Gavin and Stacey gave us one of the best cliffhangers of all time when Nessa proposed to Smithy, but now Ruth Jones has highlighted why she couldn’t do it again.
Ruth, 58, has played Nessa for 17 years, with her on/off romance with James Corden’s Smithy being a central plot.
The last time we caught up with gang, Nessa and Smithy were once again struggling to define their relationship. Although Smithy had moved on with Sonia (Laura Aikman), he wound up back in bed with the mother of his child Neil the baby, Nessa. When Sonia left Christmas day in Barry Island early after becoming overwhelmed by the Wests and Shipmans, Nessa proposed to Smithy.
Before we could hear Smithy’s answer the credits rolled, and fans have been left in suspense for five years.
At a special screening for the Gavin and Stacey finale, which will air on Christmas day, Ruth joked that she’d now struggle to recreate the proposal.
‘It took me a little while to get up off my knees, and to be quite honest with you, I don’t think I could get down on one knee now,’ she stated with a laugh while speaking on stage at London’s Ham Yard Hotel.
In a more emotional part of the chat, Ruth became teary when discussing the running themes of the BBC show, with one element clear in each of the 22 episodes.
‘What has remained throughout all of the episodes is this sense of love – I’m going to cry now – love between friends, love between family members, conventional boy meets girl love stories and unconventional relationships,’ she explained.
‘So I think that’s kind of remained the same, and the lack of cynicism has remained the same. Basically all the people, all the characters in the show really do love each other. Call it boring, but they do.’
She also thanked co-creator James for being her ‘travel companion on this wonderful journey.’ He echoed her sentiments, calling it ‘a privilege to have an idea with someone for whom it is just a joy to sit with and write with.’
‘I love you very much. I’m very proud of all of it,’ he concluded.
The beloved show tells the story of Mathew Horne’s Gavin Shipman and Joanna Page’s Stacey West relationship and the joining of their families – from Essex and Barry Island respectively.
Thanks to the hilarious scripts and top notch acting, it found a huge fanbase, but Ruth and James, 46, brought it to a close in 2010. James has revealed one of the reasons they left it be is because their ‘absolute dream came true’ when they got their initial Christmas special two years earlier, adding ‘that was enough for us’.
He continued: ‘We really felt like we’d probably told enough of the story, and if we’re honest with ourselves, we were finding it hard to construct ways for the families to keep meeting up.’ James and Ruth felt that the show was at its best when these scenarios occurred.
There’s another reason audiences have had to wait so long for the episodes, and that’s due to James and Ruth taking a while to get on the same page.
‘I think we both had various points where we talked about doing it and for one reason or another Ruth may have said, “I think we should do it now”. And I was like, “I don’t know”,’ James recalled.
‘Then I can remember a moment where I was like, “I really think we should do this and write it”. And Ruth was like, “I just don’t feel in the right headspace”, or “it’s not the right timeline”.’
Finally, last summer they agreed to a FaceTime to discuss only the show, and not have their usual friendly catchup, and it turned out they both had the same idea.
In September 2023, they got together and began writing, and ended up with 70 pages of script. ‘It may sound like complete nonsense, but it doesn’t really feel like we’re in charge of writing it. I feel like we just have to be together, and we sort of open a portal, and the characters arrive and they tell us what they want everybody to know,’ James said. It was at this point, they contacted the BBC to see if they would be interested.
Fans’ patience to find out the conclusion of the characters’ stories with a special in 2019 and the finale in 2024, James sees as a lesson in what we should be valuing.
‘Here’s a show that ended 15 years ago, waited 10 years to tell another hour of their story and waited five more years to end it,’ he began.
‘Actually maybe the lesson for all of us – for people that write about television, for people that talk about television, for people that write television – is actually maybe time and patience and care might be the answer to things having longevity outside of what we consume on our phones.’
Gavin and Stacey returns to the BBC for one final time on Christmas Day at 9pm.
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