Ruth planned legal career before Gavin & Stacey success
RUTH Jones was set to quit acting to become a solicitor long before she went on to co-create one of the biggest ever sitcoms, Gavin & Stacey.
And it was her old Porthcawl Comprehensive School pal Rob Brydon, who played Uncle Bryn in the long-running BBC series, who persuaded her not to give up.
Brydon managed to talk Jones out of packing in the acting career in a Cardiff cafe in the 1990s, it’s revealed during a chat between the pair on his new podcast, Brydon & ...
“We were sat in a cafe in Cardiff and you were going to jack it all in,” says Brydon. “And I think I get brownie points here, I said, ‘no, that’s ridiculous. You must carry on.’”
Jones talks honestly about her tough time getting on to a university degree course and how she was saved by her love of musicals, gaining a place at Warwick.
But after graduating and attending the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama – which also took some convincing to sign up to, by a close friend – the offers didn’t come in easily. y “Nobody was in interested in me at al all,” says the Stella cr creator, who ad admits she had to ge gee herself up to ta talk to agents, but ha had “a lot of rejectio tion letters”. “You think it’s go going to be easy, but it’s not. I was just getting rejection after rejection,” she adds, revealing she temped for a local London council to survive.
“This isn’t for me, I’m going to pack it in and become a solicitor. And that’s when I met you in Cardiff.”
But it wasn’t only Brydon who had a hand in keeping the Nessa co-creator and actor in the business – Welsh stage legend Stan Stennett, who Jones had written to in the effort to get employed in the theatre and gain her Equity card, cast her for the Porthcawl panto in 1990 in which she played a Ninja Turtle.
“That was the point I thought, ‘oh I don’t know’. I’d decided I was going to be a solicitor, and that’s when I met you in that cafe,” she said.
“And I remember sitting there and you were recording a pilot for BBC Wales, you and Steve Spiers and Wayne Forrester, and you were looking for a female participant but you knew I didn’t have my Equity card, and I couldn’t do a BBC production without one.
“So you persuaded me to stick at it and I did and that was my first TV job.”
Brydon remarks it was both their good fortunes that his friend didn’t become a solicitor.
You can hear more on this, what makes them emotional, their school memories and more Gavin & Stacey chat on the Brydon &... podcast now.