We always knew Smithy and Nessa would get together - Ruth Jones

Ruth Jones and James Corden knew their Gavin and Stacey characters would end up together from the first episode, the Welsh actress and writer has said.

Jones and Corden rose to fame as the co-writers of the BBC comedy in which they also played Vanessa "Nessa" Jenkins and Neil "Smithy" Smith, the best friends of the title characters

The hit comedy ran for three series, and three Christmas specials, between 2007 and 2024, with Jones telling an audience at the Hay Festival she felt there was "unfinished business" between Nessa and Smithy right up to the show's finale.

In the final episode, Smithy finally decides to marry Nessa after leaving another bride at the altar.

"I think that we always knew... from the very first scene in Leicester Square, where Smithy and Nessa met and instantly hated each other, except they also shared a love of pizza.

"I think we always knew that they would have to get together, that that had to be the actual ending of the show, but we didn't have time," the actress told author and broadcaster Hannah Beckerman during the onstage interview.

"We obviously finished series three with Smithy coming down to Barry and starting to talk like a Barry resident... and obviously Gavin and Stacey were expecting their first child, so we sort of tied that up."

"We kind of suggested that Smithy and Nessa, at that point, had come to some kind of an agreement, a workable relationship, but I think there was always this unfinished business.

"When we got together in 2019, to do the Christmas special, I think originally we'd intended to marry them then - but it was just too much of a story to tell," Jones continued.

"Such a long time had passed, it was 10 years almost since we'd finished it."

The show's final episode, which aired on Christmas Day 2024, saw Smithy marry Nessa, garnering overnight ratings of 12.3 million.

Jones also said her new Welsh comedy with The Tuckers creator Steve Speirs will start filming in Wales next week.

BBC drama Better Later will focus on the challenges of relationships in middle age and an unlikely friendship between two people who meet at a knee-trauma clinic.

Jones and Speirs previously wrote and starred in Stella, which ran between 2012 and 2017 and followed life in a fictional valleys town.

Jones told the Hay audience many of the show's cast members will return for the new series.