James Norton on the explosive Happy Valley finale and saying goodbye to Tommy Lee Royce
Norton talks about feeling empathy and love for Tommy Lee Royce and breaks down that goosebump-inducing final confrontation with Sarah Lancashire's Catherine Cawood
By Scott Bryan
5 February 2023
Sally Wainwright’s Happy Valley always felt like it had to end with a showdown between Catherine (Sarah Lancashire) and Tommy (James Norton). And oh boy when it happened, what an exhilarating showdown it was.
After breaking into Catherine’s property, a bloody and bruised Tommy is found in the kitchen next to a family album full of photos of his son Ryan (Rhys Connah) and Becky, who died by suicide shortly after her son’s birth. Realising that Ryan had a loving and supportive upbringing by Catherine and his sister Clare (Siobhan Finneran), he drops his campaign of terror on her. Doused in gasoline, he then sets himself on fire.
In his first interview following the seventy-minute finale, Norton talks about how he feels about Tommy’s fiery demise, his feelings towards Ryan’s (Rhys Connah) betrayal, and why he watched the big finale for the first time at the same time as everyone else. GQ’s interview with Norton took place on Saturday, the day before the Happy Valley season three finale aired.
GQ: I watched the finale last night. Two words. Bloody hell!
James Norton: Oh good! I haven’t spoken to anyone apart from people involved in production … anyone who has seen it! And I haven’t seen it. It’s good to hear that you enjoyed it. That it didn’t disappoint.
Quite the contrary, James. Absolutely staggering. I’ve never seen a finale that manages to exceed expectations.
Thank you. That really does genuinely mean a lot! Because I'm quite nervous. There’s been such hype. The energy has been unparalleled in my life. And so ‘I’m like shit, what if it falls at the last hurdle?’
Let’s dive into the final episode. That was always meant to be the final episode, but how do you feel about the way Tommy Lee Royce’s character arc ended?
There is this constant question ‘is Tommy a psychopath?’ and I have talked about this with people in the production and Sally [Wainwright] and Sarah [Lancashire]. The hints were almost laid in the very first series, in episode five, when he’s just been stabbed and he’s facing his own mortality, his own death. And he’s sitting in that high rise and he bursts into tears. He thinks, ‘shit, I’ve wasted my life and if I had a different childhood maybe I could have been something in me.’ And if you think back to there, that was where Sally was already planning and carving out this ending I think, because there is humanity there.
My final conclusion on Tommy is that I don’t think he is a psychopath, he’s just incredibly damaged. The fact that he can find this incredible love for Ryan. Over the last seven years, that is what drives him, and all of this plan to go get to Marbella. He could have gone on his own, but he wanted to take his son with him and build a life. He has a fairytale dream of having a house, a job, and living together as father and son.
The more we went through the series I felt that I was able to tap into [his] humanity. I read episode six before shooting the beginning of this series, so I was trying to find that love for Ryan all the way through. A person who is void of feeling and empathy, if anything I was playing someone completely opposite. Tommy was so charged up and full of love and full of hope.
So, yeah, it was really heartbreaking for me. I recognise that there are absolutely despicable acts which he has committed along the way. But along that journey, I have been with him for ten years, I feel deeply sorry for him. I feel immense pity and empathy and I sort of really love him.
And how about that final scene?
The ending was sort of perfect, in a Sally Wainwright sort of way. It was fireworks but it wasn’t fireworks. It was sitting over a kitchen table and that is where Happy Valley really thrived. That’s the heart of the whole show. Cups of tea over kitchen tables in kitchens in Yorkshire.
It’s not a big stunt set pieces on wires and jumping off cliffs, and guns and fireworks. It’s gentle, it’s domestic, it’s human.
Take me into that showdown with Catherine. It really was extraordinary. What was it like to film?
I mean, it genuinely was one of the most exciting, if not the most exciting moment I’ve had on a film set. It was very, very special. Sarah and I had received the scripts earlier and people who were there in the crew had received it, but it was kept fairly quiet as to who was able to read it. And it was shot quite late on in the shoot. Everyone [in production] knows it is this massive scene in the schedule, but it wasn’t even said. I’ve got the call sheet somewhere. It’s like ‘Catherine and Tommy chat in kitchen’ or something like that. But everyone knew it was a big thing.
There were stunts. There were fire engines. They built the whole kitchen. You think it was the kitchen we shot in Hebden Bridge. That scene wasn’t actually shot in that house. What they did was they built a whole kitchen in a studio, because I think it would be hard pushed to go and ask the owner of the house ‘do you mind if we just exploded a human being in your kitchen?’
So they built it in a studio. Amazing art department. They literally built the exact room down to the scratches on the surface, the same kind of mugs, the same kind of plates. It was incredible. It’s a very special feeling when you’ve got 100-odd people, all in one room, all quiet, all doing their jobs to the best of their ability.
You’ve got Sally Wainwright at her absolute best. Sarah Lancashire, standing opposite me, giving her absolute best. These absolute heroes, these Queens of our industry, are the best there are. So it was an absolute privilege. I know actors throw those big words around a lot, but it was genuinely one of the most special moments of my career.
It made me realise how few times you and Sarah Lancashire have shared the same scene together. That head-to-head was absolute dynamite.
Yeah, very, very, very few. Very seldom. In the second season, we had one scene in the chapel where the funeral was happening. In the first series, we also obviously had the big fight. They are always massive scenes!
I would see her occasionally. I used to see her in the makeup trailer and on the dates I was in, sometimes we would crossover. And even though we didn’t hang out that much that we did become very close.
And one of the most special moments was when Sarah was in a Q&A in Halifax [to promote the series]. And she said something like, some of these scenes have been the most meaningful in her career. She couldn’t say at that moment that one of them was with me, but she looked at me in that moment very meaningfully. And it meant so much.
One of the most staggering things that came out of that scene plot-wise was Tommy “forgiving” Catherine for not telling him about Ryan, after realising how well she had raised Ryan.
Tommy is the villain of the piece. He’s not a classic villain, he’s so far from that. He’s obviously the antagonist, traditionally. But for me personally, I’ve been living a different truth. This is where Sally is a genius, mapping this out in her mind for a decade. In episode four of the first series, Catherine confronts Tommy outside the school when he’s following Ryan, saying ‘I’m your Dad, you’re my son.’
And he says to Catherine, ‘you know me and your Becky had a thing going on.’ And she’s like ‘you’ve raped her you fucking arsehole’ and he’s like ‘no I didn’t, what are you talking about? I never raped her,’ and so I’ve been living with that truth for ten years. Tommy definitely does not think that he raped Becky. If anything, we discussed this a lot with Sally, he thinks they were in love with each other. And that from this love they grew this beautiful boy.
Obviously, he is a monster. The way he treated Ann Gallagher, there was no justification for that. That was a gratuitous, horrible monstrous side to him. I’m not in any way condoning that and I should make that absolutely clear. Tommy is a monster. But that’s the beauty of Sally's writing. She loves to play with that wonderful, complicated space between the hero and the villain. Sally’s twists and urns give a rich history to these characters, then allow their interpretations to butt heads. They learn about a piece of history, or they conflict about a piece of history, and through those emotional turns, we get the thriller.
The forgive me moment was massive for me because that is the narrative that I have been carrying as Tommy for the past ten years. Catherine is genuinely a monster in his eyes. It’s not that he wants to kill her because he's gonna get satisfaction and pleasure out of it. He wants to kill her because [he believes] she deserves to die.
There’s also the ultimate betrayal by Ryan. Why do you think he betrayed Tommy by admitting to the police that Tommy had contacted him through his games console?
I think Ryan had the life that Tommy could have had, had he been brought up in a world full of love and support. The type of family life Ryan was lucky enough to have after Becky died.
I think Ryan is a very sorted young man now. And unlike Tommy, he has a far greater hold intellectually and emotionally on the world. He recognises that this man does not deserve to be out in the world. He recognises there is a moral obligation to put Tommy back in prison.
And that decision, even though it will probably cost him because it is his Dad and I think there is love there, is based on a grounding given to him by Catherine. It’s a very mature decision. It’s like, ‘I’m going to put the love I have for my sole parent aside for a second, think about the greater good do the right thing.’ And he does the right thing. And it’s the absolute opposite of what Tommy would have done in the same situation. Again, this goes to show how different their upbringings are.
You said earlier you haven’t seen the finale yet. Are you going to watch it?
I am, I’m going to be watching it with everyone else. I knew when we shot that scene that something special happened.
