SEASON’S MEETINGS!
GAVIN & STACEY | BBC1 CHRISTMAS DAY
FILMING AN INTIMATE SCENE ON BARRY ISLAND AT 1AM IS NOT EASY!” MATHEW
IT’S A VERY BARRY CHRISTMAS AS THE FAMILIES HAVE THEIR FESTIVE GET-TOGETHER…
Oh, what’s occurrin’? I’m not bein’ funny or anythin’, but on Christmas Day we’ll be catching up with Gavin and Stacey (and Nessa, Smithy, Bryn, Gwen, Pam and Mick) for the first time in almost 10 years. Much has changed since we last saw them, but you’ll see that a lot is still the same. Here’s what Ruth Jones (who co-writes the series and plays Nessa), Mathew Horne (Gavin) and Joanna Page (Stacey) had to say…
Why has it taken so long to get the gang back together?
Ruth Well, a little thing called geography, and the fact that James [Corden] and I live on different continents! And, more than anything, we wanted to be sure that if we did bring it back that it was going to be good. We don’t know what the reaction is going to be yet, but we just didn’t want to risk people going, “Oh, it’s not like it used to be…”
Was it hard to get everyone’s diaries lined up to make it?
Ruth James gave up his summer holiday to come over here, then we had to find out if everybody was available – it’s a miracle they all were, to be honest! James and I contacted half the cast each to ask if they would be interested in doing it, and thankfully they all said yes! That was a really lovely phone call to make.
How thrilled were you to play these characters again?
Joanna I was so excited waiting for the script. It was emailed through just as I was about to go into a script readthrough for a different job – the script that everyone wants to see was there in my inbox, and I couldn’t look at it for three hours! Then I came out and sat in the car park for a couple of hours, just reading it and sending emails to Ruth and James, quoting their own lines back at them!
Mathew Then the nerves kicked in and built up, because you want to be able to deliver what is a fantastic script. But after the first day of filming, everything settled down, as we realised it was going to happen with all the love it happened with before, and we really did have the best time doing it.
How was it stepping back into these characters?
Joanna We were so nervous about filming a big scene on
Barry Island on day one at 1am – but by the time it came round to filming it, lots of people had come to watch and were shouting things out! Mathew I don’t know if you’ve been on Barry on a Friday night at
1 in the morning, but trying to film an intimate scene there is not easy!
Joanna But after that, we just had fun and drank lots of gin – it was like a holiday!