Matt Lucas left host Lorraine Kelly stunned with his striking new appearance on Wednesday. The Little Britain star, 52, joined Lorraine to discuss his coveted role as Fagin in the West End production of Oliver! The Musical.
Yet Lorraine, 66, couldn't help but quiz Matt about his dramatic new look as he appeared in the ITV studio sporting a lengthy beard, following his transformation that had already left fans gobsmacked.
Real beard for the part
During Wednesday's programme, Lorraine enquired: "And what's going on here? This is for the part?" to which Matt confirmed: "This is for the part, yeah!"
A visibly astonished Lorraine pressed further: "This is real? This is not pretend?" with Matt responding: "This is real, yeah. It's the weirdest thing."
"I mean, because I have alopecia and I've never ever tried to grow a beard before. But it's sort of, it's a couple of months in" with an enthusiastic Lorraine responding: "I like!"
Autism disclosure
It comes as Matt recently shared a medical diagnosis he has been living with his entire life but has "never spoken about publicly". As well as his theatre role, the actor has joined the brand new series of Channel 4 comedy show Taskmaster, and chose now to disclose the neurodevelopmental condition he was diagnosed with as a child.
Matt, who also has alopecia, confirmed he has autism. In a chat with Romesh Ranganathan on BBC Radio 2, he said: "I've never, ever spoken about this publicly, but I'm autistic, and so I enjoy periods of being very sociable, like you are in the theatre, and then I also enjoy those periods of solitude where I can just write on my own."
Romesh asked him: "Do you find that you need to recharge each battery, like you're kind of flitting between those two things?"
Matt replied: "Yeah, and so on my days off, you know you do theatre six days a week, and on my day off, apart from resting and resting my voice and all of that, on my day off I like not to see people and give them a break from me, but just to have that recharge time is quite important to me."
Lorraine airs on weekdays at 9:30am on ITV and ITV X.
