Alison Steadman shares casts' hidden act on last day of filming Gavin and Stacey
After four years, Gavin and Stacey fans are still waiting to find out what happened after Nessa got down on one knee to propose to Smithy at the end of the nation’s 2019 Christmas Day catch-up with the Barry Island and Billericay brigades.
And nobody misses the show more than Alison Steadman, who plays the beloved matriarch Pamela Shipman. The 77 year-old actress says: “I have to say it is the only show I have ever worked on where when we finished each character’s final scenes like, ‘That’s a wrap for Alison Steadman’. “Everyone used to put their heads down and cry as we were so sad it was over. It was such a good experience for everyone. I think the magic of the series was that everyone loved each other and the audience loves that.”
Alison Steadman has been reminiscing about her time on Gavin and Stacey (Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images)Alison hopes one day Ruth Jones and James Corden, who play Nessa and Smithy and created the series, will write a reunion episode. She says: “Pamela was a great part to play. I was thrilled to bits when I was given that role. I just knew this was going to be good.” Alison remembers her first day on set, when she first saw Joanna Page, who plays Stacey, and Mathew Horne, who stars as Gavin.
She says: “Joanna came running over to me going, ‘Hiya, my name is Jo and I am playing Stacey’. “I looked at her and thought, ‘You are perfect’. Then I saw Matt and the two of them together were perfect. It was brilliantly cast.”
The cast of Gavin and Stacey on set for the 2019 Christmas Special (BBC/GS TV Productions Ltd/Tom Jackson)On Friday night, Alison is in Here We Go: Mum’s Classic Family Christmas, a festive episode of the BBC One sitcom which follows the Jessops family from Bedford. In 2024, Alison will play Robbie Williams’ late nan, Betty, in his biopic Better Man, and will also release a memoir, as yet untitled, of her own.
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In the 1970s, Alison starred in TV plays Nuts in May and Abigail’s Party, both written by then-husband, Mike Leigh,. She also won BAFTA nods for The Singing Detective and Fat Friends. But she reveals things did not get off to a good start, recalling how a peeping Tom crashed her stage debut in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie back in 1968. She says: “It was at the very start of my career and we decided I would have no clothes on while someone painted my portrait as I sat with my back to the audience.
Alison Steadman, pictured here in 1974, says she loved working on Gavin and Stacey (Getty Images)
Alison Steadman also starred in Fat Friends“The costume department sent me a body stocking, which is basically a pair of nylons in the shape of a swim suit. So I put this thing on and it looked so awful. So I thought, ‘Forget it’ and threw it in the bin. “I turned up the next day and said, ‘I will do it nude’. It was fine except somebody came in the stage door, crawled in, went up the stairs and was looking down on me. That is sad, isn’t it?
“Being nude on stage didn’t happen that often back then. But now everyone is jumping around, aren’t they? They don’t give a damn. It was a very interesting first professional role.” She saw the funny side – as she did when she had to kiss Sir Tom Jones in the Sky Arts comedy, King of the Teds in 2012. Sir Tom was playing an ageing Teddy Boy, who leaves his wife, played by Alison, for an old flame.
Alison, a huge Elvis fan, says: “It was so much fun working with Tom. He used to tell me how had hung out in Vegas with Frank Sinatra and Elvis. “When we started to work together, he said, ‘You know, Alison, I am out of my comfort zone here’.
Alison Steadman with the cast of Here We Go: Mum’s Classic Family Christmas (BBC Studios/Jonathan Browning)“So I said, ‘Please, Tom, don’t worry, you are doing fine. If I had to sing at the London Palladium for two hours to 2,000 people, I would be out of my comfort zone’. Anyway, we had to do a scene where the husband comes back and he is really sorry about what he has done and wants to make it up.
“So he carries her upstairs and he puts her on the bed and he sings a song to her and then he kisses her and they are back together. We did this kiss and I was like, ‘Oh, my God, I have got to kiss Tom Jones’. The director said cut and said he wanted to do the kiss scene one more time. We did it again and Tom got off the bed and went, ‘Well, I don’t know about you, Alison, but I am feeling a bit horny’.”
Roaring with laughter at the memory, she says: “Please don’t think he did anything that wasn’t right. He was the nicest man and was lovely. But we did have this long, long kiss. The director said, ‘He did really kiss you, didn’t he, Alison?’ and I said, ‘Yeah’.”
Alison, who has two children, now lives with her partner, the actor Michael Elwyn, 81, in Hampstead, west London. She says: “I’ve spent over 50 years playing at being other people, yet I’ve managed to sustain my own two loves, my family and being an actress, and still be me, daft and enthusiastic.”
- Here We Go is on Friday at 8.30pm on BBC One.
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