so last week was an eventful but very wholesome week! 🥰 I turned 28 🎂, visited the hay festival twice amidst a heatwave & got to attend some great talks, meet some of my faves and get some books signed☀️📚, and the most special of all I became an auntie again to the most special boy, Theodore Elijah 🩵
!["When I was writing the script, I said to [CTM's veteran producer] Ann Tricklebank that we should contact Pam in confidence and see if it was something she was prepared to do. She may not have been up for it, in which case I would have developed my final episode differently and focus on other aspects," Thomas explains. "But the answer came back almost immediately: 'I will do it for Judy!"
With Ferris on-board, Thomas finished the script and the scene was filmed, well ahead of the rest of the episode, in September. "It was top, top secret: it wasn't on the call sheet, we put a fake name - Sister Elizabeth instead of Sister Evangelina - and we smuggled her onto the set," Thomas says. "As soon as we had her back in her old costume, it was as though she'd never been away. Pam was so generous and the scene between them is just magical."](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:onebsf4ajkkgdx4a4ge5tfu6/bafkreigqkrlus2cytimqsdipvetmcaogg74lgrnfg2dz3rynocbv7dzwbe)
![When I interviewed Parfitt in November, she was not enjoying playing Monica Joan's last days and "couldn't wait" until she was done filming the death scenes. Parfitt, who celebrated her 90th birthday on the set of the show in November, said "I said 'I'm practising [for my own death]". How did Thomas deal with what sounds like an emotional situation?
"Judy is a great actress," Thomas says, "and she'd been very humorous about her deathbed scenes and was always wearing sparkly red toenail polish. But there was a very real moment where Judy and I were sitting alone in this rather scabby dressing room we have in the basement of Nonnatus House. She was in her night dress and I was dressed as a nun and she took my hand and her eyes filled with tears, and she said! You see, to me, she is a real person! I said 'To me, she is too! We had our little moment then."](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:onebsf4ajkkgdx4a4ge5tfu6/bafkreifuwaynlmhy3ipsefiflbpnskmndxa5yhgk6zfinmznfdfjqupqwa)
