Heat arrives at roughly the same time as Ruth Jones and James Corden to the London location where we’re going to interview them exclusively about the little matter of the last-ever episode of Gavin and Stacey. But it turns out Ruth has already been lightly grilled about it this morning. She explains, ‘The taxi driver who picked me up from Paddington station just now was like, “Oh my God, I’m so excited about Gavin & Stacey on Christmas Day!” And I said, “Look, you might be disappointed.” And the taxi driver said, “No, no, we won’t be.”’ At this, James looks concerned and says, as if talking to said taxi driver, ‘But you don’t know!’
But once we’re sitting down and discussing it, it soon becomes clear that Ruth and James are not only very happy with what they’ve come up with for the 90-minute episode, they’re actually giddy with the excitement of it all, finishing each other’s sentences like the best friends they clearly are. Not that it’s been an easy process – as they’ll go on to explain – to get to this point, where the final episode is about to arrive on BBC1 on Christmas Day, five years after the last one. And, of course, that episode ended on a cliffhanger for the ages, when Nessa got down on one knee in the street outside Gwen’s house in Barry and proposed to a shocked, stunned Smithy.
That Christmas Special also catapulted Gavin & Stacey into the record books. What started out as a modest BBC3 series Ruth and James first decided to write 20 years ago, became the highest-rated scripted show of the millennium, with 18.5million viewers watching it that Christmas week in 2019. So, this last-ever episode is basically one of the most anticipated British TV events of all time. No pressure then…
After that massive cliffhanger at the end of the previous Christmas special, did you both think you’d have to do at least one more episode?
James: Yeah. We had an idea at one point of doing two specials that year, but one would be a total secret. The idea was that, after we put the special out on Christmas Day, we’d have another episode ready to air on New Year’s Day, so the show would finish with Nessa saying, ‘Marry me’, and then it would say, ‘Find out what happens on New Year’s Day, BBC One’. But in the end, it was too much to take on.
Ruth: I think originally we thought we could tell the entire story in that 2019 special, but also for a while we did think, ‘Why not end it there? Why not end it with the cliffhanger?’ Because we’ve always felt that those characters carry on living, even when they’re not on TV, which I know sounds mental. People used to say to me, ‘Well, you can’t leave it there!' And I’d say, ‘Why not? Why don’t you imagine whether Smithy said yes or no, and what happened after that?’ because there’s nothing wrong in leaving it on that cliffhanger. But then we both changed our minds.
You both agreed to resolve the cliffhanger?
R: I was suddenly keen.
J: Yes, you were keen to do it straight away. You were like, ‘Let’s do it next summer and put it out Christmas 2020’…
R: But of course, COVID happened then.
J: But even before that, my reasoning was I thought it put too much pressure on the writing of it, to know that you have a deadline.
R: Yes, because the way we’d always worked was to just write it because we wanted to write it.
J: When we wrote the 2019 special, we didn’t tell the BBC what we were doing until we were sure it was going to work, and there was a very real moment where we thought it wasn’t. We thought it had been too long.
Well, there was a 10-year gap…
R: Yes, but during those 10 years, we had kept the characters alive.
J: No question.
R: We’d always text each other things like, ‘Imagine if Bryn said this. Imagine Nessa reacting to that.’
J: Then we spoke last summer [2023], and I was very sure after a while that the cliffhanger was an unsatisfactory ending, if it was going to be the end forever.
R: And I think people were annoyed – not in a nasty way – but when you watch the Gogglebox reaction to it, you do go, ‘Oh, actually, that is really frustrating!’
So, was it when you got back from America, James, that all this kicked in?
J: Yeah, we got on a FaceTime, and originally, we had both had the same idea, which was to do a film.
R: I’d written down a couple of thoughts before we arranged that meeting, thinking it could be a film, and then when we got together, James said, ‘I hope this could be a film.’ And I went, ‘Well, that’s what I thought last night.’ So, that was quite weird.
J: Then we really played around with that idea of it being a film and wrote some of it with that in mind, but the more we wrote, we both felt the same way.
R: That it’s not a cinema film.
J: And it shouldn’t be. The idea of our characters blown up that big felt wrong. They’ve always been in the corner of your room, and that’s where they should remain.
R: I spend quite a lot of time up in the Highlands of Scotland, and I thought, ‘My friends there will have to drive for two hours to get to the nearest cinema in Inverness. They’re not going to do that.’
That’s such a practical approach…
R: I know. But there was something exciting about the idea of a film.
J: Yes, a film feels exciting, but actually what you realise is, there’s nothing more exciting than the collective experience of different generations of families and friends sitting around on Christmas Day. It’s such a wonderfully British thing to do, and when we started the show 20 years ago, the idea that it would be one of those shows that has a Christmas Special is far beyond anything we ever dreamt of. Just the notion of BBC One, Christmas Day. That means so much to us.
Did you feel the pressure of delivering after half the country watched the last Christmas Special?
J: Yes, but the idea that millions of people will come together to watch it is so exciting. Some shows, when they announce a final episode, sometimes don’t deliver. I would say there’s a higher proportion of shows not delivering than delivering, right? So, we do feel that pressure. But we are happy that it’s the show we wanted it to be.
R: It’s like when we wrote that first episode 20 years ago, we knew that we loved it, and that even if nobody else did, the two of us had done what we’d set out to do. Even if it had got slated, we’d at least be able to hold on to that.
J: And that’s the same for this episode. It’s absolutely the story we both wanted to tell.
When you broke the news to the cast that you’d written this finale, who had the best reaction?
J: It’s always Jo Page [Stacey]. I called her this time and she just said [adopts heavy Welsh accent], ‘Oh my God. Are you serious? Are you serious, James? Are you serious?’ I also rang Alison [Steadman], but I couldn’t get hold of her. She thought it was someone messing around because I sent her a WhatsApp saying, ‘Hey, Alison, this is James Corden. I was in the series Fat Friends with you many years ago. Is there a time when we can talk?’ And it went grey on WhatsApp, and then it went blue, and I remember texting Ruth going, ‘She’s just not replying.’ Eventually she did.
R: And I rang Larry [Lamb, who plays Mick], and I said, ‘Larry, are you on your own?’ And he said, [adopts cockney-ish accent] ‘Yeah, it’s alright, I’ve got these Spanish guys with me, but they don’t know what I’m saying.’ [James laughs.]
When you were writing the 90-minute finale, did you both agree quite quickly what would happen in it?
R: What we’ve always done is decide how each series ends, then we work out how to get there. And we love our Post-it notes and work it out on them. We’re not very detailed in that regard, are we?
J: Well, we’re not very slick. If you saw our writing room, it’s 11 Post-its on a wall, and that’s it.
R: There was a time when we couldn’t get hold of any Post-its, do you remember?
J: Yeah, when we cut out pieces of paper and laid them out. But, as Ruth says, we’ve always started at the end, basically, and then worked back from that. So, with this final one, we always knew it would end in the way that it does.
How emotional was the last day of filming?
R: What I thought was really nice, actually, was that everybody made a decision to really enjoy every day of filming, living in the moment. So, I didn’t really get too sad until the last day.
J: Yeah, same. Then we were all emotional.
R: And we both felt it was really important that we filmed as close to the last scene as possible on the last day. It was so valuable and so important, and it made such a difference to have everybody join in with this sense of an ending. I think it was really special. And the wrap party was great, wasn’t it?
J: Yeah, the wrap party got to about half one, and we both decided that we were going to leave, and I went over to thank the DJ, who was so good, and I said, ‘Thanks so much, we’re going to head off now,’ and just as we were leaving, he started playing Stephen Fretwell’s Run [the show’s theme song] and the entire crew just gathered in this huge hug, and everyone was just holding each other, just singing, ‘Tell me tomorrow, I’ll wait by the window for you.’ And it was magic, all of it. It was just a magical end to it all. [James wells up, and Ruth looks teary-eyed, and so does heat!]
And will you both be watching it on Christmas Day?
J: We’re going to try to watch it together.
R: With our families.
J: It’s what we did last time. So, I think that’s going to be very, very special.
The Finale airs on BBC1 and iPlayer, Christmas Day, 9pm.