haruspis: What we’ve done this year with Clara’s departure was Plan A. This was what I w
haruspis: What we’ve done this year with Clara’s departure was Plan A. This was what I wanted to do with Clara all along. But Jenna said she wanted to leave at the end of Series 8. I sort of knew she didn’t really want to leave – I think she just felt that she ought to leave at the end of Series 8. And despite my various attempts to tell her what she was thinking – which I find never goes down well with human beings – she decided to leave at the end of Death in Heaven. So I wrote her out at the end of the episode. I was halfway through Christmas [special Last Christmas] without Jenna and then she said: ‘I’d actually like to be in Christmas’ and I discretely threw away the script I was writing and started again! Never told her that. I should have. And I wrote her out at the end of Last Christmas… but this time I sniffed the wind and wrote two endings. I wrote one version where she actually is the old lady and we last see her going up the spiral staircase and kill her on Christmas Day – so that was an ace idea! And then I wrote the other one [as used in the episode]. At the read-through we did the big heartrending departure and she changed her mind. Peter and I did perform every form of emotional manipulation known to people on the world tour [summer 2014, to promote Series 8] – badly and ineptly – but I like to think in the sheer ineptitude of our apparent subterfuge we were charming. But what we’re doing now is the right way for Clara to go – in my view. I don’t get to write the reviews… but wouldn’t it be great if I did? [Steven Moffat] -- source link
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