Happy Valley spoilers follow.
Happy Valley creator and writer Sally Wainwright has opened up about Sarah Lancashire's input into the ending of the highly-acclaimed BBC police drama.
Season three of Happy Valley concluded on Sunday with a more thoughtful ending. Instead of killing his arch-nemesis, James Norton's Tommy Lee Royce had a closure-giving conversation with Lancashire's Catherine before setting himself ablaze.
That left Catherine unscathed and able to book her dream trip away to the Himalayas in what was a satisfying send-off for the character. However, that ending wasn't always the planned one.
Related: Happy Valley star reveals death scene was changed
In an interview on Monday's Newsnight (here via the Metro), Wainwright explained how Lancashire spoke to her about the original ending and her concern with it, which ultimately led to it being changed to the one we ended up with.
"Sarah is to thank for that ending, in many ways, because I wrote the first draft, and everybody seemed quite happy with it and then she made it clear that she wasn’t happy with it," Wainwright said.
"The Christmas before she came up to my house, and she spent all day talking about it and she gave me some really good notes. So everything got pushed a bit further in that episode and it was all thanks to Sarah."
Related: Happy Valley's final episode fumbled one thing
Wainwright continued: "It was a great privilege to have the opinion of someone who knew the scripts almost better than I do because she put so much into it, so much thought into it."
Wainwright explained that actors sometimes know scripts better than anyone as they have to get into "granular details" about their characters and their character's journeys. This was what allowed Lancashire's honest and accurate assessment of the original ending.
"It was a really fabulous conversation — she was literally here all day at my house. And we just spent all day really talking it through and it is nice that we kind of worked it through together. Her performance is just off the scales," Wainwright said.
Happy Valley airs on BBC One and BBC iPlayer.
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