Iconic actress shocked fans as she shared that she had been catching up with the “OG Vicar”, who the religious sitcom Vicar of Dibley was set on. Wearing her winter woolies, the 67-year-old star posed next to Joy Carrol Wallis as she posted to her account.
The pair huddled together as they smiled into the camera, with Dawn – who starred as vicar Geraldine Granger since the Vicar Of Dibley began in 1994 right up to its revival in 2020 – writing: “Caught up with the OG Vicar #joycarrollwallis. She is ACTUAL joy…”
Joy was one of the very first women ordained a priest in the Church of England in 1994 – she is a true trail-blazer who became the adviser and role model for Richard Curtis, who penned and created the series.
In a recent exclusive interview, former star how the real life vicar inspired the character of Geraldine. The self-confessed superfan said: “It was based on a wonderful Vicar called Joy Carroll.
“She was a Vicar in London and Richard Curtis went along to a wedding that she did and thought ‘this is great, of course there should be women vicars’. So he based the character of Geraldine on a real person.
Dawn French as Geraldine Grainger on Vicar of Dibley (Image: BBC)
“What Geraldine the fictitious character and Joy the real person did was make it look possible to be yourself to be this job. I always thought if you wanted to be a priest you had to water yourself down and be a bit bland and boring and samey.
“But they just went ‘oh no, you can actually like popular music and know stuff about popular culture and wear what you want’. So it made it look possible is what I think it was.”
Joy herself has also said how important the muhc-loved programme was to her. In previous interview for Principles TV, she explained: “It helped the country, ordinary people sitting in their living rooms who may or may not go to church, it helped everybody receive women priests into the community and fabrics of society.
“The way that happened was Geraldine was not the figure you were supposed to laugh at in the Vicar of Dibley.”
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Dawn and Joy posed together on Instagram (Image: Instagram)
She continued: “Geraldine was really smart and funny, she was almost this saintly person who put up with all these idiots around her, and you laughed at everybody else in the show.”
The priest’s website also explains how her and Dawn became friends as she writes: “He [Richard Curtis] had written one episode of a new series about a woman priest for the , but quickly realized that he knew nothing about women priests.
“To cut a long story short, I became his unofficial advisor and friend/chaplain to the cast of The Vicar of Dibley. The actress Dawn French shadowed me for a while, coming to hear me preach, officiate at a funeral and as we spent time together we became firm friends.”
She continued: “In the UK I became known as the real ‘Vicar of Dibley’ and eventually was given the opportunity to write my book, Beneath the Cassock, the story of the Real Vicar of Dibley which really was an opportunity to tell the story of a woman in ordained ministry and document the struggle for, and the realization of the ordination of women in England.”