them and everything was Moomin this and Moomin that, so I really learned about the Moomin world through her. She’s now 28 and she’s overexcited to be here this evening. She’s just so sad that Moominland is closed for the winter! Freya loves everything that Tove Jansson’s ever written, so when this came up I just thought abso-bloody-lutely I’m doing it.