Laura Smyth pilots BBC sitcom Launderette
- Laura Smyth has written and stars in a BBC sitcom pilot, Launderette, co-starring Kate Robbins and Phil Daniels
- Set in Smyth's native East London, the comedy also features Tori Allen-Martin and Eleanor Nawal, and is made by the team behind Plebs
- Smyth has also opened up to fellow comic Cally Beaton on her podcast about her career taking off while she was battling breast cancer
Laura Smyth is piloting a BBC sitcom, British Comedy Guide can exclusively reveal.
The stand-up created and wrote Launderette and stars alongside Kate Robbins, Tori Allen-Martin (Here We Go), Eleanor Nawal (Pls Like) and Quadrophenia alumnus Phil Daniels.
Set in Smyth's native East London, the non-broadcast pilot shot last week, directed by Sam Leifer (Plebs) and produced by Caroline Leddy (Friday Night Dinner) for Leifer's Rise Films (Plebs).
Spitting Image and After Life star Robbins posted an image of the core cast from the launderette set.
Winner of the 2019 Funny Women Award, only five months after she began performing stand-up, Launderette consolidates Smyth's relationship with the BBC.
Appearing on the upcoming 17th series of Live At The Apollo, she has also written for the Bad Education revival and acted in excluded teenagers sitcom PRU.
Further credits include writing for Spencer Jones's upcoming Deep Fake Neighbour Wars on ITVX and Sky's paramedic sitcom Bloods. And she shot her feature film acting debut in Cottontail last year, appearing alongside Ciaran Hinds, Lily Franky and Ryo Nishikido.
Beginning stand-up at 37, the former secondary school English teacher and mother-of-three was recently diagnosed with breast cancer.
"I didn't go back to work in September, I found a lump ... we're just over a year since my diagnosis" Smyth told fellow comic Cally Beaton on her Namaste Motherf**kers podcast, released on Thursday.
"I submitted my sitcom to the BBC the same day I went to the GP about my boob. I got feedback and notes the same day I went in for my mastectomy ... I did Live At The Apollo, pretty much to the day of finding my lump. These wonderful, awesome parallels.
"Darkest days of chemo I pictured stepping out to the Live At The Apollo stage, to the point that me and my agent laughed, because I found out I didn't get it. Then a week later, I found out I did get it because someone pulled out or something. She said: 'You didn't get it". And I went, 'that don't feel right!'".