James Corden says he and Ruth Jones thought ‘Gavin and Stacey’ was "dead" – until they saved it with "the best scene".
The ‘Late Late Show with James Corden’ host – who co-writes and stars in the sitcom with Ruth as Smithy and Nessa respectively – has admitted he found it "deeply depressing" when they had penned 40 pages for the upcoming Christmas special, and when they’d finished it, they both felt it just wasn’t ready to share with fans.
James recalled to The Sun newspaper’s Bizarre TV column: "In a 24-hour period the show was dead – then brought back to life.
"It was deeply depressing.
"It was the second time Ruth had flown out. That’s a long way to go.
"I was working on my days off, so that is essentially time you’re not with your children.
"We wrote the majority during a hiatus week from ‘The Late, Late Show.’
"I finished work on the Thursday and people were saying, ‘Ooh, I’m off skiing’, or ‘Oh I’m doing nothing, I’m just going to potter around’.
"And you go, ‘Well yeah, I’ll be in a room trying to see if there’s anything there in a world we created 15 years ago’.
"There was a very real moment where we had written maybe 40 pages.
"We recorded it just to see how long it was and we both knew probably halfway through, but we soldiered on.
"And we both finished, and Ruth went, ‘What do you think?’
"And I said, ‘We haven’t got it. It just doesn’t feel like ‘Gavin & Stacey.”
"We decided, ‘OK, well, thank goodness we didn’t tell anyone. "Thank the Lord we didn’t.
"We’ve scratched this itch that we thought was there, and it isn’t, so no harm done. No one will ever know.’"
Fortunately, the pair managed to come up with a scene out of nowhere, which the comedian has hailed as "the best scene" the show – which returns after a decade on Christmas Day (25.12.19) – has "ever had".
He continued: "It’s probably the quickest scene we’ve ever written. And I think it’s the best scene ‘Gavin & Stacey’ has ever had.
"Suddenly this scene arrived, I can’t tell you, I sound like Mystic Meg, but it landed in the room."
‘Gavin and Stacey’ stars Matthew Horne and Joanna Paige as the titular couple and aired between 2007 and 2009.
Ruth recently admitted she and James – who moved to the US in 2015, where he has been hosting ‘The Late Late Show’ – almost gave up on the festive episode.
She confessed: "It wasn’t easy that week because bearing in mind we hadn’t written it for years and years.
"We’d had ideas for characters, lines of dialogue, going back and forth, but we hadn’t sat down and written a script.
"One night we thought, let’s just give up, because it just didn’t seem to be … I don’t know, there was something missing and I couldn’t pinpoint it."
Gavin and Stacey Christmas special was ‘saved’ with ‘best scene’ ever
