Happy Valley actor James Norton has revealed how the finale’s explosive concluding scene was filmed where his character set himself on fire.
Happy Valley has become an enormous hit since the release of its third season, with many of its stars begging for a fourth instalment despite it being rejected because the show’s writers had always only planned for three seasons.
On Thursday, James, who played series antagonist Tommy Lee Royce, took to Instagram, where he shared a video from behind the scenes of the finale.
“Happy Valley BTS The final scene,” he captioned the clip. “Spoiler alert. Waited a beat before posting, in case people hadn’t caught up. Huge respect to my stunt double Leo Woodruff.”
“Huge respect to @leonardstunts, my stunt double. The man literally goes up in flames,” he added in the post, which has since garnered over 11k likes.
After so many violent confrontations, Sarah Lancashire’s lead character, Sergeant Catherine Cawood, arrived home to find her house had been broken into via the basement.
As she walked into the house wielding a taser, she found an injured Tommy sitting at her table, having swallowed a bunch of bills and drank a bottle of whisky.
After exchanging verbal blows, Tommy set himself alight and died in one of the most shocking scenes of the series.
The video James uploaded showed the stuntman, Leo Woodruff, being covered in a flammable paste as camera people and crew pottered around in the background.
The flame suit was ignited by a blow torch, and it took only moments for the flames to rise and engulf his body as Sarah’s character could be seen attempting to put out the blaze with a nearby blanket.
Reacting to the clip, one fan wrote: “The acting was superb! Huge respect to your stunt double though! Can imagine the convo at the breakfast table that morning ‘what are you up to today?’ ‘Well, I’m going to be set fire to. But it’s ok, there’s a crochet blanket nearby to save me’.”
“Oh my goodness ! I held my breath the whole way through that! What a man!”
A TV insider had earlier dished on the dramatic scene while talking with The Sun, where they told the publication that producers wanted to create the most visually realistic fire.
Hence they employed Leo, who had previously worked on James Bond's No Time To Die, Batman and the Marvel films.
They explained: "The Happy Valley producers wanted to deliver as sensational and realistic a final scene as possible and though the first moments when Tommy sets himself alight are done using computer generated imagery, the rest was real.
"The moment where he is seen standing up and writhing around in agony as the flames take hold is where Leo really was set alight.
"He was wearing specialist protective clothing and gel on any areas of exposed skin, he then fell to the floor, as planned, and was immediately extinguished by fellow stunt coordinators."
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