WARNING: Contains spoilers of tonight’s show
The actress who played Smithy’s fiancée Sonia in Gavin & Stacey didn’t even tell her parents she was in tonight’s finale for fear of the plot twist leaking out.
Laura Aikman planned to film their reaction when they saw her not only appear in the BBC One comedy tonight, but play a crucial role.
The actress also stayed at arm's length from the rest of the cast during filming, lest she got spotted by the paparazzi, and even kept away from a preview screening for the cast and selected journalists, including Chortle, earlier this month.
Speaking at that event, co-creator James Corden said: ‘She put in, I think, as good a performance as you could ever really wish for, and isn't here today for fear of it just somehow leaking.
‘She stayed in different hotels. She was going into places in the dead of night. She's not part of any of this, such as her want, and our want, to try to protect the very feeling that we had here [of watching the episode without spoilers]. She hasn't even told her mim and dad.’
‘She’s hoping to film her parents reaction,’ co-writer Ruth Jones explained. ‘She hasn't said she's in it. So we hope she will capture that.’
That Corden’s Smithy started the episode preparing to marry Sonia, not Jones’ character Nessa, was not the only surprise in the episode. The revelation that Gwen had started seeing Dave Coaches also floored fans… including Joanna Page, who plays Stacey.
Recalling the first time she received the script for the finale,, she said: ‘I read it just voicenoting Ruth going, "Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god.
‘And then my biggest, "oh my god" was like, essentially a voice note going "Gwen’s got a boyfriend, I'm telling you, she's got a boyfriend…. Oh my god, she does… He's gonna come downstairs…. Oh my god, it’s Dave Coaches!" And I couldn't believe it.’
The finale also saw the return of Smithy and Nessa’s child Neil The Baby, now 15 years old in the show, who sang a touching song and their wedding. The actor who plays him, Oscar Hartland, was in the original series as well as the 2019 special.
Corden recalled: ‘Oscar was one of the original babies back in series 3.We had three babies who played Neil the baby, and Oscar was one of those babies.
‘Ten years later, he came back in and auditioned. Did his audition brilliantly. And then at the end of the audition, mentioned to Ruth and Chris [director Christine Gernon]. "Oh, you know, I'm one of the babies that you had".
‘And then while we were writing this one, Oscar went on The Voice so we knew that he could sing… And he does it so brilliantly, we were so proud of him.’
A number of extras were bought in to play guests at Smithy’s wedding to Sonia, officiated by a celebrant played Anna Maxwell Martin, who got rather carried away in the moment.
‘We didn't really tell anybody what to do, other than our cast, who would stand up at their various points,’ Corden said. ‘When Anna Maxwell Martin, who so brilliantly came to give us two days of her time to play that part, when she says, "if anybody here knows of any reasons, please stand". there are two ladies at the back on Sonia’s side who stood up. We didn't tell them to.
‘One was from Australia, and they were just real fans of the show. They were so into it, that they just stood up – and then they got really embarrassed and were like, "We didn't know. I just thought she shouldn't be marrying him". It was an amazing moment, really.’
Another highlight was the wild party scene at Pam’s house, which Jones admitted she almost broke character for.
‘One of the things I always tried to do with this is to not smile,’ she said of her role as Nessa. ’It’s very difficult to be in a scene like that and not smile when it's so joyful. And so, yeah, I do look a little bit like more like Ruth Jones in that scene.’
And the pile-on on the sofa had consequences for at least one of the cast, Robert Wilfort, who plays Jason.
‘A couple of weeks after we shot that, I got this funny pain in my side,’ he said. ‘A memory of the pile-kon when we fell on top of each other. It was a little nice, happy memory of the show for a couple of weeks afterwards.’
He also told how the stunt of driving a coach through a hedge was not as dramatic as it looked (which wasn’t very). ‘We went through that hedge in real life, at about eight miles an hour,’ he said. ‘We were bracing ourselves for this huge stunt. But we just kind of went through a hedge, but it was very good fun.’
A couple of changes to the show occurred during pre-production, First was that the pivotal scene between Nessa and Smithy at Southampton Docks was originally at Cardiff airport - but the crew could not get permission to film there.
Another was that the shooting schedule was changed, so the last scene they shot was the last scene of the series,
‘The first schedule of the show had us finishing, I think it was, with me on my own in a car on a low loader.
‘And Ruth, and I were like, "Oh, that can't be the last day." Remember, this is a massive cast who are all very busy and have different things to do, and have juggled a lot of things around to do it. But we, we really, really felt that the last day should be the last scene, and that the last line should be the last thing that we ever shoot.
Jones added: ‘And what was lovely was that actually, if you look at it on, if you look at the script, it is literally just the montage. So we had a whole day. It was quite a luxury. Normally, you know, you're watching the clock and you're up against it. We were so blessed that everyone in production who made this happen so that we could have the luxury of having a final day where everybody was there, and that we didn't have any lines. We had karaoke!
’It was lovely, because it did feel like a real wedding, a real pub reception. So we're very grateful for being indulged, for being able to do that, because it made such a world of difference that we did that last shot.
'Then Chris being the wonderful woman she is, when she called, when she called "cut" on the very last take, arranged for the sound department to play [the theme tune] "Tell me tomorrow, I'll wait by the window for you…." And that got us all going, as you can imagine.'
Corden concluded: 'It was probably the most emotional film set I've ever been on, and it was kind of wonderful. So many of our crew have been with us from the start, and so it was a wonderful way to close it all out.’
• Gavin & Stacey: A Fond Farewell will air at 7pm on New Year’s Day on BBC One and iPlayer
