Gavin and Stacey star Laura Aikman has responded to a fan who spotted her own wedding dress on the show’s long-awaited finale.
The hit BBC sitcom originally aired between 2007 and 2010, and returned in 2019 with a one-off festive special that ended on a cliffhanger when Ruth Jones’s character Nessa proposed to James Corden’s Smithy.
The show’s finale, which aired last month, became the most-watched programme on British television on Christmas Day with 12.5 million views, as viewers tuned into to see Smithy’s response. Corden admitted he’d wanted to “trick everyone” with the bait-and=switch storyline, which left fans on tenterhooks.
Aikman played Smithy’s unpopular girlfriend Sonia in the finale, and explained the lengths she went to to keep her role a secret.
The actor recounted how she was kept off all the show’s paperwork and sent to stay at a different hotel from the rest of the cast, in an interview with BBC Radio 5. Her name was even changed to Susan, which all the cast and crew were made to call her.
“We couldn’t go wedding dress shopping (because of the secrecy), so this was from Vinted (it probably belonged to someone who watched the show!),” Aikman wrote in a post on Instagram along with a picture of herself wearing the dress.
“Shout out to our costume designer [Shan James] who had to alter it massively as 48 hours before we shot the wedding it didn’t fit,” she added.
Instagram user @abigailjayne4 commented: “OMG I sold this wedding dress on Vinted in August and did wonder whether it could be mine! Would be amazing to know it was! You looked stunning in it.”
“Ahhhhh I bet it’s yours!!” Aikman responded. “I had to have the boning taken out coz it was too big on top and the lace up put in the back at the bottom coz my bum was too big, so if you’re a bit slimmer than me with bigger boobs it’s probably yours!!!”
The actor had kept the news of her role in the show a complete secret, even surprising her family who found out about her impending nuptials to Smithy when the finale aired.
