What shows has Matt Lucas been in? All about the comedian accused of ‘bullying’ Millie Bobby Brown

Matt Lucas is in the news again. The popular British comedian and actor recently apologized to popular actress Millie Bobby Brown when she called him out in a video posted to her Instagram, which attacked journalists who make hurtful and disrespectful comments about her appearance.

Lucas had earlier posted an image of Brown dressed in pink clothes with a blonde bun, strikingly similar to his character Vicky Pollard from the sketch comedy, Little Britain. Lucas had posted the image alongside Vicky’s catchphrase, “No, but yeah, but.”

In his apology, Lucas directly addressed Brown and explained why he had posted the image, also sharing that he thinks very highly of Brown.

Matt Lucas rose to international fame with the radio show Little Britain which began airing on BBC Radio 4 in 2000. Lucas co-wrote the show and performed in it alongside David Walliams. The radio show gained immense popularity and was eventually turned into a TV show, which was broadcast on BBC Three. The third season of the show was broadcast on BBC One, and immediately broke TV viewership records of the time, dethroning the then no. 1 TV show, Doc Martin, according to The Guardian.

Apart from Little Britain, Lucas has appeared in Shooting Stars and Come Fly With Me. He has also played Nardole in Doctor Who, and was a presenter for The Great British Bake Off.

Criticism received by Matt Lucas’ Little Britain

Little Britain was Matt Lucas' claim to fame, but the controversial show had its fair share of detractors. According to Vice, it was criticized for using stereotypes of ethnic and racial communities. As per Sky News however, the objective of the show was to critique class differentiation in Britain.

Nevertheless, in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement and the discourse it generated, the show was called out for its racial stereotyping and was removed from online streamers almost a decade after it had been aired on television.

Matt Lucas had previously responded to the criticism garnered by the show and was quoted by BBC as saying,

“If I could go back and do Little Britain again, I wouldn't make those jokes about transvestites. I wouldn't play black characters.”

The show was made available on BBC iPlayer again in 2022, however edits were made to be sensitive towards the criticism garnered by the show. Radio Times published a statement from the broadcasters, which read,

“Little Britain has been made available to fans on BBC iPlayer following edits made to the series by Matt and David that better reflect the changes in the cultural landscape over the last 20 years since the show was first made.”

The show also received backlash about its portrayal of homosexual characters. An example is of a character called Dafydd Thomas, who was otherwise known as “the only gay in the village. According to Matt Lucas, the character was meant to be a celebration and an affirmation for gay people. However, Lucas confessed to Metro in an interview in 2019 that the phrase “only gay in the village” made popular by his show had been used to bully homosexual people.

Matt Lucas’ experience of homophobia

In an interview with The Guardian, Lucas revealed how he had been bullied in his high school years for being gay. He also spoke about the support that he received from his elder brother who would protect him from such bullying. Lucas further shared in the interview that he regrets not being able to share the fact that he was gay with his father before the latter’s death.

Lucas who is open about his queer identity, has been vocal about homophobia. Late last year he posted about his recent experience of homophobic insults received during football matches on X, writing,

“I have been verbally abused twice on the way to football matches so far this season. On both occasions I was minding my own business, head down, walking to the ground. I was called 'a fucking queer cunt' by one man and another told me that 'our club doesn't want disgusting gay fans'. If you're a player and that offends you less than wearing a rainbow-coloured armband for a couple of matches, then maybe you're part of the problem.”

Matt Lucas’ Jewish heritage

Lucas, who has a Jewish ancestry, is open about being an atheist. In an interview with The Jewish Chronicle, he said,

“I don’t look down on people who do believe, but I can’t pretend to feel something when I don’t feel it. I don’t want to be a hypocrite and I don’t want to be fake.”

However, Lucas acknowledges and is sensitive towards the hardships that the Jewish community went through in the last century. This came across very clearly in an episode of the docu-series Who Do You Think You Are, in which he appears.

Who Do You Think You Are is a BBC series where celebrities get to know the family history that they were unaware of earlier. It was during the shooting of this episode that Lucas became deeply aware of his family’s experience of the Holocaust. In the episode, we see Lucas looking at his late grandmother’s passport emotionally. The passport contained the Swastika mark along with the notation which marked his identity as a Jew.

Matt Lucas had by that time attained German citizenship, becoming a dual citizen of Britain and Germany. In the show, we see Lucas taking a journey to Germany to know more about the traumatic past of his Jewish family. As he walked around modern Berlin, he said,

“Berlin seems very progressive now, but everywhere there are echoes and shadows of a darker time”

While he was in Germany, he finds out through historians and archivists that one of his grandmother Margot’s cousin, Werner Goldschmidt, had been hiding alongside the family of famous writer Anne Frank during the Holocaust. Werner Goldschmidt had been a friend of Anne Frank’s father, Otto Frank.

The young writer Anne Frank’s diary, which documented the period when her family was in hiding in Amsterdam as the Holocaust was at its dark height, became an international bestseller and a symbol of remembrance of that dark period in history.

In the Who Do You Think You Are episode, Matt Lucas can be seen as being composed yet deeply moved as he came to realize his family’s connection with Anne Frank’s family.