“Gavin & Stacey” star Laura Aikman took her NDA so seriously she even kept her appearance in the 90-minute special a secret from her own family.
Aikman, who plays the widely-disliked Sonia in the cult BBC series, posted a video of herself watching “Gavin & Stacey: The Finale” on Christmas Day with her family, who appeared to have no idea she was about to make an appearance on screen. In the scene, James Corden, who co-created and stars in the series, is shown into a room to meet his “bride-to-be,” with the audience led to assume it’s his on-again-off-again partner Nessa (fellow co-creator Ruth Jones). Instead, it’s Sonia.
In the video Aikman showed her family screaming with surprise as they watched the scene, with Aikman laughing while a woman who appears to be her mother shouts “Oh my God… you never told me!”
Aikman captioned the video: “I take an NDA very seriously.”
The actor, who has also appeared opposite Jason Isaacs in Cary Grant biopic “Archie” and, most recently, alongside Sophie Turner in “Joan,” did not participate in press for “Gavin & Stacey: The Finale” and reportedly even stayed in a separate hotel to the rest of the cast so as to keep her appearance a surprise for fans.
The special, which saw Corden and Jones reunite on screen after an absence of five years, aired in the U.K. on Christmas Day, where it won the ratings war with 12.3 million viewers, beating out “Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl,” which clocked up 9.4 million viewers and King Charles II’s annual Christmas speech, which saw 5 million people tune in.